We were facing an uphill battle coming into this game. 3rd week in a row on the road (What the **** is that by the way???), the weather, Tua’s cold streak etc…. However, we could have and should have won this game. This loss is, without a doubt, on the coaches. On to the grades:
QB — The Good: 17 of 30 for 234 and 2 TD’s isn’t a bad game at all. Should have been much better but our WR corp had a few drops.
The Bad: While not a bad game, Tua wasn’t great either. A few questionable throws in there that could have gone for picks.
The Grade: C +. The drops didn’t help but neither did the play calling. Overall a good effort by Tua….But I was hoping for great.
RB’s — The Good: Wow. Mostert came to play. Great game by him. 17 rushes for 136. That’s an 8.0 ypc. Very well done. Ahmed had 43 more and our backs totaled 181 yards with Ingold’s 2 yard input.
The Bad: With a performance like that, there wasn’t much bad with these guys.
The Grade: A . Almost put up 200 on Buffalo. This group deserves the A. Spoiler Alert: It’ll be the only A given out today.
TE’s — The Good: The TE’s held up well in the running game. That’s all.
The Bad: Gesicki with 1 catch for 5 yards. And he stopped running after he caught it. Smythe with 1 catch for minus 2 yards. Awful.
The Grade: D . The only reason this group gets the D is because of the running game. They are being woefully underutilized and this coaching staff deserves the F for that alone. Meanwhile Buffalo’s TE had a career game tonight.
WR’s — The Good: Waddle was very good tonight as was Hill. 9 catches for Hill for 69 and a TD. Waddle with 3 for 114 and a TD.
The Bad: Wilson was the only other receiver with a catch. Ridiculous. Also too many drops in the first half that were costly.
The Grade: C -. Again….Hill and Waddle make this a C -. No one else did anything.
OL — The Good: Opening enough holes to hang almost 200 rushing on Buffalo is a good game. Tua, in general, had time to throw. A good effort by these guys.
The Bad: A few blown assignments when it counted hurt us. However, not a bad game by this unit.
The Grade: B - . How often do I ever say we should run more in a Dolphins game? Rarely. But McDaniel should have trusted them and we would have won this game. Awful coaching. Period.
DL — The Good: Wilkins with a Fumble recovery. Seller with a sack. Not much else.
The Bad: No pass rush to speak of. We have up 153 on the ground. And of course, we folded when we need a stop in the last 3 minutes.
The Grade: F . They played well for the 3rd quarter. That’s it. I’m sorry….That doesn’t cut it for me.
LB’s — The Good: Great Strip Sack by Phillips. That’s all.
The Bad: Anybody seen Jerome Baker? Actually….Anyone seen any of our MLB’s? I haven’t. Where is the pash rush from this group? Awful first half. Decent 3rd Qtr. Awful 4th qtr.
The Grade: F. I’m sorry….But they did not play well at all.
DB’s — The Good: N/A
The Bad: Open receivers everywhere tonight. If Noah Iggy isn’t cut on January 9th, I’m going to be pissed. He is awful. X wasn’t much better tonight. Admittedly, there was no lash rush to help them out. But they let way too many receivers get way too open.
The Grade: F . Folded like a Walmart Lawn chair when we needed them. Awful.
Coaching — The Good: Offensively we rang up 29 on the Bills. Defensively, we shut out the Bills the entire 3rd qtr. That’s it.
The Bad: Where do I start? McDaniel refusing to run the ball on 3rd and short? Or refusing to run the ball 4 time on first and goal from the 4 and settling for a FG? How about not ever running a rub route or anything of the sort on 3rd and short? Terrible. Wait! Then there’s Boyer….He has absolutely Zero feel for the game. Rushing 4 on 3rd and 17 and letting the Bills convert? How about the last 8 seconds of the first half? How do you give any NFL QB 9 seconds to throw the ball? Honestly, does Boyer know what a delayed blitz is? Awful.
The Grade: F. Again.
Conclusion: We have 3 games left and in my mind we have to win all 3 of them. The division is Buffalo’s. That’s all but official. 10 wins might get us in, but we have to rely on help for that. The problem is, Our defense has fallen apart. Our play calling is suspect. The coaching, quite frankly, is not peaking when we need it to. Nor is this team. It’s an up hill battle from here on out. I would say we’re going to find out what we’re made of in the next 3 weeks, but I think we just found out in the last 3. To be honest, I don’t like what we found.
No Moral Victories!
Last time I checked, the object was to win the game, not to lose by as few points as possible!
-How about Hill and Sherfield catch the TD pass early in the game, then we are up by 4 at the end and Buffalo has to score a TD, which changes everything
-When you are on the road, against a better team, you have to make plays to win. Right when they dropped those balls and we left with a FG I knew the game was over
-Don’t get me started on the 2-point conversion attempt by us either. Stupid. But it didn’t end up mattering. Just one more way we tried to give away the game
-Then at the end, when you are actually winning the game, how about not letting them go on a 15 play, 86 yard drive that consumes 6 minutes of clock, not even leaving our offense time so they had a chance to choke at the end and go 4 and out with a sack, an illegal motion, and a an offensive hold
-Not to mention we were winning by 8 points in the 4th quarter and then proceeded to not score and let them score for the balance of the game
-Don’t want to say I told you so but how about not trading away a first round pick and a bunch of payroll for Bradley Chubb, who totally sucks. Only time I heard his name called was when he chased Josh Allen for 8-12 seconds but didn’t tackle him
-And how about not getting carried away and going all in on this year after we beat a bunch of garbage teams and somehow thought we were something that we clearly are not, not even close
-How about not losing to San Diego and San Fran in winnable situations? Buffalo was a game I expected them to lose. But the Chargers? Hello McDaniel, guess what you can actually run the ball. How about having done that against San Diego? Same thing goes for the 49ers and the backup QB we were playing against. And Tua totally no showed that game, and frankly was not that much better against the Chargers. One thing or the other for this team
-How about not whining about the snowball thing. Yeah the refs should have done something, but it didn’t make Sherfield and Hill drop TD passes. We sound like babies
-How about leaving Josh Boyer in Buffalo, in a snow drift?
The Minnesota Vikings are not very good, but they find ways to win games. I don’t know what the Dolphins are, but we find ways to lose games. Frankly same thing happened against said Vikings. We outplayed them the whole game. Only game all year our defense was good. But then the whole team imploded at the end, and made a ton of stupid mistakes along the way that left Minny in the game to begin with. Because we just find ways to lose.
a key to a groin issue.
