Stubborn, Not Stupid

Guess Cameron’s just stubborn not stupid. He gave Ronnie Brown all the work and Chatman never touched the ball. The result: over 200 yards of offense from Brown against the Jets. The payoff: another loss. Brown was a force, Miami only turned it over once, and they scored 28 points on the road. And they still lost. And Miami trailed 31-13 at one point in the 4th quarter. So what happened and how do we parcel out blame? I’d do it this way:

1) The defense. Couldn’t force a single turnover. Gave up a ton of third-down conversions, several by penalty. No pressure on the quarterback. And they got pushed around, literally, by Thomas Jones. I should just quote Jason Taylor here instead of wasting anymore words of my own:

“We do things that hurt us, and that’s me included. I jumped offsides twice. I can’t do that. You play around with that fine line of jumping the ball and rushing the quarterback and being offsides. I can’t do that to our team. We’re not ready to overcome stuff like that … I didn’t get to the quarterback, I suck right now, it’s as simple as that so there, there’s your headline … “

2) Special teams. Not just the kick return TD by Leon Washington; the Jets had better field position than Miami all game. Again, Ginn did little on returns. His one good return got called back on a penalty of course.

3) Trent Green. His best game of the season. Only 1 INT as mentioned. But that INT was critical. Leading 21-13 the Jets take the second half kickoff, chew up 7 minutes, drive 67 yards, and kick a FG for a 24-13 lead. Miami responds with a good drive into Jet territory, really a must-score drive. And Green kills it with a pick. Bad, bad timing. The Jets then drive for what proves to be the winning TD. (During that drive, CBS showed a closeup of Green on the sidelines looking at a notebook. Jeff said it was his Quarterbacking for Dummies Book).

So even with an improved offensive performance, our special teams stink and the defense is collapsing. Cam was brought in to improve the offense but even if he proves successful at it, it looks like the Dolphins are going to have to rebuild the defense too. And if Ginn doesn’t get it going already, we might have to waste another pick on a WR/KR too.

What about the Raiders on Sunday? Well, if the Dolphins can’t beat a bad team at home in the heat then I’ll have to further revise my predictions downward. I think they'll win it somehow but if they can’t win Sunday, I don’t know what games they can win. Seriously, they can’t actually let Duante Culpepper return to Dolphins Stadium and beat them can they? If they’re not good enough to beat the freaking Raiders then a one-win season could be a real possibility.