New York Jets vs. Miami Dolphins: Ugly Game, but a Beautiful Result for Miami
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
To the casual football fan looking for a game to watch among the late games, this game was ugly.
To Jets fans, this game was downright disgusting.
But to Miami Dolphins fans, the phins 10-6 victory in The Meadowlands on a rainy Sunday afternoon was a thing of beauty.
No matter how bad it may get on the field, and believe me any game where the punter is the most valuable player without scoring a touchdown on a fake punt shows that the game is ugly, as long as the final score shows the Miami Dolphins with more points than the hated Jets is a work of art that belongs in the Lourve.
So I'll take a look at the ugliness of the game that lead to the beauty of the final result.
Dolphins Offense: Ugly
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Six first downs.
Seis.
Sechs.
No matter what language you put it in, six first downs is embarrassing.
Just as embarrassing: three turnovers, and 5 for 19 passing for 55 yards.
Surprisingly, Henne had a better passer rating than Sanchez (58.3 for Henne, 45.3 for Sanchez.)
Two saving graces: a running game that in total rushed for 101 yards on 32 attempts. Not great by any stretch, but just enough to eat some clock and the move the ball down field.
I'll get to the other saving grace later.
Jets Offense: Uglier
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Yes, the Jets offense out-gained the Dolphins offense by a 149 yard margin.
Yes the Jets had eight more first downs than the Dolphins.
So what makes the Jets offense uglier than the Dolphins offense?
Well the Dolphins offense was at least able to account for 10 points and got into the end zone.
End zone.
END ZONE!
Do the Jets know what one of those look like? Its been 17 days since they've been inside of one.
The last time the Jets offense got into the end zone, the Knicks and Heat, who I know this coming Friday will provide a much more entertaining game than their NFL counterparts did today, were a combined 16-15. Since then the two teams have combined to go on a combined 17-2 run.
Its almost certain that one of those two teams will lose before next Sunday when the Jets take on the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Whats not certain however is if the Jets will get into the end zone come next Sunday.
Jets Defense: Pretty
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Well, no matter how inept the offense, no matter if the quarterback is Chad Henne and the offensive coordinator is Dan Henning, holding a team to 10 points and causing three turnovers, as well as only allowing 131 total yards of offense is the sign of, sigh, an excellent defense.
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Dolphins Defense: Beautiful
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How do you beat the New York Jets?
Stop the run and force Mark Sanchez to beat you while making sure that he's pressured when he's in the pocket every time he drops back to pass.
Those are as simple directions as you could possibly get. Yet in game one, a game where the Jets were missing Braylon Edwards for a quarter, as well as Santonio Holmes for the whole game, the Dolphins failed to do that.
Game two, with both Edwards and Holmes in the game full time, they executed the plan to perfection.
Sure, Sanchez threw for 216 yards. But more importantly, he also threw for zero touchdowns and one interception by Nolan Carroll, pictured here.
Meanwhile the Jets could only muster 87 rushing yards on 31 attempts.
Again, most importantly, the Dolphins didn't allow the Jets to get into the end zone, although they did have some luck thanks in part to Santonio Holmes doing his best Ted Ginn Jr. impression and dropping the ball in the end zone.
Sadly for the Jets, that was Sanchez' best pass of the day.
Brandon Fields: Beautiful Punts
5 of 10I couldn't find a Brandon Fields compilation from Sunday's game on YouTube.
And Getty Images didn't have a picture of Brandon Fields on file.
So this will have to do.
Now normally I hate punting. I honestly think that the only circumstances when punting should be acceptable is when you're behind your own 20 and its 4th and more than 5, or if you're already up by three scores or more in the fourth quarter and you don't want to run up the score.
Let me add a third addendum to that: punting is also acceptable to me when Henne and Henning are running your offense.
But Fields kept pinning the Jets back deep into their own territory no matter how deep the Dolphins were in theirs.
While he gets a lot of credit for that, also credit the Dolphins special teams for protecting him and giving him the time to unwind these booming masterpieces, which averaged 56.4 yards in 10 punts, with a long of 69.
And please let this be the last time I ever bring up punting statistics.
Cameron Wake: Darkhorse Candidate For Defensive Player Of The Year.
