A Recap of the Miami Dolphins 2021-2022 Season and A Look Ahead
Where do I begin? Well the 2021-2022 NFL season has concluded and I guess it’s time to talk about the Miami Dolphins. This season was not short on excitement or drama to say the least and I want to go over every aspect of it. Let’s talk about everything: the offense, the defense, special teams, off-the-field drama, and the future. But first, we need a general recap of how the season played out.
The Miami Dolphins ended the season 9-8, which consisted of a 7 game losing streak and a 7 game winning streak. We beat our divisional rival New England Patriots twice and lost to our kryptonite Buffalo Bills twice. At times, we showed spurts of being a potential playoff contending team and others we showed our true colors of being a developing team with a solid young core that need veteran presence or a couple more years under our belts. Our coaching staff showed that it was lopsided in its approach, with a heavy emphasis on defense and little effort at developing the offense into something.
OFFENSE
We should just get this out of the way now because I love the Miami Dolphins, but we’ll save the best for, sort of. Our offense has bright spots for the future, including an incredible season from rookie Jaylen Waddle, who broke the rookie receptions record in Week 18 versus the Patriots. Mike Gesicki was a highlight reel at times, making spectacular one handed catches; that is when he got the ball. Tua Tagovailoa is a mixed bag of sorts, showing promise that he may develop into the franchise quarterback. Some of the interceptions thrown this year were head scratching and boneheaded, which showed that he still needs development.
There were weird moments throughout the season where substitutions were highly questionable for the coaching staff. The lack of utilization of wide receiver Mack Hollins raised eye brows. With Will Fuller out basically the whole season and Devante Parker being out due to injury, the fact that Mack Hollins wasn’t instantly promoted to a starting role was baffling to say the least. There were times when Mike Gesicki and Jaylen Waddle would make a huge play down field and then be sidelined for multiple plays. If I am running an offense, those two are not coming off the field. Simple as that. They need to be out there, even when they are not getting the ball so that they can be decoys to create further opportunity in the passing game. When one or both of them are sitting on the sidelines, it allows the opponent’s defense to breath in passing coverage or all out blitz because a follow up running play is inevitable.
But the black mass of the offense was the offensive line. Plain and simple. No question whatsoever. The Dolphins’ offensive line was one of the worst, if not the worst in the entire NFL. Pass protection was practically nonexistent, which resulted in Tua having to release the ball within 2 seconds each attempt, putting him and now retired Ben Roethlisberger at the fastest releases in the league for 2021. The brutal offensive line also couldn’t make a running gap to save their lives. Our run game suffered drastically because of this, until later on in the season when Duke Johnson broke out for a few games. The only respectable offensive lineman that exists on the Miami Dolphins is Robert Hunt and this off-season should see a drastic change to the other 4 offensive lineman positions. Throughout this season, Fins fans called out Austin Jackson and Jesse Davis to be cut on a consistent basis on Twitter and rightfully so. With an entirely new coaching staff for the 2022 season, if I see Jackson and Davis on the field, I will know that we are content with being mediocre.
I can go on for days about the offense: from Will Fuller playing one game and the front office basically lighting $10,000,000 on fire, the lack of a run game, the predictability of the passing game, lack of pass protection, and just overall lack of identity or threat. I will leave the offensive side of the ball at this: expect to see a lot of changes this upcoming off-season and if you don’t, don’t expect another winning season.
DEFENSE
Let’s talk about the defense. It was the apple to now former head coach Brian Flores’ eye. But after Week 1, it took a turn for the worst. I’m under the belief that in crucial times of close games between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons, defensive play-calling lead to those losses. If you told me before the season that we would have lost by a field goal to the Jaguars and the Falcons, I would have laughed. I’ll cut to the chase. I don’t completely understand what happened with our defense this season.
After the Week 1 win in Foxbourough, I thought it was going to be another season that was carried by our strong defensive play; that gobbles up turnovers and even has a history of scoring on the defensive side of the ball. I don’t know if the Week 2 blowout loss to the Buffalo Bills took the spirit out of the defense, but they were not the same until the winning streak began. I am under the assumption that Brian Flores attempted to delegate the defensive play-calling to the coordinator and took back the reigns to begin the winning streak against the Houston Texans. During the winning streak, the animalistic attitude of the defense was back, which existed during the 2020 season. The feared around-the-league zero blitz was back. Our defense was winning us games again. I can point to 4 games this past season where it was obvious that the defense was the reason for the wins: against the Ravens, the Panthers, the Giants, and the Saints. The way that the defense disrupted the offenses in those games and got to the quarterback showed that there is still hope and promise for this team.
Jaelan Phillips and Jevon Holland had incredible rookie seasons and you can tell that veteran mentorship played a factor in their success. With the likes of Jerome Baker, Byron Jones, Xavien Howard, Andrew Van Ginkel, Zach Sieler, Jevon Holland, Brandon Jones, and Jaelan Phillips all expected to be returning to the team for the 2022-2023 season, it will allow a cushion for the coaching staff to put more emphasis on the offense and take pressure off the defense to be the sole reason we win games. I have always believed that defensive play wins championships and with this strong core of defensive players and aggressive play-calling, I am excited to see more of the same from these guys next season. It is an expectation at this point for this defense to be one of the top 5 in the league on a consistent basis.
