The Titans got points from other players in Monday night’s win over the Dolphins, but they only needed the ones that kicker Nick Folk provided.
Folk made all five field goals he tried during Tennessee’s 31-12 road win. Folk also made a pair of extra points, so he ended the team’s first win of the season with 17 points.
It’s the seventh time in Folk’s career that he has made five field goals in a single game.
The NFL named Folk the AFC’s special teams player of the week in honor of his performance. It’s the 11th time he has been the recipient of the award.
As the Dolphins’ offense struggled to even struggle on Monday night, the boos from the assembled fans got louder and louder.
Coach Mike McDaniel was asked about it on Tuesday.
“I guess it didn’t hit me with surprise,” McDaniel told reporters regarding the fan discontent. “I think people invest and have to go and believe in a team that has — bottom-line — the droughts that this organization has incurred. I don’t take that lightly. So I would be dishonest if I told you that I didn’t expect that. The worst part about all of that is you have people that I can relate where weeks are ruined with losses, and the worst part about it is you don’t have any control.
“So that’s not a fun place to be in. I know sporting events where I’m rooting for a team and I’m not coaching in it, I get much more angry when there’s failure than when I’m coaching and I can actually problem-solve something. It’s to be expected. This is the big leagues. To feel entitled to blind support, that’s not my cup to tea. I think you have to go to work, problem-solve and try to fix things as best you canm and I don’t think we’re necessarily owed anything, I think people believe when you give them reason to believe and if people jump off the bandwagon — I’m not really villainizing the people who are jumping off the bandwagon. It’s more we gave them reason to. So that’s to be expected. I don’t think people pay what they pay to go to Hard Rock Stadium to watch us lose, so whatever results incurred by our game day failure, we deserve.”
It’s a healthy, pragmatic approach. The same passion that gets the fans to dig deep into their discretionary income gets them to dig deep into their lungs when things don’t go the way they want.
And, frankly, their frustration might have gone beyond what they were seeing on the field to what they were not seeing on the field. They were not seeing a competent, effective, experienced, and properly prepared veteran quarterback, who was ready to go the moment Tua Tagovailoa had his latest concussion.
Yes, they started Pro Bowler* Tyler Huntley. But he basically just got there. The Dolphins entered the offseason program and training camp with Skyler Thompson and Mike White. They could have pursued players like Gardner Minshew, Jimmy Garoppolo, Jameis Winston, Tyrod Taylor, Joe Flacco (who came off the bench to beat the Steelers on Sunday), or Mason Rudolph (who came off the bench to beat the Dolphins on Monday night).
Skylar Thompson wasn’t the answer. Tim Boyle isn’t the answer. Tyler Huntley possibly could have been the answer, if they’d decided to get him in the fold early enough to master the offense so that he could run it fully and completely, including the shell-game/sleight-of-hand plays that don’t require the skills of Patrick Mahomes but that require reps and reps and more reps to nail down the timing.
Yes, that’s likely where some of the boos were coming from. We all knew Tua’s concussion history. We all knew the Dolphins needed a reliable and effective and experienced and prepared backup. They didn’t, and don’t, have one.
That’s the kind of thing that gets customers to complain. It’s the kind of thing that gets management to issue pink slips.
The changes to the rulebook suggested that the league had targeted “cheat motion” for 2024. A source with knowledge of the situation said so, specifically mentioning the tactics of the Dolphins, 49ers, and Rams.
But then came a string of nothing-to-see-here comments and reports suggesting, from the perspective of officials who were visiting training camps and head coaches, that nothing about the aggressive pre-snap movements had changed. However, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel seemed to acknowledge a change was coming.
On Monday night, it arrived.
The Miami offense racked up five illegal shift fouls, including three on the same drive. McDaniel addressed it on Tuesday.
“Guys aren’t getting set fast enough,” McDaniel said, via Joe Schad of the Palm Beach Post. “So I have to take a look at the amount — you use motions and stuff to try to give players some advantageous situations, but you have to pull back from that if you can’t execute them because there’s no play that works that doesn’t even get a chance to get started.”
The question is whether the officials are officiating it differently, or whether the players are executing it differently.
“Well, they harp on a lot of the motions that we do . . . so they’re really making that an emphasis in the league,” receiver Jaylen Waddle said. “So it’s something that we’ve got to adjust to.”
Adjustment is the key. The Dolphins must adjust to what the officials are calling.
“The motioning part of our offense is something that our players have been good at in the past and have used it to create advantageous situations, but I mean, you just can’t keep doing the same thing,” McDaniel said. “You have to fully adjust if guys can’t execute in the moment of truth.”
That’s the key. Figuring out the rules, knowing what will draw a flag, and not doing it. Even if the end result is that what once was an advantage for the Dolphins and other teams has been neutralized.
I don’t like the Monday night simultaneous overlapping doubleheader. Others agree.
But it continues, for the second straight week. (And two more are coming.)
For last night’s Titans-Dolphins/Seahawks-Lions staggered doubleheader, the ESPN/ABC platforms generated an audience of more than 20.3 million during the 2.5-hour overlap between the games.
The late game in Detroit, on ABC, averaged more than 15 million viewers. ESPN didn’t mention the numbers for Titans-Dolphins, which as usual means they were nothing to brag about.
We still don’t know why it’s not good enough to have one game on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, etc. Regardless, none of us gets a vote — unless we vote with our eyeballs and, in turn, deprive ourselves of something we enjoy.
Regardless, many don’t enjoy having two games on at the same time on Monday night as much as they’d enjoy keeping it to one.
For those of you who pay close attention to our content (and thank you for that), you weren’t as surprised as others might have been by the onside kick the Dolphins attempted late in last night’s game.
The play happened after a safety. The Dolphins had a free kick from their own 20. They were permitted to declare, and to attempt, an onside kick.
The Dolphins punted the ball at the 20. It landed on the Miami 47.
The Titans made the “Peter” call as the ball was landing (it can easily be heard on the broadcast), instructing the players to stay away from the ball.
Titans special-teams coordinator Colt Anderson was livid, telling the players that they should have made a fair catch. ESPN rules analyst Jerry Bergman seemed very confused, too. Play-by-play announcer Chris Fowler, whose primary beat is college football, kept insisting that the Titans should have called for a fair catch.
The players on the field weren’t confused by any of it. To their credit.
They apparently knew the rule. If the kick goes untouched beyond 25 yards from the spot of the kick (the 10-yard restraining line plus the 15-yard setup zone), the receiving team takes possession. And, on top of that, here’s the penalty: “For an onside kick that goes untouched beyond the onside kick setup zone: Loss of 15 yards from the kicking team’s restraining line and the receiving team takes possession.”
The ball landed two yards past the setup zone. This means that, even without a fair catch, it became Tennessee’s ball. On top of that, they got the ball 15 yards (here, half the distance) from the spot of the kick.
While it required a careful and accurate estimate of where the ball would land, the Titans players got it right. It hit the ground more than 25 yards from the spot of the kick. And if a Tennessee player had called for a fair catch and muffed it, the Dolphins could have recovered the ball and retained possession.
Everyone should have known about this rule before last night. After last night, there can be no excuses that people didn’t know.
