Miami Dolphins: What You Need to Know Heading into Week 10

Fresh off of a home victory against a 6-2 opponent in front of a national audience, one would normally expect sentiment to be running high in favor of the Miami Dolphins. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Dolphins find themselves embroiled in embarrassing controversy as the media continues to dig up evidence that left guard Richie Incognito may have been bullying left tackle Jonathan Martin. Dolphins management blundered its way through a Sunday that began with a statement declaring that they are unaware of even the accusations of misconduct, let alone the misconduct itself, and ended with the indefinite suspension of Incognito.

All of this takes away from the team’s focus on football. Here, we will take a break from the controversy in order to look at everything you need to know from a football standpoint, heading into a Week 10 matchup with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday Night Football. We will update you on the division standings, injuries and focus on what the Dolphins must improve on in order to keep the winless Buccaneers from breaking into the win column for one more week.

Division Standings

Team	Record	PF	PA	Next Game
New England	7-2	234	175	Bye
New York Jets	5-4	169	231	Bye
Miami	4-4	174	187	at Tampa Bay
Buffalo	3-6	189	236	at Pittsburgh

Miami could not buy a break within the division this weekend despite beating a very good opponent. The Patriots and Jets were able to maintain their leads on the Dolphins with impressive victories of their own.

The Patriots faced the 2-5 Pittsburgh Steelers in Foxboro. Victory against the Steelers was by no means assured. New England had dropped two of their past four games, whereas the Steelers had been winners of two of their past three games. However, the Patriots offense finally got on track during the game, scoring 55 points off of a perfect performance by quarterback Tom Brady.

The performance reminds us that the New England Patriots tend to be a stellar football team in the second half of the NFL season. The team has been 24-1 during the second half of the regular season from 2010 to 2013.

Meanwhile, the New York Jets exchanged insults with the Miami Dolphins during Week 9. After the Dolphins beat the Cincinnati Bengals, a team that destroyed the New York Jets in Week 8, the Jets answered by beating the New Orleans Saints, who had embarrassed the Dolphins in Week 4.

The Jets seem stuck in a strange up-down pattern this season, as they have yet to win or lose two games consecutively. If for no other reason, the pattern will be broken in Week 10 because they have a bye week.

The Buffalo Bills caught a bad break in their game against the Kansas City Chiefs. They were forced to march out third-string quarterback Jeff Tuel, an undrafted free-agent rookie out of Washington State, against the unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs. Despite a strong team effort that featured the Buffalo defense holding the Chiefs offense to only nine points, Buffalo could not overcome the shortcomings of their third-string quarterback. Tuel handed the Chiefs 14 points himself with a 100-yard interception returned for a touchdown, as well as an 11-yard fumble returned for a touchdown.

Injury Update

Name	Position	Injury	Week 8
Jonathan Martin	OT	Illness	Inactive
Dimitri Patterson	CB	Shoulder	Left Game
Dion Sims	TE	Toe	Inactive
Cameron Wake	DE	Knee	Active
Richie Incognito	OG	Neck	Left Game

The Dolphins were fortunate to walk out of the Thursday Night Football game against the Bengals without many injuries. The Bengals could not say the same, as they lost All-Pro defensive tackle Geno Atkins to a torn ACL.

Linebacker Koa Misi was suspiciously absent during certain portions of the Bengals game, and he may be dealing with an injury.

Defensive end Cameron Wake appears to be fully back after battling a knee injury that sapped his explosiveness for a number of weeks. Wake had three sacks during the game, including the game-winning sack-safety on quarterback Andy Dalton in overtime.

Left guard Richie Incognito missed most of the game with an apparent neck stinger. However, the injury has become irrelevant as the team has suspended him indefinitely after finding out about inflammatory, threatening text messages and voicemails sent to teammate Jonathan Martin approximately seven months ago.

Tight end Dion Sims did not play in the game as he battles a toe injury. His availability for the Week 10 game against the Buccaneers is unknown.

While healthy, corner Dimitri Patterson is having an excellent year for the Dolphins. Unfortunately, his health remains a question mark.

Patterson spent a lot of time injured in 2012, leading up to his early release by the Cleveland Browns. He then went to Miami and played a full game in Week 16 against the Buffalo Bills. However, he only made it about a quarter of the way through the Week 17 game against the New England Patriots before getting hurt.

