A Promising Dress Rehearsal
Last night, the Dolphins won their third preseason game of the year against the Atlanta Falcons! And despite Mike Pouncey’s knee injury – which we will hopefully find out more about shortly, although it was encouraging that he was able to walk off the field on his own – the starters stayed healthy and continued to look sharp. The starting defensive line was once again suffocating and teed off on Matt Ryan for a total of 4 sacks in the first half. The offense also was successful moving up and down the field, but they did have two gaffs in a turnover and a bad snap on a punt.
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More importantly, on offense Tannehill continued to look sharp and showed sports betting fans that he is ready for the season. This preseason Tannehill has completed just over 80% of his passes going 33 for 41, with 303 yards, 3 touchdowns and no interceptions. This is the type of stat line that could definitely help Miami win a lot of football games this year.
There is a real positive vibe that has come from this preseason so far, even players who were big questions marks have vastly improved. One player in particular is Dallas Thomas, who many Miami Dolphins News fans including myself have been very worried about. Thomas has played well all preseason. Against the Falcons, he even filled in at Left Tackle and once again held his own and didn’t allow give up a sack. If Thomas can continue this upward trend, then fans won’t need to worry about Thomas being a weak link as one of the Dolphins starting Guards.
One thing that we expected is being reinforced with each game: Miami is going to have one of the most dominant Defensive Lines in Football – one that could truly makes this defense special. I would even go as far as saying that the D-Line could be so good that they help Miami’s defense become one of the top 3 defenses in the league and on the same level as the dominant Seahawks defense. Yes, it’s a bold statement! But consider this, not only is the phins D-Line stacked with All Pro talent, they also have excellent depth. Players such as Derrick Shelby, Terrence Fede, A.J. Francis, and Jordan Phillips are guys that can start on most teams in the NFL. The beauty of having such a dominant D-Line is that it makes the back end of the defense better. Linebackers have more time and space to do their job, and the secondary has a shorter clock to work with in coverage because opposing QB’s won’t have all the time in the world to sit in the pocket and pick the secondary apart.
Two notable players from the Falcon game were Jay Ajayi and Andrew Franks. Ajayi has received a lot of hype from sports betting fans, but has been hobbled with a hamstring injury during training camp, and hadn’t played a snap in a preseason game prior to last night. However, he played against the Falcons and looking explosive between the tackles had 25 yards on 7 carries for a 3.5 yards per carry average. Lastly, Andrew Franks the undrafted rookie kicker just made the kicking competition a little bit more difficult. He connected on two field goals, and the last field goal was a clutch 51 ‘yarder’ that put Miami up by 4 points in the last minutes of the game. In addition, he had two kickoffs that he bombed right through the endzone. Still, Franks has been inconsistent in practice, and Sturgis is a 2013 5th round draft pick and may be difficult to unseat, His performance though gave the coaches a much harder time deciding on who they want to be their kicker.
Is there anything or anyone that particularly stands out to the rest of the Miami Dolphins news fans from these first 3 preseason games so far?
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