Advertisement

After acing test against Jets, what is Dolphins’ next big challenge?

kyle crabbs
·2 min read

The Miami Dolphins can sit back this week, get healthy and then refocus themselves on the task at hand: the Los Angeles Rams. The Rams are Miami’s Week 8 opponent, which will give Brian Flores plenty of time to game plan alongside coordinators Josh Boyer and Chan Gailey to come up with a winning formula to counter Sean McVay’s motion-heavy offense and the presence of elite talents like Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey.

But that’s going to be part of the greater challenge Miami must tackle next. Because at 3-3, Miami has proven that they can shut out the noise and claim victories over teams of equal or lesser standing. Jacksonville, San Francisco and the Jets are all no better than 3-3 on the season to this point, with Jacksonville and New York a combined 1-11 on the season to this point.

The next big challenge for Miami?

Learning how to win close games against better teams. And to be fair to the Dolphins, the next six games on the schedule are significantly softer than the first six games on the schedule. And Miami seems to have gotten their feet underneath of them despite the lack of a preseason to establish some chemistry. And, in equal fairness to the Dolphins, Miami was 0-6 at this point last year and then did, in fact, learn how to claim wins against better teams by the end of the season.

Miami’s 2019 team logged late wins against Philadelphia and New England, two playoff teams — plus wins against the Colts and Jets, two teams that finished with 7 wins on the year (two more than Miami). So it isn’t unheard of in the Brian Flores era for this team to get better and more proficient in close games from the start of the year to the end of the year. And that’s what is most exciting: Miami is in position to do exactly that with their record standing at .500 coming out of the bye.

They’ll get their first test against the Rams, who are currently 4-2 and will be coming off a Monday Night Football appearance against Chicago to travel across the country and play in Miami in Week 8.