A typical late afternoon downpour did in the Dolphins on Sunday, but it had nothing to do with rain. After taking a 13-10 lead halfway into the third quarter on an impressive 73-yard touchdown drive, the floodgates literally opened as Dallas scored 20 unanswered points to put the game away. The lead disappeared thanks in large part to repeated, second-half turnovers by Trent Green when the game was still undecided.
Although the 37-20 final score might lead one who had not seen the game to believe the loss was attributable to the defense, this was not the case. The culprits: ugly performances by Trent Green and the offensive line. Don’t be fooled by Trent’s stats: 23 of 40 for 287 yards with 2 touchdowns. Outside of his 4 for 4 passing during the opening drive of the second half which was capped off by a go-ahead touchdown pass, Green was horrendous. He was 6 of 14 (42.9%) in the first half. He threw 4 interceptions, fumbled a snap and then fumbled again attempting to spike the ball. Many of his completions and much of his yardage, along with one of his touchdowns, came in garbage time with the game out of hand and the Cowboys playing soft coverage. When it counted, his throws were too often way off target. Green must think his receivers are 10 feet tall; the rest of us know better.
Thanks to turnovers and a special teams breakdown (which only occurred after an illegal formation penalty nullified a 53-yard net punt), Dallas scored 20 unanswered points with no drive starting more than 40 yards from the goal line. It’s hard to fault the defense too much under these circumstances.
And just as against the Redskins in week one, the running game was abysmal. Once again Ronnie Brown had no holes to run through. This team is going nowhere fast and much of the blame goes to the running game that has produced an average of only 63.5 yards per game thus far. Offensive Line Coach Hudson Houck ought to explain to his players that running backs’ averages are not measured in inches!
The first two games have certainly raised a lot of questions about this Dolphins’ team, but quite frankly, these are the same questions fans and analysts had going into the season. One new question that has surfaced, however, is why didn’t Cameron insert Cleo Lemon in the fourth quarter when the game was out of hand and Trent Green was obviously having an off day? Why not give Lemon some game experience considering he is the second string and has so little regular season playing time to his credit? Why not see what he can do? It’s not a matter of sending the wrong signal to the veterans who Cam can’t afford to have quit on him. In his post-game comments Cameron could have readily explained why he pulled Green (because the game was out of hand and he wanted to give Lemon some more game experience in case Green were to get hurt later on in the season) and he could have headed off any further speculation by clearly naming Green as his starter against the Jets next week. The bottom line is that there wasn’t any good reason Cameron didn’t put Cleo Lemon in when the game got out of control, there were just good questions about why he didn’t.
With an 0-2 start, this season is shaping up as another tough one for the boys in orange and aqua. Perhaps, Cameron can somehow get his team to gel over the next few weeks and turn it around. Just don’t count on it. The way things look, it’s all too likely that the daily afternoon Miami downpours are going to be even worse on Sundays!
