As always, I look at rushing attempts, not yards. Miami was extremely fortunate to go 4-12. In the back-to-back wins over New England and Cleveland, the Dolphins were outrushed 38 attempts to 20 by New England and 40 to 25 by Cleveland. If you had shown me those numbers before the games, the odds of us winning both games was literally less than 5%.
It demonstrates our record was legit and we were even worse on the line of scrimmage than most posters here dare to concede. Kudos to Saban for understanding that and stocking up on defensive linemen in particular. In only one 2004 game did Miami have more rushing attempts than its opponent and lose. That was vs. Arizona, a small 31-27 edge in rushing attempts. We were outrushed by 9 or more attempts in an amazing 11 of 16 games, including the last 4 games when supposedly the team was doing so much better. In fact, in each of the final 4 games we were outrushed by 15 or more attempts. That was horrid ignorant football. Bates would have been a failure long term.
Per usual, rushing attempts was an excellent predictor of success, since 13 of the 16 games had the team with most attempts winning.
Here is one of the links I use for stats, college and pro. You can select the team and year and get a quick reference point for the basic stats:
http://www.mrnfl.com/data/ByTeam.aspx (Note: it defaults to 2005, which is obviously blank regarding stats but includes the schedule, quite handy. You have to choose a prior year above to view past stats)
