How complete was Miami's win last Sunday vs the Patriots on their opponent's home turf? Amazingly, many accolades followed the win. On the offensive side of the ball, RB Ronnie Brown was voted the NFL's Offensive Player of the week for his 5 touchdown performance. Not only that but he rushed for 113 yards and executed the "Wild Cat" scheme to perfection. The last time a Dolphin was named offensive player of the week was back in December of 2002 when Ricky got it for a 216 yard, 2 td performance against the cursed Bills ... in a loss. To fully understand what Ronnie did on Sunday you would have to go all the way back to 1923 to find someone who matched what he did.
Defensively, OLB Joey Porter won Defensive Player of the Week honors for a 3 sack, 6 tackle, and 1 forced fumble performance. Porter now has 4 sacks for the year and is tied for second behind Atlanta's John Abraham. Why the resurgence when everyone kept saying that Porter was on the way out? He points to the fact that he has coaches that know how to use his talents. Last year Dom Capers moved him from his traditional weak side linebacker spot to strong side linebacker. His performance sank and it was not due to a lack of effort. This year the Dolphins moved him back to the weak side and he's caught fire.With Matt Roth making a smooth transition to outside linebacker in Miami's 3-4 defense, give a lot of credit to the recently hospitalized outside linebacker coach Jim Reid. Does anyone not doubt that this team was mismanaged last year?
Bill Cowher:
"He looks now like he's able to play instinctively. He's got his explosiveness back. He doesn't need to speak publicly and give people bulletin-board material. But when bullets start to fly, I want him on my side.''
On the coaching side, Coach Sparano was voted Coach of the Week for orchestrating the 38-13 pummelling the Dolphins gave the Patsies. I guess ole Belichick did not have a video clip of our new offense, eh? The Patriots were so inept that they only gained 216 total net offensive yards in the game. Of course, you wouldn't see that with Brady in the game, but let's not forget that the Dolphins have been a thorn in the Patriots side no matter what our record seems to be.
Well, it's not totally a complete domination as New England's special teams outplayed Miami's, but that was something that Sparano addressed this week at practice. The Dolphins responded so well that Sparano gave them a 3 day weekend with their families to chill out.
How complete was Miami's win last Sunday vs the Patriots on their opponent's home turf? Amazingly, many accolades followed the win. On the offensive side of the ball, RB Ronnie Brown was voted the NFL's Offensive Player of the week for his 5 touchdown performance. Not only that but he rushed for 113 yards and executed the "Wild Cat" scheme to perfection. The last time a Dolphin was named offensive player of the week was back in December of 2002 when Ricky got it for a 216 yard, 2 td performance against the cursed Bills ... in a loss. To fully understand what Ronnie did on Sunday you would have to go all the way back to 1923 to find someone who matched what he did.