SPECIAL TEAMS
Where is Jason Sanders? Can someone give him a call and tell him to bring his leg please?
Our special teams play was not the greatest this year. And that’s putting it politely. Punter Michael Palardy was mediocre and I wouldn’t have been able to tell if someone off the street came into the game and threw his uniform on to punt. He made maybe 4 great punts this year, but it was the punting unit that suffocated opponents to start their drives within their 5 yard line and not necessarily Palardy. I’m not going to bash the special teams units too hard because they did make fantastic plays, backing teams onto their own goal lines essentially and even blocking a punt for a touchdown return. I think our field goal kicker can take the “brute end of the stick” on this one.
Jason Sanders looked like a shell of himself this season. He was inconsistent in his field goal attempts, which resulted in questionable play-calling due to the lack of belief in him at crucial times in games. When they showed Sanders on TV when he would come onto the field for a kicking attempt, the look in his eyes told stories. He just looked like he didn’t believe in himself; the confidence was gone. I don’t know what happened to make him doubt himself but he wasn’t the same guy we had for 2020-2021, who at times seemed automatic or on auto pilot mode. He was named to the Pro Bowl and the All-Pro team for 2020-2021, he signed a pretty nice contract extension prior to the season and still didn’t produce to expectation. I think with a fresh season ahead in September, he will shake the jitters off and get back to where he was. I expect a big season and overall turnaround from him next season.
I want to talk about coaching and the future of this team. Brian Flores cannot call an offense. He hired two offensive coordinators to take over the offense after firing Chan Gailey after the previous season. But it still seemed as if Flores was calling the offensive plays, despite hiring two guys to do that for him. There only needs to be one offensive coordinator and the head coach needs to delegate the majority of the play-calling to him. When you’re overreaching in your head coaching position or just plain nonsensical in your staff hirings, it’s going to lead to failure.
Flores made bad challenges throughout the entire season and didn’t challenge when he should have. He was conservative at times when we needed to be aggressive on 4th down, which showed a lack of belief in his offense to make plays. The Robert Hunt “receiving touchdown” was entertaining to see, but why is the ball ever going to an ineligible receiver? It was constant throughout the season.
I’ll also point to the Atlanta Falcons game late in the fourth quarter when we are running either Cover 4 or 3 Man Deep, and the Falcons have a timeout in their pocket. The Falcons simply saw there was no short pass coverage, did a check-down play for about 10 yards, called a timeout and kicked the game winning field goal. That’s on the coaching staff. There were games that should have been wins that were losses. The Miami Dolphins showed incredible fight and recovery to win 7 in a row, but they should have never lost 7 in a row to begin with. That’s on the coaching staff.
With the firing of Brian Flores, it caught a lot of people off-guard and shocked the entire fanbase in a sense. But I saw it coming and it was a necessary move in order to move this team forward into being a competing franchise. The first season of his contract was a write-off, with him alleging that owner Stephen Ross was willing to pay him $100,000 a loss, in an attempt to bribe Flores into tanking for a higher draft pick. But the last two seasons we have come so close to making the playoffs, just to fall short in the end. It is unacceptable. With the talent that consists within this young core of players, we are a playoff contending team on paper to say the least. It is on the coaching staff to develop strategy, play-calling, schemes, and key roster movement in order to get the success that lies within this team. Mike McDaniel incoming.
Since the firing of Brian Flores, I wanted McDaniel. His youthful attitude in press conferences, his ability to relate to the players, and his aggressive playmaking approaches are all exciting to see and I am glad that this weapon of a coaching personnel is now our head coach. With McDaniel being named the new head coach of the Miami Dolphins, we have to question how well-balanced of a mind he can be. It is a reasonable concern that a person who spends so much focus and energy on one side of the ball in the past may neglect the other side of the ball. But I think so far, he has added the coaching staff around him to utilize their skills so he can focus on his job, which is being the head coach.
Frank Smith has been named the offensive coordinator, with Josh Boyer being named the defensive coordinator. Wes Welker is the wide receivers coach, with Sam Madison being the cornerbacks coach, and Patrick Surtain being named a defensive assistant. Mike McDaniel wasted no time bringing in great football minds to surround him on both sides of the ball and these additions should excite Dolphins fans and show that the future is bright.
Obviously, as Miami Dolphins fans, we didn’t get what we needed out of last season and I believe the players feel the same way. It hurts to fall short time and time again and makes us look back and ask ourselves: “what if?” But with the hiring of Mike McDaniel, the new coaching staff, our electrifying young core of players, and almost $70,000,000 in salary cap space going into the off-season, I am excited for next season. I am anxious about it, but I believe in our coach, our front office, our players, and our team. We know what needs to be done and it is just a matter of going out and doing it. I think we’re going to do it. I think we will make great acquisitions, great development, and utilize new coaching schemes to unlock the potential and talent of our team. We will make the playoffs next season and we have the potential to make a good run. We will achieve success.
The Fin is always up.
