do you realize that the defense played 93 plays ???....i can´t believe this *****ing after a win....needless thread
Maybe, just maybe, they offered him a contract and he picked Oakland instead. Signing players you want isn't as easy as you would think.
They forget because they choose too. They see Dansby and Burnett having success on their new teams but forget how average they were for us.
It really is bizarre. I wish I cared enough to go back and count all the times it was brought up that we were overpaying for both of them. Now we are paying less for similar overall production but are also getting some big plays too.
Anybody see that Jones and Ellerbe communication before the end of the game when the Bengals were backed up towards their endzone? Jones was getting instructions from Ellerbe and Jones basically dismissed Ellerbes calls with a dismissive wave of his arm. Looked like Jones said #### you im going to blitz. What was that all about?
First off, yes they won. Doesn't mean that some players didn't play awful. It's amazing how everyone only wants to talk about who did bad when they lose. 93 plays. Reshad Jones missed several tackles, took wrong angles, didn't know his job and got destroyed on combo routes as well. But let's just chalk that up to 93 plays. Phillip Wheeler missed every other tackle while trailing in coverage half the time. He did apply pressure well sometimes though. I could go on such as Ellerbe is a horrible blitzing linebacker and rarely provides pressure and takes plays off...but we won so lets just ignore all the problems still there. People who blame Philbin need to open their eyes and see that our players mess up the execution aspect regularly. The way this team was coached last night we should have won 30-10
Same can be said for Davis and Smith. Left for Colts and Chiefs and hey presto!....playing decent! Must be a curse.
Am I happy with the win? Heck yeah. However, for our D to be dominant (looking more and more that is what we need to win) some guys need to pick up their play. It is amazing how much better this D looks when Wake and Solai are healthy. I am not a fan of Wheeler. He seems to miss too many tackles. Maybe it was just being tired from being on the field ALL night. I am fine giving him a pass for this game. However, I think we have seen this is becoming more of a trend than the exception. Neither of which is the guy I thought really played poor. Jimmy Wilson. Seriously, how is our rookie DBs not beating this guy out for playing time in the Nickel/Dime? The one time he actually had good coverage, he could not bat the ball down and gave up the first down. He is good on ST, but that is it.
Gotcha. My mistake. Guess Jones won that argument with that. I was watching Jones and i was thinking..." i seriously hope you have got the right play/assignment called!"
Dansby and Burnett were average if you take your cues entirely from highlight reel plays and stat sheets. They both played pretty well while they were here- Maybe not up to their contracts, but certainly not stiffs.
agree with wilson,, but he had the KEY hit to force that ellerbe interception which nobody on network tv seems to think relevent because i haven't heard it mentioned,,, but that was a nice hit that popped the ball up in the air for ellerbe
I thought it was Clemons and Jones... not Ellerbe and Jones. And did you notice what Grimes did on the play? He went to blitz and had a feeling something was wrong, Marvin Jones was running free across the middle so he broke off the blitz and started to chase him down. Had Dalton had a half second more before Wake nailed him, Jones might still be running with the ball.
I dont know if you guys notice but Tight Ends arent tearing us a new blowhole this year, you can thank Ellerbe and Wheeler. They still get beat yes but not as bad as Dansby and company were, I'd say they were good pickups. Jones is meh, some plays he shines others he's crap.
Had we lost, I'm sure there would be more complaints. It's only natural. But you have to realize, the mistakes and missed tackles were MUCH worse in the second half than the first. The defense got tired, which to me is somewhat amazing considering how many players rotate, particularly on the defensive line. I can understand a guy like Grimes needing to take a few plays off after the 92 yard int return for a td and the Bengals O going straight back onto the field. I can also understand guys like Ellerbe and Wheeler just breaking down as the game goes on.. but the defensive line should have no excuses considering the rotations. And thankfully Wake doesn't have an excuse for his level of play to win the game does he?
Yeah man, the announcers were saying in OT the Bengals had 90+ offensive plays to our 50+ and yet it was our defense that held on in OT.
I cannot believe this thread is about bad defense are you guys kidding me do you watch any of the games? they played 12 more minutes and 40+ plays than the offense, the defense scored almost as many points than the offense did 9 to 20 and i would give the defense 6 more of them points since they got the ball back on the scoring half 3 times which the offense went 3 and out and kicked fg one miss, wanna blame someone put the blame where it needs to go!!!! your turnover margin is 4 to 1 and you win by a safety? I think there's something wrong here, if grimes doesn't house that INT we lose....I know what your gonna say well we missed a fg, do the math make that fg and kick another fg you lose the game!!!
My wife almost flipped out on the woman that ran our birth classes at the birth center because she was talking to one of the other people in the class and said something to the effect of "Sometimes anecdotal evidence is really the best evidence". My wife just earned her PhD in biology.
