Reflections: Jets (2008)

[Dave Gray]

I come away from this game feeling like I did a lot of the time last year...another close game that we could've won, had one or two things gone differently.

QB - Pennington played fine.  He was jittery getting started, but he didn't make any big mistakes.  The pick at the end of the game was not due to a poor throw, but was more a gamble because of time constraints.  I think he managed the game well.

WRs - Crap, downfield.  Nothing long.  Because of this, we had to dink and dunk (which is fine), but it affected our running game.  The line was constantly stacked.

RBs - Nothing to report, really.  There weren't holes to run through.  Some missed blocking assignments on the blitz.

O-Line - Their pass blocking was phenomenal.  When we had their 4 linemen against our 4 guys, we gave plenty of time.  We only got tripped up on blitz pickups, but that's more of a FB, TE, RB thing.  Run blocking was crap.  Jake Long needs to focus and not commit penalties at such costly times -- he had 2 that negated first downs and ended drives.  As great a player as he might be, if you cost your team 2 drives, we got problems.  Hopefully he'll work on this.

D-Line - I think that we applied pressure, but we're not very good at closing the deal once we apply the pressure.  We get in the pocket, but usually overpursue and let the QB squirm away or scramble for yardage.  Favre's 2nd TD pass was total garbage and he should've probably been sacked twice by then.  We had him dead to rights, but couldn't grab him.

Punt game - Terrible.  Fields had no hangtime, so it gave their returners room to set up and run.  Also, our fliers get down quickly, but can't tackle or they just run past the ball-carrier.  Our return game was terrible and Ginn wasted two golden opportunities to advance the ball late in the game.  When you essentially lose a game by 20 yards, missing these chances is huge.

Kicking game - Carpenter had a kickoff out of bounds.  Other than that, he was fine, and had a touchback, which we hadn't seen much of to this point. 

Secondary - I don't think they played as poorly as some might.  They gave up everything on 2 plays.  One was a great play-fake from Favre, and the other was just a hail mary type thing.  Both should've been covered, but I think over the long haul of the game, they held their own.

Coaching - Play calling was good, for the most part.  We did have some mental mistakes, where we had to burn timeouts, or where we didn't manage the clock well.

Ultimately, this was just a lot of small mistakes here and there, and not one huge thing that cost us the game.  It's positive in that I think that every one of these things is coachable.  On the downside, though, a lot of these same problems were here last year, when we only got 1 win.

[USO-ORLANDO]

Milkshakes on me!!

[SCFinfan]

I was pretty happy with what I saw today. I couldn't catch the game on TV, as Tallahassee would rather show the Jags and the Bucs lose, but it didn't sound like we did that poorly.

[AprFools_Phins]

This is the 1st game I was able to watch this year and even though we lost I didn't think that we were the complete mess we were last year. Like Dave said we could have won, and a lot of our mistake can be fixed in some time. We aren't playing like a playoff team or anything- but we didn't play like a 1 win team either.

[StL FinFan]

The Dolphins still have a lot of work to do, but as the season goes on, they should get in better sync with each other and cut down on  the penalties.  This first game was something to build on.  They actually had me believing they could pull out a win.  It's a start.

[bsfins]

I think Jake Longs sturggles coud alos be contributed to Playng More 4-3 defenses in preseason,and this was his first game action gainst a 3-4 defense...He seemd to struggle with the stunting....The entire line seemed to struggle a bit  with who had who...

[CF DolFan]

I think Jake Longs sturggles coud alos be contributed to Playng More 4-3 defenses in preseason,and this was his first game action gainst a 3-4 defense...He seemd to struggle with the stunting....The entire line seemed to struggle a bit  with who had who...

People don't stunt and blitz too much in preseason do they?  I mean ... isn't that why so many offenses look better in the preseason and then look like total crap?

[bsfins]

I don't know..We kept sending Kitchen sink Blitzes quite abit in Preseason....It seemed like to me,the Line looked really confused on who to Block at times during the game...They had a three man rush..and got pressure to Pennigton...

[Kid Dynamite]

I thought the dolphins did well for a team that went 1-15 the year before....The Dolphins played a tough close game.

What if Favre wouldnt have completed that lucky hail marry he just threw up for grabs? Chad Pennington I thought played a good game. Also consider that he just became a dolphin and adopted a set of piss poor receivers.

Bottom line, it doesnt matter how many games they win this year.

[masterfins]

Well I drank the Kool-Aid again this year.  All the talk about Parcells' big moves, Long will be a pro bowler for years to come, Ginn will show his speed on kick returns and receiving ability on offense, Ricky will run like he did years ago, the kicking game is fantastic, etc.  I was even excited to be able to wach the game at home (I live in Bills country), the game was on the local network station since the Bills played an NFC team which was on the opposing network.  Well, I was treated to just another piss poor showing by the Fins.  The Fins couldn't beat a team that won only four games last year, while playing at home, with the quarterback who spent the last several seasons playing on (and against in practices) the opposing team, against a team with a 38 year old quarterback who was new to his team's system (and conference).  My Fall Sunday schedule just opened up.  Kudo's to Fasano who played the entire game like it was the SuperBowl.  See ya next year!

40 year DolFan