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Dolphins vs Jaguars Game Summary |  | ||||||||
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STARTING LINEUP:
For the pre-season, I'll only be listing the Dolphins' lineup. Offense: Defense: QB 10 Trent Green *DE 93 Akbar Gbaja-Biamilla RB 23 Ronnie Brown *NT 96 Paul Soliai FB 30 Cory Schlesinger DT 91 Vonnie Holiday WR 84 Chris Chambers DE 98 Matt Roth TE 88 David Martin *WLB 56 Derrick Pope TE 87 Justin Peelle *MLB 52 Channing Crowder LT 72 Vernon Carey *SLB 59 Donnie Spragan LG 66 Rex Hadnot RCB 25 Will Allen C 64 Samson Satele LCB 29 Travis Daniels RG 77 Drew Mormino SS 37 Yeremiah Bell RT 79 Anthony Alabi FS 24 Renaldo Hill * - player is a backup at that position on the depth chart. Jason Taylor, Keith Traylor, and Zach Thomas did not dress for this game and Joey Porter is injured. Also, Marty Booker did not play and the official depth chart had the Dolphins starting two tight ends. However, Ted Ginn, Jr lined up at the second wide receiver spot with the starting unit. The first pre-season game of the year was a night game at Dolphin Stadium, that kicked off at 7:38 PM. The weather was clear, hot and muggy with little wind. The first quarter passed without any scoring, as both team's defenses dominated the game. Even without four of their defensive starters, the Dolphins shut down the Jags' rushing game, sacked Leftwich twice (Rod Wright and Matt Roth) and bottled up their passing attack. On offense, the Dolphins couldn't put anything together, as Miami's offensive line was manhandled quite effectively by the Jaguars' defensive front seven. The Dolphins' offensive line did manage to give Trent Green some time to throw, but Green was off-target and rusty. On one play, Green ran 2 yards past the line of scrimmage before throwing and was called for an illegal forward pass - an obvious mental error. The running game was mostly non-existent for the Dolphins in the first half, with Ronnie Brown picking up 8 yards on 8 carries. This was due to the offensive line's inability to open any holes at all in the first half. At the start of the second quarter, the Dolphins' defense replaced all of their starters with second team players and this opened the field up for the Jaguars' first team offense, which was in the middle of a drive at mid-field. The Jaguars finished this drive by efficiently moving the ball the length of the field and scoring their first touchdown on a short pass to WR Dennis Northcutt. The Dolphins' best scoring chance in the first half came midway through the second quarter, when Jaguars' RB LeBrandon Toefield fumbled at the Jaguars' 32 and the ball was recovered by Dolphins' DE Chase Page. However, after a sack and a fumble, the Jags got the ball back and avoided giving up any points. In response, they drove from their 37 to Miami's 12 before Akbar Gbaja-Biamila sacked David Garrard to halt the drive and the Jaguars settled for a field goal and a 10-0 lead. The Dolphins got another chance with under 2 minutes to play when LeBrandon Toefield fumbled again after being hit by Jason Allen. The Dolphins took over at the Jaguars' 47 and moved to the 8 yard line, mostly on a 30 yard pass from Trent Green to Derek Hagan before stalling and settling for a field goal and 10-3 deficit at halftime. In the second half, both teams went deeply down their depth charts for players but the Jaguars opened the 3rd quarter with their second string offense still on the field facing Miami's third string defense. The Jaguars still didn't get much of a running game going, but their passing game and the play of David Garrard more than compensated for the lack of a running game by driving from their 27 to Miami's endzone in 9 plays. The touchdown was a one yard run, but otherwise that drive was almost entirely through the air. Miami's second string offense opened the second half with the biggest play of the night for either team. Cleo Lemon opened at quarterback by completing a 6 yard pass to tight end Aaron Halterman. Then, on 2nd down and 4 from the Miami 26, Lemon handed off to Jesse Chatman. Chatman started to the right behind right guard, but that was sealed and he bounced it back to the left. The flow of the play had left a hole to the left and Chatman turned on the juice, sprinting through the linebackers and past the defensive backs for 74 yards and a touchdown. This play put Miami back in the game by cutting the score to 17-10 but more importantly, put some fire back in the offense. From this point on, the game was a lot more evenly matched than it had been through the first 35 minutes when Miami's offense was dormant. From this point on, the game see-sawed back and forth with each team making several short drives that resulted in punts. However, with just under 9 minutes remaining in the game, John Beck checked in at quarterback for the Dolphins. He looked a little shaky at first, throwing a little off-target and almost getting an interception - although, to be fair, he was hit as he released that ball. He also fumbled while being chased from the pocket, but was rescued by an alert Patrick Cobbs, who picked up the loose ball and scrambled forward for 10. After that, he steadied down and drove the team down to the Jacksonville 3 where Patrick Cobbs took it around the left side and leaped a defender to get into the endzone. Cobbs was the most consistent Miami runner during the game. The Dolphins decided they didn't want to try for a tie and went for a 2 point conversion. Patrick Cobbs went in almost untouched between the left guard and the center to give Miami an 18-17 lead. The Jaguars took the kickoff and drove the ball from their 29 to the Miami 25, mostly on the strength of a perfectly thrown 4th and 1 pass play that gave