“Obviously, I felt like we should’ve won that game,” Ronnie Brown said. “We had the better team.”
“It didn’t feel like they beat us as much as we lost the game,” Cameron Wake said.
“I knew we were going to win throughout the whole game,” Ricky Williams said.
“Man, I thought we were going to beat the s*** out of Cleveland, just like everyone else did,” Kendall Langford said.
But the Dolphins didn’t. And it continued a troubling trend for the Dolphins – another game in which they had the better stats, but couldn’t produce the points to match.
The Dolphins out-gained the Browns, achieved more first downs, won the time of possession battle and held Cleveland to one touchdown.
But once again, the Dolphins’ overall performance did not match the sum of its individual parts. They turned the ball over three times, had a field goal blocked, committed a handful of untimely penalties and punted twice from midfield instead of going for it on fourth-and-short. Despite their advantages on the stat sheet, the Dolphins scored just 10 measly points.
“All those negative factors just add up to a loss,” guard Richie Incognito said. “It just wasn’t winning football today.”
And it has been this way all season for the Dolphins. They dominated the Patriots in the first half, but led only 7-6 at halftime, and allowed New England to pull away in the second half. They dominated the Packers on the stat sheet, but scored just two touchdowns and needed overtime to win. They gained nearly double the yards as Oakland, but trailed at halftime and didn’t pull away until the final moments.
