Week 3 @ Chargers Prediction

Unfortunately, my prediction turned out to be right last week, as the Dolphins fell to the Colts. So now I'm 1-1 on the season.

This week, Miami has to travel across the country on a short week to play one of the best teams in the league. Miami does get some relief, however, in the form of LaDainian Tomlinson, Nick Hardwick, and Travis Johnson all being ruled out with injuries. San Diego's monster nose tackle Jamal Williams is also out for the year and is being replaced by a practice squad guy.

Miami will have room to run, but in order to win, they'll need a vast improvement out of the defense, especially when it comes to covering targets in the middle of the field.

Against Philip Rivers, I'm not sure the defense can deliver. I'm picking the Chargers to win.

Also, after last week's loss, Miami's playoff odds now stand at 3.7%, a drop of 2.5%.

Reader Question: Looking ahead to 2010 Draft

Here's a question I received in response to my recap of the Colts game:

From what you posted about the Colts game, are you thinking linebacker with the first or second round pick in the 2010 draft?

Linebacker is clearly a concern for this team when looking into the future, and the team's struggles thus far this season with pass rushing and covering the middle of the field have only made the spotlight brighter.

The bottom line is that aside from Channing Crowder, the starting LB unit is ancient. Akin Ayodele (30 years old), Joey Porter (32), and Jason Taylor (35) are all past their prime and the team will see only diminishing returns from them from here on out. Matt Roth (26) can help this situation by returning to full health by Week 7 when he's eligible to be activated off the NFI list and proving that he's worth keeping around for another contract. But Roth alone is not the answer to Miami's real LB woes concerning pass rush and coverage.

Ayodele and Crowder are both useless as blitzers, and they both struggle in coverage as well. The same can be said for their backup, Reggie Torbor. The team is so desperate for inside linebacker help that they are resorting to switching Charlie Anderson's position! Good luck with that. The team desperately needs an infusion of talented youth on the inside that is athletic enough to both cover well and blitz. And yes, I believe the early rounds of the draft are where they should be looking for this.

Here are the other areas of critical need that must be addressed early in next year's draft:

• Nose tackle
  
• Wide receiver
• Coverage linebackers

Luckily, it seems as if each of those needs will have a good amount of top prospects to choose from.

Week 2 vs. Colts Recap

Here are some thoughts about last night's game:

• Despite the outcome, it's undeniable that that was a great game to watch. Highly entertaining.
• Gibril Wilson looks awful, and he's quickly turning into another major free agent bust. One thing I heard a lot after Miami signed Wilson, just a year after Oakland jettisoned him after signing him to a huge contract, was that Al Davis is just a clueless guy who doesn't know how to value players. And in most cases, that's true. But one area that Al Davis has proven to be quite knowledgeable is the secondary. And if he thought it was worth it to bail on the Gibril Wilson experiment after a single year, then that scares me about what Miami got itself into. Remember, the team handed him a five-year $27.5 million contract this offseason. As it stands now, I can't see him even keeping his starting job this whole season if he keeps playing like he has. The bottom line is that he can't cover - at all. He's like Roy Williams back there, except he's playing free safety instead of strong, which exacerbates the problem that much more. And let's drop the ridiculous logic that, "Well, he played free safety for the Giants team that won the Super Bowl, so he must be good." Yeah, because every player on every Super Bowl team has been a good player.
• Miami's coverage issues go further than just Wilson sucking it up. The linebackers absolutely cannot cover tight ends either. The middle of Miami's defense is just screaming to be attacked right now. The only way to counter this would be to substitute a corner like Vontae Davis in for a linebacker and have him cover the tight end, but that will weaken the run defense.
• Ted Ginn's stats look a bit better than he actually played. He makes almost all the routine plays, but he has shown no ability whatsoever to make a big play in the passing game when it really matters. On his first missed TD opportunity, he simply didn't realize where he was on the field and ended up letting the pass sail beyond his arms. On the second missed TD, he just had the ball clank right off his two hands. That was devastating. The corner was there with him, but it's not like he had his hands disrupting Ginn's catch. Ginn just flat out missed it.
• Lex Hilliard is a beast on special teams coverage.
• No one should expect that kind of rushing output to continue week in and week out. That was against a Colts defense that is terrible against the run, never mind that they were without Bob Sanders.
• The clock management at the end of the game was horrendous. Even still, this loss is not at all Chad Pennington's fault. He played a solid game. The horrid defensive showing deserves all the blame.
• Kudos to the South Florida fans for showing up and making a real home field advantage. I've never seen the stadium that full or loud before.
  