them a 30 yard gain to the Miami 22. It looked like the Jaguars would pull the game out at this point, but their kicker missed a 43 yard field goal off the infield dirt and that gave Miami the game. Offensively, there was very little that was good. The second and third string offensive units played much better than the first string, but with the exception of Chatman's 74 yard run, there were not very many offensive highlights for the Dolphins. The pass protection of the starting offensive line was better than their run blocking, but only marginally. Of course, they were in a very difficult position. Jesse Chatman and Patrick Cobbs both showed some talent at running back, which suggests that the Dolphins may have some good depth at running back this year. Cleo Lemon looked the best of the quarterbacks, but John Beck had his moments as well. Beck had a perfect 20 yard throw to the Jaguars' one yard line dropped by Courtney Anderson. Overall, the starting defense did an excellent job, especially considering that they were without three of their best players. They shut down the Jaguars running game in the first quarter and limited Byron Leftwich to completing 3 of 6 for 48 yards and no scores while sacking him twice in the first series. Leftwich's best numbers didn't come until the Dolphins' defensive starters were on the bench. In fact, the pass rush for the whole team was very good. By the end of the night, the Dolphins had sacked Jaguars' quarterbacks five times - without Jason Taylor in the lineup. The overall run defense did well, also. The Jaguars ended the night with 59 yards rushing at 2.0 yards per carry. Special teams played pretty well, but gave up a partially blocked punt. On the other hand, kickoffs were deep and coverage was good. And Jay Feely didn't have any problem handling his kicking duties. Overall offensive line play was poor, but in the running game it was most notable. The offensive line couldn't open any holes, especially in the first half. The very inexperienced offensive line couldn't get past Jacksonville's excellent defensive line and Ronnie Brown ended the night with 8 carries for 8 yards. Also, Trent Green looked old, tired and weak in the backfield. While he wasn't given a lot of time, when he was given the opportunity, he missed open receivers and his arm looked like he couldn't make the throws. Many times, he threw at his receivers' feet or behind them. It was only when they went to the 2 minute drill at the end of the first half that Green started to look stronger and in command. While overall defensive play was good, the secondary seemed to be allowing too many receivers to get open. It's difficult to know how much of that was due to the lack of game planning and how much was due to coverage mistakes, but too many times, the Jaguars' receivers were uncovered in the Miami secondary.
OT Vernon Carey had a knee bruise in the third series of the game, but he walked off under his own power and returned to practice on Monday after the game. He was just held out as a precaution. At first, this was a tough game for me to understand, because it looked like the coaching staff was deliberately throwing the offense to the wolves, rather than bringing them along more slowly. Last year, the Jacksonville defense was the 2nd best defense in the league and is anchored by two of the best defensive tackles in football in Marcus Stroud and John Henderson. Against this, Cam Cameron and Hudson Houck threw an offensive line consisting of two rookies, one player playing left tackle for the first time in his career and one player who had never started in the league. That seemed to me to be too much to ask of a group and a recipe for bad play, if not outright disaster. And I was at least partially right - it was a recipe for bad play. The Jaguars' front seven gave the Dolphins' starting offensive line much more than it could handle. The Dolphins' offensive line made a lot of mistakes. But Coach Cameron's comments, both before and after the game, showed that that was exactly what he meant to have happen. His philosophy is that training camp and the pre-season is a learning environment, not a place to worry about winning and losing. And Coach Cameron believes in a philosophy that says, to be successful, the team must "fail forward fast". This is a management philosophy that says that the way people learn is by making mistakes - so if we want the team to learn at a faster pace, they must make mistakes at a faster pace. To implement this philosophy, managers must be bold and aggressive - not afraid to try new things and not afraid of failure. And that is why he threw the rookies straight into the fire against the Jaguars. Certainly, at least the first part of that philosophy was in play on Saturday night. The offense in general and the offensive line in particular made plenty of mistakes. But under this philosophy, that is just an opportunity to learn and grow more. The key, of course, is that the team must learn from the mistakes they make so they don't repeat them. From that standpoint, it may take a while to see how well they learned those lessons. But the idea makes sense to me. And it may explain why the rookies are in the starting offensive line in the first place. If Coach Cameron's goal is teaching the offensive line a new system, he may believe that the younger players - while not as good now - can be taught more easily than the veterans and will become better fairly quickly. Clearly, with the pick of John Beck and Ted Ginn, Jr, Coach Cameron does not plan only for the immediate future, but also for the long term. It remains to be seen if he is right, but the more I learn of his way of doing things, the more I like it.
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