Miami Dolphins Defeated in Victory over Buffalo Bills?

By Ronn Burner • on September 14, 2010

1:00 PM ET, September 12, 2010 Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo, NY

Chad Henne and the Miami Dolphins escaped Buffalo with a “W” but didn’t look very good in doing so and at times looked downright awful. I think ESPN uber-dork John Clayton pretty much summed up this entire game recap with his powerful and succinct NFL Power Rankings comment:

“To barely win in Buffalo isn’t a great start for the Dolphins.”

I concur. No matter how you spin this nothing can possibly ring more true than that statement. So what though? Our mission was simple. To get on that plane back to Miami sitting at 1-0 overall and 1-0 in the mighty AFC East, right? Mission accomplished. No matter how dominating Miami played in Buffalo Sunday the best possible result would still have been 1-0.

Not even Dan Marino could do better than 1-0 after Week 1. Put THAT quote in your pipe and smoke it, John Clayton!

The offense appeared stagnant most of the afternoon and although the Dolphins defense played great football during that same span they still collapsed when it mattered most blowing a coverage and allowing Trent Edwards, who only had 21 yards passing in the entire first half, to look like Joe Montana finding Roscoe Parrish running down the field like he was the only one playing on 4th and 11 for a 31-yard touchdown bringing Buffalo within a field goal, 13-10.

Miami came out of the gates with a 5:08 9 play drive for 37 yards capped off with a Dan Carpenter 32-yard field goal. From there Henne and the Dolphins offense struggled to find their bearings amassing only 164 passing yards and 132 rushing yards for 296 total. Not a horrible number but when you consider the Dolphins had the ball for nearly 37 minutes due to the defense forcing the Bills off the field on 11 of 14 3rd downs you would expect the offense to put together more than three scoring drives and only one touchdown.

The Good:

Ronnie Brown looked fresh, healthy and darn good on his 13 carries for 65 yards and a touchdown despite the lack of production out of the Wildcat. I’ll take 5.0 yards per carry any day of the week, especially Sunday and sometimes Monday. Point is, he’s healthy which is truly the key ingredient to the success of the Dolphins offensively regardless of all the Brandon Marshall hype. Okay, it’s close and they both open different things for other players but Ronnie runs the Wildcat, relieves Ricky Williams of shouldering the entire load, punishes opposing defenses and is a threat on every play running, blocking or receiving.

Jason Allen fared very well starting at corner in place of Sean Smith, last years starter benched in the preseason by Head Coach Tony Sparano. Allen had 6 tackles and 1 pass defensed that had he not flat out dropped it he could have skipped into the end zone saying na na na na na you can’t catch me. Baby steps I guess. At least he didn’t get toasted or commit a crucial pass interference penalty.

Three penalties for fifteen yards total. Very impressive for a Week 1 game.

Koa Misi (4 tackles, 1 sack, 2 QB hits), Cameron Wake (3 tackles, 1 sack, 2 QB hits, 2 pass defense) and Karlos Dansby (8 tackles, 1 sack, and 3 QB hits) all put relentless pressure on Edwards and answered the call thus far as to how effective could they be.

The Bad:

Despite the dominance of the defense the game was still very much in question with only a couple minutes remaining in the 4th after a mis-communication between apparently the entire secondary.

Henne to Marshall as made more news because of what they’re not doing rather than the next great quarterback, receiver tandem they are expected to be. Henne badly under threw a wide open Marshall racing down the field and after he adjusted and still should have made and potentially scored on the play Marshall gave his best Ted Ginn impersonation. Result: 2nd and 10.

Benny Sapp and Jason Allen each treated a gift wrapped Pick-6 like it would have given them chlamydia had they taken it. The result a 15-10 nail biter rather than the 27-10 snoozer it should have been, and that’s not even including the defensive blunder given Buffalo their only touchdown and the Moe and Curly put on by Henne and Marshall on that certain touchdown that would have made it 34-3. There are no “ifs” in sports. Just saying. 34 to friggin’ 3 wasn’t only possible but should have been the case. It took 4 Dolphins bone head plays to keep that from happening.

The Ugly:

The rest. It’s been said many times that the NFL is not a Beauty Contest and it’s a darn good thing because we are butt ugly. And you can bet you’re trophy wife there are 16 other teams around the league right now that wished they were as ugly as we are.

Including Minnesota, where we will head to face a grumpy Vikings team licking their chops at the thought of treating us as their “Slump Buster”.