1. Will Tony Sparano single cover Randy Moss? Last year, the Dolphins surprised the Patriots in Miami when they chose to cover each of their receivers – including Randy Moss – with one defensive back. Moss responded with eight catches, three touchdowns, and 125 yards in a 48-28 Patriots win.
“I don’t know why Coach disrespected me like that,” Moss said after the game, meaning Sparano. “I think they disrespected me today by giving single coverage. If I see single coverage, man to man, I think I can beat anybody in this league.”
2. Which Chad Henne will show up? Holding the first pick in last year’s draft, the Dolphins took offensive line cornerstone Jake Long, passing on potential franchise quarterbacks Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco. Their reasoning, in the wake of Chad Pennington’s season-ending injury, has become evident: They believed in Chad Henne.
Since Pennington went down in Week 3 against the Billis, the Dolphins handed Henne the offense. His numbers are pedestrian – 60 percent passing for 154.2 yards per game – but with Henne guiding the huddle, Miami has gone 3-1 in games he started.
3. Why the heck don’t defenses drill the quarterback when he splits out wide in the Wildcat? We’ll let Bill Belichick take this one:
“Well, it does happen at times,” he said. “Sometimes they don’t have a quarterback in the game, sometimes they do. There have been teams that have gone out there and tried to, on a snap of the ball, go attack the quarterback and hit him and all that. Of course the downside of it is that they put a player out there who really can’t block, and he’s eliminated one of your players because you’ve chosen to take him out of the play to go hit him. You’ve sacrificed a player that you could actually gain into the play because that quarterback is not really a threat to do much blocking, so you’ve given up a player that could actually help you on the other aspects of the play. So that’s probably why most teams don’t do a lot of that.”