This season, he came into the Week 1 game against the Cleveland Browns ‘questionable’ on the official injury report with an ankle problem and left the game halfway through with a groin injury. He re-injured that groin in practice, leading to a four-game hiatus. He played only half of a game against the Buffalo Bills in Week 7 as he tested out his injured groin.

The following week he took a nasty blow to the head while defending a screen against the New England Patriots and missed a handful of plays, including a play in which quarterback Tom Brady targeted his replacement—Nolan Carroll—in the end zone for a touchdown. This week against the Cincinnati Bengals, he once again took a nasty hit while giving his body up in defense of a screen pass, and according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required) he missed 19 snaps.

The Dolphins will attempt to keep Patterson together for another week, but it remains unclear how much he will be able to practice this week and if he will be able to play against the Buccaneers on Monday Night Football.

What the Team Must Improve

The Dolphins finally maintained a strong commitment to the ground game against the Cincinnati Bengals. The team ran the football strongly and frequently in the first half. Although the team once again dialed back its percentage of run plays in the second half—unlike the Week 7 game against the Patriots—the Dolphins maintained a balanced attack as long as they could afford one.

However, a few new issues did pop up against the Bengals. Despite average or above-average performances from most units on the offense, the team only scored a total of 13 points offensively. This will not be enough to win most ball games. The offense was supplemented by a 94-yard interception that Brent Grimes returned for a touchdown, as well as a safety caused by All-Pro defensive end Cameron Wake in overtime. These things will not happen every week.

Part of the problem was a costly turnover by tailback Lamar Miller, who had the football tomahawked out of his hands as he raced toward the end zone on what had been a 41-yard run play. The fumble may have taken as many as seven points off the board.

However, the biggest problem was the team’s inability to convert on third down. Though quarterback Ryan Tannehill completed 20-of-28 passes on the evening, three of the incomplete passes came on third down. Four more passes were completed on third down but fell short of the first down marker. Yet, one expects some incomplete passes on third down. One should also expect some complete passes to fall short when attempting to convert on 3rd-and-Long.

However, one should not expect failure to convert on 3rd-and-1 situations. The Dolphins failed on three such situations during the game. They failed with their power ground game, as tailback Daniel Thomas was stopped short on two such occasions.

The team’s obvious weakness in short-yardage situations potentially influenced the play-calling of offensive coordinator Mike Sherman on a third short-yardage situation. Instead of a run play, Sherman called a shotgun pass play on 3rd-and-1 in overtime. The play fell incomplete.

The Dolphins must fix their short-yardage offense. Tailback Daniel Thomas is a known failure in short yardage situations despite his size; however, the starter Lamar Miller is not necessarily any better. The team may need to find creative ways of opening up space for 1-yard and 2-yard conversions.

There are a number of experiments the team could run to this end. Tight end Charles Clay has carried the football twice this season and looked good each time. He could be a short yardage option in some situations. In other situations in which the Dolphins must gain two yards, the team could experiment with option looks that take advantage of Tannehill’s athletic prowess.

Mike Pouncey is an excellent center. However, his one weakness since coming into the NFL has been power in short-yardage situations. If the Dolphins really want to entertain some creative concepts for fixing a critical short-yardage weakness, they could consider subbing Pouncey out in such situations for his 6’7", 325 lb backup, Nate Garner. Teams are reluctant to tinker with the center-quarterback exchange. However, the team could mitigate the risk of fumbled exchanges simply by practicing the plays during the week leading up to the game.

The question is where would Pouncey go on such plays? It would be a shame to leave a Pro Bowl caliber player sitting on the bench. Pouncey’s skill set is highly unique for a center. For a big man, he moves like a rabbit. Additionally, he has excellent knowledge of the blocking schemes and the ways in which defenses can attack them. This leads one to wonder how he would look if lined up a short two or three yards behind his usual spot in the offense, as a lead blocker.

Realizing that we are wandering firmly into gimmick territory, the point is that the Miami Dolphins cannot continue to simply accept a weakness in short yardage situations. If the team needs to drop a couple of their assumptions about what can and cannot be done in addressing the weakness, so be it.

Teams are supposed to convert on 3rd-and-1 an overwhelming majority of the time, especially when they run the football. Not only is the short-yardage weakness leading to runs that fall short of the sticks, it is affecting the play-calling. This is unacceptable.