Unfortunately, they couldn't even slow down the rest of the Kansas City offense and ended up on the losing end of a 48-30 drubbing that left the team shaking their heads about what had hit them.

In cases like this, I don't normally do a full review of the game, because it's too painful to delve into ever nuance, and I won't do that today, either. But I do want to hit on some points about the game.

The Dolphins had most of their roster on the field for this game, but Jason Taylor played with a large brace on his knee that limited his mobility and Patrick Surtain missed this game again.

The Dolphins had a number of problems on Sunday, but the biggest problems they had were turnovers on offense and the inability to cope with the Chiefs' passing game on defense. The offense turned the ball over a total of 5 times, which is clearly unacceptable performance, no matter what kind of offense you're running.

The offense did do some things right on Sunday. The Dolphins scored 30 points and on most days, that would be enough to win. Ricky Williams was held out of the game in the 4th quarter, but still ended the day with 126 yards of offense and had 66 yards rushing at 4.7 ypc and a touchdown.

Unfortunately, with 1 fumble lost and 4 interceptions, the Dolphins' offense made way too many mistakes to make up for their 30 point production. And as I said in my preview, mistakes were the Dolphins' biggest worry coming into the game.

There is no excuse for that many turnovers. The fumble was the result of a screwed up handoff and should never happen. Some of Fiedler's picks were his fault and some weren't, but as I'm sure you'd all agree, the Dolphins aren't going to win too many games against any team if they turn it over 5 times.

The Dolphins' offensive line played fairly well, but allowed too much pressure on Fiedler, which helped cause the interceptions. But, as I said, Fiedler also made his share of poor decisions yesterday, which he had avoided for most of the previous 3 games.

On defense, the one bright spot was the job they did on Priest Holmes. With the exception of one 25 yard run, Holmes did almost nothing on the ground. Even with that run, he had only 52 yards rushing on 23 carries for a 2.3 ypc average.

Unfortunately, the Dolphin defense didn't do anything else right. They allowed Trent Green to look better than Dan Marino, as he threw for 5 touchdowns and didn't turn the ball over. The first problem was the lack of a pass rush. The Dolphins' defensive line generated no pressure on Trent Green and Miami didn't blitz enough to help them out.

As a result, Green was not sacked and barely pressured. This not only allowed him to complete 24 passes for over 300 yards, but also allowed him to scramble effectively.

The Dolphins also couldn't cover TE Tony Gonzalez at all. He ended up catching 7 passes for 140 yards and 3 touchdowns. The Dolphins' defense just couldn't figure out a way to contain him.

As bad as the Dolphins played, they were in the game until the 4th quarter, when Jay Fiedler threw 3 interceptions.

As for the coaching, none of the defensive adjustments made to contain Tony Gonzalez worked and that is a problem. But the biggest question mark in coaching was why Ricky Williams was on the sideline through most of the 4th quarter.

With the Dolphins trailing 30-38 with 11 minutes remaining, Norv Turner took Ricky Williams out of the game. Since Ricky is the centerpiece of the Dolphins' offense and the only thing that makes the play-action fake believable, the question is why? 11 minutes is plenty of time to use the running game effectively, even if you believe you need two scores.

In any case, Norv didn't use Ricky at the end of the game and we may never know why.

All in all this loss was a wake-up call that hopefully will be answered before the Dolphins face the Patriots this week. The Patriots have been a passing team this year and the Dolphins will need to do a better job stopping them than they did stopping the Chiefs.