On the one hand I understand that in the wake of a win nobody wants to hear anything negative. On the other hand, ... come on, guys. When the Dolphins lose games there's always at least half a dozen threads springing up specifically trying to focus on the positive. We faced an opponent traveling on a short week, an opponent that lost the best or second-best defensive tackle in the NFL early in the game to a torn ACL, an opponent that lost the star tailback that was thrashing us late in the game to an injury, an opponent that gave away turnovers like candy on Halloween, our offense scored only 13 points ... and we won 22-20 in overtime. Let's not pretend Miami just played an awesome game. People should have just as much interest in figuring out which players do and do not belong now as they did two days ago. That said, Philip Wheeler catches entirely too much flack, IMO. Seems to me like when he has a good game, he's not often getting credit for that...but when he has a bad game, he's taking immense heat. And not for nothing, not accusing anyone here of this but I have seen people flat out confuse Ellerbe for Wheeler because of the dreads, and blame Wheeler for Ellerbe's mistakes. I think Wheeler is exactly what he was acquired to be. He's an aggressive blitzing outside linebacker that can make aggressive plays behind the line of scrimmage. Only Lavonte David has more total pressures on the quarterback this season than Philip Wheeler. His run stop percentage on PFF is 7th best among all 4-3 OLBs. Does he have issues in coverage? Absolutely. But the team SHOULD have known that when they signed him. Any examination of his work in Indy or Oakland should have shown it. Yet the team is putting him in position constantly to cover guys like Marques Colston, Stevie Johnson, Harry Douglas, Greg Little, Davone Bess, now A.J. Green and Mohamed Sanu. The result of that is not entirely surprising. As for Reshad Jones...I agree with Robert Horry on this one. He had a bad game. I'm not sure what the hell he was doing out there, but it wasn't playing football at a $30 million level, which is the amount of the contract extension he got in the off season. As for Ellerbe's interception...I mean, come on. Sanu gift-wrapped the thing for him. He even put a bow on it, and signed it "XOXO Sanu".
In the beginning of the year we were. Judging by the naked eye, a lot of coverages against the Bengals were aimed at either doubling Green or one of their two tight ends on a given play, which I can't say was a bad strategy, though Marvin Jones and of course Giovani Bernard got loose a couple times on us. Maybe I'm wrong. Just didn't see a lot of Gresham and Eifert.
We were running the ball quite successfully with Atkins still in the game. Sure, Dalton made mistakes, but its up to the defense to capitalize on them. Why shouldn't a score on defense be a credit to how we played? I remember you saying injuries weren't an excuse when we had them, why is it different with the Bengals?
I'm pretty sure you're not correctly characterizing what I said about injuries. As I recall, I was arguing against the complaining about silly things like Ellerbe missing one play in one game, and other such nonsense. You've never heard me say that losing Cameron Wake for instance is just no big deal. That's the caliber player that the Bengals lost when Geno Atkins tore his ACL. As for running the football while Geno Atkins was in the game, I don't know how relevant it is. The offense only scored 13 points total in the game. Atkins' value is as a pass rusher on the interior. You don't know how he could have impacted Miami's passing game if he'd stayed in the game. Just as Cameron Wake is naturally going to have an effect on the other team's passing game.
this may be the worst tackling team i've ever watched. wheeler is a horrible tackler amongst horrible tacklers. i really don't think burnett or dansby were good but i don't see the upgrade with these two guys other than long term salary cap ramifications.
Wheeler's season definitely took a dip for the worse last night...but his season has been primarily up-and-down, not just down. That's what I'm not seeing enough of when people talk about Wheeler. His game seems to go to extremes, either extreme good or extreme bad. And considering he's new to the system, that could change as he gets more used to it as well as his teammates.
I'll grant you it was poor during the 3rd quarter defensive marathon, but I think this year overall the tackling has been leaps and bounds better than recent years past.
Fair enough. I'm just a little confused at what hypotheticals you can apply to this game. I mean, Geno Atkins was out, but so was our best guard in an abysmal offensive line.
I have been critical of Jones. IMO he's the main reason our defense has been deficient for much of the season. Coyle's defense is designed for the S to make plays and he hasn't been making them. And worse, he's been a liability in too many instances. By my count he's had one decent game and that's it. I don't agree with the Wheeler complaints. I see him as about even with what we got from Burnett last season. They don't play the same style of game but the net impact is about even. The comments at the end of last season indicated to me that the coaches wanted more players that could pressure the passer and catch the ball (create TOs). They were willing to give up some coverage for more overall speed and more tackles in the flats. The players acquired on defense seem to be the type the coaches wanted. I have been more disappointed with Ellerbe's play. I expected a downhill guy that would read quickly and make a ton of those hits in the backfield, those tackles for loss. He seems to make the reads often enough but he gets blocked or misses the tackle too often.
after reading ck's post about wheeler and Pffs stats maybe i really don't know what a missed tackle is. to me this is a case where the film don't line up with the stats.but really miami is terrible at tackling as a team. then i see the 3rd and long comment really 25 % why does that seem so low.
Maybe this will sound like just an excuse for Wheeler and Jones -- who I think have both been kind of up and down this season (Jones more down than up) -- but the Thursday night games that I've watched (and not just this year), both offensively and defensively, haven't met to the standards of games on Sundays or Mondays. Whatever that short week does, the games just look more ragged. While you can't excuse any lackluster playing in any game, it'd hard for me to shoot a kill shot after a Thursday night game in the middle of the season.
All the line stunts are exposing our linebackers to some wide open holes in the run game...Miami is not putting much if any emphasis on gap control so I'm not going to hammer guys expected to make an exorbanent amount of open field tackles.
Yeah I think Geno Atkins impacts the game a lot more than Richie Incognito. Going to just have to disagree with you there. This is all about assessing where Miami is. That's what it's all about right now. The original poster brought up two pointed criticisms and the blowback he's getting is essentially saying the team beat an awesome team and should be immune to criticism. Well, except the awesome team they beat traveled on a short week, suffered a devastating injury early in the game, gave the football away like candy, and we won by 2 in overtime. So I disagree with those who apparently think Miami should be immune to criticism based on the fact they won.
