No-22 is brought to you by NFL “technical difficulties”
If you read the Buffalo Bills penalty recap this week, and for the record there’s no reason you should except to give me the clicks, you read my lamentations of the NFL somehow screwing up my sub leading to a lack of GIFs. Guess whose sub is still ****ed? Ha ha ha! WEEEEEEEEEE!
My intent this week was to revisit my drive enders article about the Miami Dolphins’ narrow win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 1. I identified a few common factors that led to the Dolphins having a statistically fine day in most every aspect aside from the score. Well we’re still doing that, but there won’t be any GIFs to illustrate my point. I’ll do what I can to pull from stats to see if the Bills were able to capitalize on similar Dolphins speed bumps.
What went wrong for the Dolphins in Week 1?
If we’re going to compare the weeks, let’s recap the Week 1 issues that I identified as drive killers for Miami. If you want a visual refresher, last week I was able to make GIFs. I’m not bitter NFL. Okay, I’m a little bitter. Maybe even considerably bitter.
Naturally of course the answer was “negative plays.” Being more specific: runs for little, no, or negative gain were a consistent problem for Miami. I noted that the running back room was banged up and Buffalo may have the opportunity to bottle that up.
Miscues in the deep passing game that the Dolphins thrive on reared their ugly head in Week 1 and forced some drives to end. Penalties were a bit of an issue as well, but not catastrophically higher than league average. They just contributed to making a few drives harder.
Did Week 2 have similar issues for Miami?
Let’s cut to the chase. Buffalo’s defense had an excellent night, so clearly there had to have been some overlap. But let’s consider some of the specific issues for talking points.
Starting with penalties, Miami actually had two less than the week prior against the Jaguars, and most of them were false starts. Overall they had a pretty clean game, but an offensive holding call did kill one drive (third failed drive). That’s an iffy connection between weeks, and it’s not remotely uncommon for a team to have at least one drive stalled due to penalty.
In the run game, let’s lay out some bullets to rapidly process some points:
- Miami averaged 4.08 yards per carry, which isn’t too far below average. On the surface, their aggregate looked fine.
- On the Dolphins’ first failed drive, a negative-three-yard run forced 2nd & 13, which led to Miami taking two shots to make up the yards (see below for the passing game breakdown).
- Their fourth failed drive saw Miami reach 3rd & 1; a loss of one on a running play was followed by a sack and turnover on downs.
- The sixth failed drive saw a great opportunity for an open playbook with 2nd & 7. Another loss of one put the Dolphins behind and they failed to recover.
- Despite the need for Skylar Thompson to come into the game, Miami had to go pass-heavy for their final drives, and it’s hard to argue negative running plays set them behind. They did have two more negative runs, for the record.
Now what about the passing game:
- With that first failed drive, as noted the Dolphins took two deep shots to try and make up the yards; one was incomplete and the next was intercepted.
- On their second failed drive, the running game had zero issues but another deep shot was intercepted.
- The next drive saw incomplete short passes that doomed the series.
- The second-half opening drive for Miami was a pick-six on a shorter pass.
- Sacks and incompletions from Thompson round out the list pretty well.
The Final Straw
Of course a lot of the credit naturally should lie with the Buffalo Bills’ defense, which made things a nightmare for the Miami Dolphins. That said, their talent was able to extend the woes that the Dolphins saw in Week 1. While unable to shut down the run game entirely, Buffalo was able to exploit matchups frequently enough to create opportunities to end drives.
With Miami’s bread and butter in the passing game being the deep threat, let’s close with quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s pass distribution chart from the game. Buffalo didn’t allow any pass greater than 15 yards, managing to keep everything in front of them and limiting the damage.