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Plenty of reason for Optimism

ckparrothead

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Hey guys I haven't posted in here in a while but I just wanted to say there's plenty of reason for optimism here, and that on the whole we're not in bad shape at all.

For starters, if the playoffs were to start today, we would not get a bye week....merely because the Steelers have a 4-0 record in their division compared to our 2-1 record. What I'm trying to say is, despite our two game swoon, our record is still tied for 2nd best in the AFC, and the Steelers only just barely have us edged for that bye week were it to be handed out today.

Secondly, we have a tie-break against the Denver Broncos, and have a chance to gain one against the San Diego Chargers. If we gain the tiebreak on the Chargers, then you have to like our chances of getting that bye even more.

Did I mention we're still leading the AFC East?

Aside from any talks about the state of the AFC there are definitely some big positives I took from this game...a game which I basically chalked up before we played it.

One, our defense. I heard Melissa Stark ask Ahman Green after the game how the Packers managed to "pick apart" the Dolphins defense as they did. Honey, this is why they pay you to sit in front of the camera and look pretty with that blonde hair and those pretty blue eyes, rather than paying a smarter and more knowledgable person to analyze football. OUR DEFENSE, MAN. Yeah thats right, our D had the killer style on Monday Night. The field goal, that started from the Green Bay 33 yard line, and that kind of thing WILL happen, especially when facing Brett Favre, Ahman Green, and Bubba Franks. But the two touchdowns they got started at the Green Bay 48 yard line, and the Miami 44 yard line. In a game where field position had to be key, our offense turned the ball over 4 times and let them start their drives at the Green Bay 40 yard line or better a total of 5 times. The reality of the matter is that our defense contained Ahman Green a little bit while managing to put a stymie on Brett Favre. A quarterback with a 102 season rating who leads his team to ON AVERAGE more than 28 points of offense, got a 83 rating and led his team to 17 points of offense. Not bad. We had 3 sacks against him as well, with Jason Taylor adding one more to his total. Patrick Surtain had a great interception just when it counted most.

The second positive to take from all this is from our offense. Specifically, Cris Carter. No, he did not have a good game. He dropped an easy pass, he popped up another pass that was intercepted, and he FUMBLED the ball in a play where he basically looked like he was absolutely not ready to come across the middle of the field and be hit hard. But, he caught three passes for 30+ yards. And, if he were perhaps a little more in sync with his quarterback, and not merely about 10 days removed from his first practice in nearly a year, then perhaps that figure would have been more like 5 passes for 60 yards. Chris Chambers had a decent game too, with 5 catches for 55 yards. I was pleasantly surprised at how much Ray Lucas could keep going back to Cris Carter (despite being burned by him a bunch of times) and Cris would still usually be open. I mean guys think about this, his first game back from retirement where he was extremely rusty, and in all likelihood in a game where we should NOT have expected him to start, he caught 3 passes for 31 yards. Oronde Gadsden wasn't even averaging 3 catches a game with us through 6 games. What we had with Cris Carter there was the opposite of what we'd get with Oronde. Cris was getting open frequently and was being thrown at frequently, but instead of making the positive play he tended to make the negative play. Oronde would hardly ever get open, but usually make the bigtime positive when he finally did. When Cris gets back into the groove I would imagine we won't be seeing him fumble the ball or drop a bunch of passes anymore. What we'll have then is a guy who will, as I heard one analyst put it when asked what Cris Carter's value to the passing attack will be, catch on average 5 passes for 50+ yards a game and a few TDs. I'll take that over Oronde's 2.66 catches and 38 yards per game, and no TDs. You never like to lose a guy, especially one that can make plays like OG, but what I think happened through 6 games this season is we saw that we probably made a mistake not going more heavily after Cris Carter back in the offseason...instead trusting the starting job to a man who is not a starting quality WR in the NFL...Oronde Gadsden. You would think that this game would show me that all the OG haters were wrong, that Cris Carter is no significant improvement. To that I say that its the opposite for me, the fact that Cris continually got open impressed me enough to say that when our QB situation is straightened out, our passing attack will be more potent than when OG was here.

One more note....Mark Dixon please get healthy, we need you here for us. Marcus Spriggs should have been visiting Green Bay Wisconsin to unload a dairy truck rather than start an NFL game at Left Tackle against the Packers.

Ok, yet another note. To all the Todd Wade haters (you know who you are)...who is the most impressive lineman on the Dolphins according to John Madden? Thats right, Todd Wade. He said he was lookin at this year's game tapes and the guy that jumped out the most and looked the most impressive, was Wade.
 
Welcome back CK.

