I do not have the technical insight to be able to break down the game like some on here, but I wanted to throw what I saw last night because living in Texas I will not be able to see many Dolphins games. THE GOOD Chad Henne ~ 30/40 for 416 61.2% 8.5 per play 2 TD 1 INT 93.6 I thought Henne had an outstanding game. The INT was garbage INT IMHO. He showed great poise in the pocket even when under extreme duress, he audibled at the line showing he was reading what the defense gave him, and played smart football. Granted this is the first game, but I think this is a sneak peak at what Henne will give us when he is allowed to manage a game. Anthony Fasano ~ 5 for 82, man did he come on last night, great catches! Reggie Bush ~ 11 rushes for 38 yards, 9 catches for 56. Granted these are not mind blowing numbers, but Bush did a lot for the offense that does not show on the stat sheet. The Pats had to account for him every play opening up other options for Henne. Bush will break some of those during the year too. THE BAD The defense……I think this is a case of being over hyped and they got caught looking, they thought they were going to dominate and when they got smacked they never really recovered. I don’t think this will be the trend for the year; in fact I am willing to bet our D comes out next week hungry. O line ~ This issue needs to be addressed ASAP, I have no idea what the answer is but it is not hard for teams to stack the line when only 3/5 lineman play at a high level. Henne was sacked 4 times, and pressured all night. Imagine if he had time to throw…… The secondary ~ Are we on the phone with Will Allen yet, pleading with him to come back? WOW…..
I agree with everything you wrote USAFF, and will add I think we were unprepared and out-coached. There's no doubt the no huddle NE employed killed us, but my question is why didn't we see it coming (they've done that many times before). And, why didn't we try to do the same in return? Also, the use of our time out's was horrible IMHO. We used two on the opening drive, and WTF was Marshall thinking?! In all honesty, I did not expect to win this game. But, I also didn't expect that we'd let a division rival (and their fans) come into our house and b!tch slap us around. I had hoped that maybe we'd turned the corner as a team in terms of our development. That we were maybe a team on the rise and ready to complete with teams like NE. But, after watching the last quarter and a half of that game, I don't think so. I'm sure I'll get flamed by his apologists for saying this, but a Tony Sparano led team will never be a playoff caliber team. On a more positive note, I was very happy to see Henne play as well as he did last night. He may have been out shined by an almost perfect Brady last night. But, if he continues to improve and play like he did last night, we may win some games simply due to vast improvement at the QB position.
I don't think the D is overhyped. The front was being held all night and it was only called once. Several times Wake would have gotten Brady had he not been held. But as usual the refs will give the Patriots the benefit of the doubt. The secondary was never hyped by anyone other than Davis and Smith. They hyped themselves and should be offering retractions today. Burnett got burned in coverage, and that is unlike him. Not sure what the hell happened with him last night, but he is a specialist in pass coverage and didn't show that vs the Pats. Must be something about putting on this uniform. As for Henne....I take it all back right now. He looked great last night. For the most part he made the right reads, had great throws, and showed he can get down the field on his feet as well. A couple of bad throws in the red zone, but those could be on Marshall as well for the route he ran. Still...very positive performance by Henne.
lets not forget that we cut Polite , Clay is injured, and the other tightends are not showing much of anything. but my pet peeve is the crappy play of special teams that whole unit needs to be cut and replaced. and Vernon Carey he almost got Henne killed last night.how is it that the officals are allowed to call the plays for the pats? if officiating is this way when we play our other rivials it will kill our season.
Its amusing that you could obviously see the holding going on with the Patriots OL, especially Solder but one of the announcers saw it and said the officials don't call or overlook between the shoulders holding. Maybe so in some cases but not when the defensive man gets the offensive lineman turned and he still has a hand full of jersey.
Other than a few mistakes on blitz packages, the line did pretty good. Henne had time to throw the ball and was only sacked 4 times on 60 drop backs, with one being completely his fault.
