That is the second time this season that the Miami Dolphins lost a heart breaking game against a very good NFC North team in the final seconds of the game. It was a tough defensive battle, which many sports gambling fans expected it to be, but at the end of the game, the Dolphin defense could not come up with that big stop to keep the lions out of the endzone. I felt the Dolphins played decent, and it was a game that they could have won, but Detroit is a very good team, and on this Sunday they proved to be the better team.
Luckily for the Dolphins, the Bills and Steelers both lost so at least the Dolphins did not lose too much ground to those teams in the playoff race. In addition, a loss to an NFC team is definitely not as bad as a loss to an AFC team, because it will not go against their Conference record.
I thought the Dolphins actually played exactly the way we expected them to. The run game was non-exsistant, but Miller was extremely limited, and not letting Tannehill run, was in hindsight, probably a wise decision, because against the gang tackling Lions, his chance for injury would have been greatly increased. Lastly it was no secret coming into the game that the Lions had the best run defense in the league, spear headed by Suh, so I can’t say im surprised that Miami had problems running. As usual the offense did nothing in the first quarter, and played better in the 2nd half after making much needed adjustments.
The Defense played well but allowed both Tate and Johnson to go for over 100 yards, but again we knew this was going to be a very tough task to stop coming into the game. Honestly besides the deep ball touchdown, the Dolphins secondary played pretty well, and Grimes made a spectacular catch on the interception. The one thing that was disappointing was that the run defense got out toughed by Bell, who was constantly getting that extra yard or two and falling forwards.
Besides the first fake punt that got completed for a first down, and the blown fake punt that drew a penalty, the special teams unit actually played pretty well. They had a huge blocked kick that they ran back towards the goal line, and put them in position for their only touchdown. Sturgis connected on all 3 of his field goal opportunities, and one was a 50 yarder. Lastly Landry continues to make explosive run backs on the kick offs, which is huge weapon in the field position game.
It would have been great to get this victory, but unfortunately we did not, but I think the Dolphins can hold their heads up high, and now just go back to work and focus on Buffalo for Thursday. The Dolphins are still very much alive in the playoff hunt, but this upcoming game needs to be treated like a playoff game, because going 5-5 and losing both games to Buffalo is not the recipe of a playoff team.