The Bills and Dolphins had a big divisional match-up on Sunday where the winner was still in the wild card hunt and the loser was going to start looking at the draft. It ended up not being an extremely close match-up as the Bills never trailed and the Dolphins still can’t figure out how to hike the ball to the QB without getting a safety. In the end, the Bills snatched up another win against the Fins and they are back to 500.
Screen Passes, Screen Passes Everywhere
The Dolphins offense improved over the last meeting and if it wasn’t some horrible situational football by the offense, they might have made it a game. Screen passes were the Dolphins favorite play as the majority of the time they ended up having great success. The Bills defense struggled to stop those as they struggled tackling and making a play. That was the Dolphins offense as they really struggled to throw downfield due to a bad offensive line and Lamar Miller showed why he needs to be replaced by Jay Ajayi. What really destroyed the Dolphins was the final play of the 1st half, instead of using the running ability of Ryan Tannehill and using an option play, they decide to do a tight window pass which was easily batted away. At that point the game was 7-19 and a FG and especially a TD at that point along with getting the ball back to start the second half would have given the Fins some key momentum. Instead they ended up remaining in a big hole and never getting out.
The Return of McKelvin
The Bills defense has regressed greatly since last year as Rex wanted to see how badly can he misuse a top 10 defense. This week the secondary got key reinforcements as Leodis McKelvin came back where he will add much needed depth in the secondary. Overall the Bills defense still did not play well as the Fins were having very little difficulty moving down the field and only incompetence stopped the Fins from scoring on those drives. The Bills were able to get some pressure but it wasn’t enough as Tannehill was able to get the ball quickly the majority of the times. What was worst was the red zone defense as two times, they let Lamar Miller run it in for a TD. Screen passes were the Bills nightmare as they had no answer for them and were the Dolphins offense. While the Bills got the win, they can’t be happy about the defense.
Sammy Gets His Targets
Sammy Watkins is back and he made a huge interest as he was the Bills passing game. Of the 12 passes by Tyrod Taylor, Watkins ended up with 8 of the 12 targets and racked up 168 yards. He was own Brent Grimes as he was able to easily get wide open, especially in the two deep balls Tyrod threw. These are the type of games Watkins is able to get as he has shown that he can make plays happen if someone throws his way. The moral of the story is, throw to Watkins if you want to win.
Los and Shady Show
The Bills went back to their identity today as they played smash mouth football and it ended up having huge success. The Bills had no difficulty running as their two RBs both got over 100 yards and combined for three TDs. Even with Suh causing massive havoc at times, the key blocking of Richie Incognito opened up holes for the Bills to get big runs. The outside runs were the most success as the Dolphins linebackers continue to show they are horrible. This is the type of run game the Bills are capable of and with a steady offensive line, it isn’t tough to see them just beating teams to submission with the run game.
Overall this was big win for the Bills after getting two huge losses. The Dolphins are not that great a threat for the Bills as the past few years the Bills have had the Fins’ number. This is a nice game for the offense as they were able to be run heavy and limit the throws of Tyrod Taylor. The only huge concern is the defense which had another subpar outing. This Thursday they face Chan Gailey who more probably than not will use the screen game. Hopefully in the next week that is what the Bills defense is working on.
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