Week 2 vs. Colts Prediction

Well, I'm 0-1 to start the season off with my predictions.

I thought Miami would be able to take advantage of Atlanta's weak defense, but they made it look like an elite unit instead.

So, suffice to say, I don't have any confidence that the Dolphins can beat the Colts on Monday night. The only chance they'll have to pull this one out is if they revert to last year's near-turnover free offensive performance. It will also help if Chad Pennington can get the receivers involved out wide and down the field to open some room inside for the running backs.

Prediction: Colts win

Also, in these weekly game prediction posts, I'll put up Football Outsider's playoff odds for Miami. After Week 1, they had a 6.3% chance of making the playoffs.

Andrew Hartline added to practice squad

The Dolphins made an adjustment to their practice squad by adding rookie T Andrew Hartline and releasing G/C Mark Lewis.

Hartline (6'5, 287) was an undrafted free agent out of Central Michigan this year.

Here's one analysis of what Hartline brings to the table:

Hartline has been a durable and productive college blocker. He lacks the physical skills to start at the next level, yet his mental makeup and understanding of the position plus his versatility could help him find a spot as an inexpensive utility blocker.

The Dolphins practice squad now looks as such:

• DE Ryan Baker
• CB Will Billingsley
• LB J.D. Folsom
• WR James Robinson
• LB Danny Lansanah
• WR Julius Pruitt
• TE Kory Sperry
• T Andrew Hartline
  

Reader Question: What happened against ATL?

To recap that mess of a game on Sunday, I'll just get right to a reader's question:

What happened to the Dolphins offense on Sunday? They were horrible. The defense did its job, just the offense couldn't move the ball hardly at all. They did have a few opportunities to put some points up, just couldn't capitalize. I hope that a better Dolphins team shows up for the Colts game. If the team that played Atlanta shows up its going to be a long day.

Well, you're absolutely right about the Dolphins offense. They played like absolute crap. But the defense made plenty of mistakes as well, so I'm not letting them off the hook.

But let's start with the offense. The name of the game is turnovers. Miami was so successful last year because they turned the ball over at a historically low rate. No one should have thought that kind of production would be the norm going forward. In fact, Miami's playoff game against the Ravens was somewhat of a correcting force in that matter and it certainly brought the team's season-long numbers back into reality. So more turnovers are to be expected. Of course, that many turnovers in a game is more than just a regression to the mean - it's just poor, sloppy play.

The good news is that the guys who committed the turnovers (Pennington and Fasano) don't have a track record of playing sloppy. I don't expect that kind of carelessness from them to become a trend. If it does become a trend, get ready to say hello to a top ten draft pick next year.

The offense was also put in awful field position all day due in large part to horrendous blocking on kick returns. Miami's average starting position was the 22 yard line.

The offensive line also deserves a huge chunk of the blame. They played like crap, pure and simple. I'm not really worried about Jake Long at this point. I am worried about Jake Grove though.

Some people are blaming the use of the Wildcat and Pat White packages as another reason why the offense stalled, but I'm not buying that. We should all know by now that the Wildcat (and I'm assuming the Pat packages) are the home run plays. They're like Adam Dunn and Ryan Howard - going to hit a bomb or strike out trying. And I'm fine with that because this offense is going to have a hard time finding its big plays elsewhere. So if we want the huge plays that come with these packages, we have to be prepared to accept it when they gain little or nothing.

Now, as for the defense, I want to give huge props to the run defense, and Phillip Merling in particular. It's a shame Merling doesn't put on the same display in practices as he does in games, otherwise the coaches would be more comfortable starting him and getting him more game snaps. But he's proven to this point in his career that he plays better than he practices. Hopefully, with more experience and added maturity he can begin to show the coaches more in practice so that they have more confidence in him come game time.

But the problems on defense came from the secondary, particularly the safeties, and particularly Gibril Wilson. I do not trust Wilson as a coverage safety whatsoever. I know how incredible he is in the run game, but he's a free safety now and is being asked to do less of what he's good at and more of what he's bad at, which as we saw against Atlanta is covering tight ends and wide receivers down the field. This defense is going to have quite a hard time getting off the field on third downs when even long third downs are hardly a challenge for the opposing offenses.

Phins remaking "The Notebook"?