6 of 10You don't hear his name in the discussion, but you should.
I'll write more about this subject in the coming week.
But here are his stats for Sunday's game against the Jets:
Five tackles, two sacks, and another hit to Sanchez.
Rex Ryan's Record Against Miami: Ugly To Jets Fans, But Beautiful To Phins Fans.
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Since becoming head coach of the Jets, Rex Ryan is 2-2 against the Patriots and has an overall record of 20-12 in the NFL.
But he's 1-3 against the Miami Dolphins, including 0-2 against them at home.
I think he might be my favorite New York Jets head coach of all time.
Alright, he's second, but one more year of losing to the phins and he passes Rich Kotite as my favorite Jets coach.
Tony Sparano and Chad Henne...Well at Least They Can Beat The Jets
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There's the distinct possibility that neither Henne, Sparano, or possibly even both, will be in Miami next season.
Their records aren't necessarily those of a coach and a quarterback combination that you want leading your team for the next few years.
However, it should be noted that Tony Sparano is 4-2 all time against the Jets, including 3-0 against the Jets in his home state of New Jersey.
Henne meanwhile is 3-1 all time against Mark Sanchez.
Now you might be wondering why I'm pointing this all out.
Part of it is because I love reminding Jets fans that a mediocre quarterback has owned them the last two years and that a mediocre coach might just be responsible for keeping them out of the playoffs in two out of the last three years (we'll talk about the Jets post-season chances later.)
But another reason is because its a rivalry game. Rivalry games tend to take on more importance in football than anything else.
Some Dolphins fans might even tell you that the shame of 2007 isn't that they only won once, but that it didn't come against the Jets (or Patriots for that matter.)
But you can't overlook Sparano and Henne's record against the Jets, despite the fact that it could very well wind up keeping both in Miami another season.
Well, at least Sparano, and hopefully WITHOUT Henning.
Playoff Chances For Both Teams: Jets Still Decent, Dolphins Still Ugly.
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As of right now the Miami Dolphins are two games behind the Jets and Ravens for the final spot in the AFC playoffs.
Which is great, however there are three games left to go, and by losing to Cleveland last week, they made this the funniest thing I've ever written since joining Bleacher Report last January. Go ahead, click and read it, you'll laugh.
However, that article wasn't meant to be satirical.
Meanwhile the Jets seem safe, for now.
But they finish out the season with the Steelers next week, followed by the Bears the week after.
Both on the road.
Then they close out the season hosting the Bills, who could very well beat the Dolphins next week and should provide a hellish match-up to the Jets.
Don't be too surprised if both of these teams finish 9-7 and on the outside looking in. With the Dolphins, it would be considered a miracle to be 9-7.
For the Jets, it would be a huge disappointment.
(The last two paragraphs brought to you by the society for bringing up the obvious.)
The Trip Heard Round The World and My Parting Thoughts.
10 of 10I knew you were waiting to see what had to be said about "The Trip" which will probably spawn a thousand articles on B/R in the next 36 hours.
I'm not going to write a separate article about it however, I'll instead just stick it as the final slide of this slideshow.
You can clearly see it was on purpose, more importantly, the tripper, Jets Strength and conditioning coach Sal Alosi admitted it was.
"I accept responsibility for my actions as well as any punishment that follows."
"I spoke to Coach Sparano and Nolan Carroll to apologize before they took off. I have also apologized to Woody, Mike and Rex."
"I made a mistake that showed my total lapse in judgment. My conduct was inexcusable and unsportsmanlike."
A one game suspension is really all that's needed. At least he manned up and admitted to it, if you look at the video he could've denied it and gotten away with it because it wasn't too clear until it was pointed out, and even then it could be construed as a little vague.
But instead, Coach Alosi admitted to it, which probably killed it before it became a big controversy, and more importantly, Nolan Carroll is ok.
As for Dolphins fans, no matter what circumstances or how ugly it was, if you ask us how we're doing after the Dolphins beat the Jets, there's only one answer.
We're doing just fine, for this week that is.
A Dolfan Diaries Entry. Thomas Galicia is a Miami Dolphins Featured Columnist To read more of his work, visit www.thomasgalicia.com, or follow him on twitter, @thomasgalicia.
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