Nice post and all,just one thing, inregards to Madden.
I find 99% of his rants to be incoherent rehashed babble.
Yeah Ray Lewis is our QB. lol. Madden needs to be put out to pasture or taken out back and shot. :)





:monkey: Boom!! Madden
 
yep, good post, but in second place in the AFC we still get the BYE, top two teams get the week off.;)
 
it is easy to look at this team through rose colored glasses since we were so impressive w/Jay. But w/o Jay we will lose every game until we stop turning the ball over. Nothing else matters. 10 TOs in 2 game is expansion team stats. Ricky, our STs and especially our D are worthless if we cannot stop giving the ball away. :fire:

other than that I agree with everything you said ;)
 
you are right...2 things that we have going for us are 1) a favorable schedule and 2) that this happened in the middle of the year and not the end of the year...even if we lose the jets game...we still have time to get everything corrected and be the team that left the field in denver with a 5-1 record...
 
maybe you kids are too young to remember that madden was a football coach in his day, and a pretty good one. maybe he gets names mixed up and maybe he gets a little excited, but he knows this game.
 
MarinoFan, we wouldn't have the bye, We are tied with Pittsburgh for second best record. They would get the bye due to having a better divisional record so Parrot is right.
 
I think id have to disagree with ur statement about the defense...they already had the game won they went ultra conservative, so keeping them to 17 points in all is a moot point at best. Thats like our top ranked pass defense last year!! Who the hell needed to pass on us last year we were getting ripped all year for rushing yards a plenty. Those stats are very very misleading. Taylor couldnt beat a reserve lineman or the injured starter all night. Madison played like crap again. Zack didnt have room to move cuz the Dt's didnt keep him open, so generally i would have to say the defense was horrible. I do however agree about Carter, his first game since last december wasnt as bad as people think. Dixon has to come back soon as well. Overall we didnt make plays in that game and Green Bay did.
 
OG haters? I love the way the guy makes catches and is a bull to bring down. Having said that I do believe that Carter will be even better. I was posting in the pre-season to get him. Spriggs is not getting it done at all. He is hurting us, we miss Dixon. I just heard that Lucas will start on Sunday night. IMO the team doesn't respond to him at all. Well. with Dixon back and the turnover bug out of our system(hopefully) I pray for a performance that results in victory.
 
Originally posted by ckparrothead

Ok, yet another note. To all the Todd Wade haters (you know who you are)...who is the most impressive lineman on the Dolphins according to John Madden? Thats right, Todd Wade. He said he was lookin at this year's game tapes and the guy that jumped out the most and looked the most impressive, was Wade.

Agreed with you up to this point. Madden is old and senile. He has been slipping the past few years now to the point where he is barely credible. He kept calling Ray Lucas, Ray Lewis all night long.

15 yard face mask penalty....wtf was up with that. This is what happens when you only draft 5 linemen before the 5th round since 1996. A really bad inept offensive line.
 
Originally posted by stan marino
I think id have to disagree with ur statement about the defense...they already had the game won they went ultra conservative, so keeping them to 17 points in all is a moot point at best. Thats like our top ranked pass defense last year!! Who the hell needed to pass on us last year we were getting ripped all year for rushing yards a plenty. Those stats are very very misleading. Taylor couldnt beat a reserve lineman or the injured starter all night. Madison played like crap again. Zack didnt have room to move cuz the Dt's didnt keep him open, so generally i would have to say the defense was horrible. I do however agree about Carter, his first game since last december wasnt as bad as people think. Dixon has to come back soon as well. Overall we didnt make plays in that game and Green Bay did.


JT did not have a good game. he realized Favre was in shot gun and getting rid of it early. JT would have no chance of getting to him. he was to busy trying to snuff out screen passes and such. i also noticed him dropping back in coverage becuase of this. i dont undrstand why we werent bringing up the safeties more and covering A. Green. im sorry, that guy had a field day with us. our pittily little DT's on third down got used. Carter had a bad game but the work that he got will get him acclamated sooner. that is about the only positive i take from this game. everyone was heartless and certainly did not earn there money. including the coaches!
 
the biggest thing we have going for us is our schedule. There are only 2 games left on our schedule that the opposing team has an above .500 record, but both those teams lost by 30+ last Sunday. We have to squeek out a victory in NY this week. If we do all is well. The following week we play 1 of 3 offenses that is worse than ours with out Jay. We may lose to the Chargers, but thay isn't a big deal. In Dec we have games against the Vikes and Bears, enough said. The Raiders who have lost 4 games in row. Jay takes us to Buffalo, but we only lost to them by 13 with Ray making 6 TOs. That is an easy win with out a melt down. We finish the year in NE, a team we already beet by 2 tds. With Jay we could easily go 5-1 the same record he had before the injury.

If we lose to the Jets 5-1 wont be enough, and I would worry about the Ravens if we can't win in NY.
 
The sched sounds nice, but if we dont make plays we dont make plays. I hope we play a good game this weekend. If it werent the jets i wouldnt even care if we lost. We need to play a good all round game, and gain some confidence.
 
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