you said
“Moving along, we’re how two days removed from Sunday’s heartbreaking loss.”

instead it should be

“Moving along, we’re now two days removed from Sunday’s heartbreaking loss.”

get it together

and a little side not:

when we were practicing for state championships (which we won)…we practiced at Monmouth university

first state championship my school had ever won

o i love it

I am a new member from Mexico City, don´t have much to say right now but hope to be joining a few discussions later on, specially the ones that don´t involve the word secondary every two lines. Well anyway nice to meet you all and let´s go get that 3rd W.

infact it’s an ultra conservative move that I’ve seen several NFL coaches do. It’s what Cam would have done and that’s all that you need to say about that, since we lost 6 or 7 games last year by 3 points or less. Hindsights 20/20. That being said i believe scoring the TD was the right move, the D held last week at the end of the SD game and you gotta show confidence in them to get the job done.

The problem with this team goes much deeper then Cam and Mueller and it’s unfair to state that since they were only here one year. Wanny and Saban traded away all our picks for …. alot of crap. Mueller at least got Samson S. and the Henne’s pick didn’t he?

I like the Beck trade it’s good for us and good for him. It’s obviously the FO is through with him.

Matty I, I kinda want to disagree with you about something to start some conversation but…..

I agree with everything you wrote. Well done.

Heartbreaking loses suck, but then, in hindsight (which there seems to be a lot of after a loss), i’ll take this loss over a loss like the Patriots took. In fact, i’ll take both this loss and the Jets loss over both the Pats loses. Ours were close nailbiters, theirs were blowouts.

To say that a lot of teams would love to have 2 wins right now is a cliche – but we do have a solid future ahead as a franchise. Plus, if we win next week against the Ravens, this loss will be washed away.

What a difference a win makes!

I agree on the Ronnie knee issue….as I stated in my article. I can not believe that is an issue….my god. These are the same people asking why we didnt go for 2 at the end of the game……to go up 6 lol.

Who is CamCam? I dont know who this is you speak of. I am a robot. I erased that part of my memory im being told.

Mark this as the day Matty I broke up with John Beck. Its not you…its me duckie. That Austin guy looks like a star. I would trade Beck for any player on Dallas….really…anybody

hahahaaha i knew u had to read all those matty……lol. im sorry.

Boy, I just HATE IT when I hear fro my fellow Dolphanatics “Aw MAN! We suck! And we were going to the play-offs!” My response is always the same: “Uhm… what the hell did you just say Mr. Duche-bag? We were 1-15 last year, this year is a REBUILDING year.” Why can’t people jsut temper their expectations. We still need corners. We still need receivers. We might possibly need linebackers as well! So why oh why do we start using the “p-word” when we still get two straight four games into the season? Sheesh!

…okay, breath… Breath…okay, sorry about that, that’s just my rant. Anyways, Matty, I agree with everything that you say. And I’m curious: have you heard or seen ANYTHING that hints to ANY interest in Roy Williams? What’s your take of that fantasy (for the moment) aquisition?

There´s nothing on NFL.com or cowboys.com yet but I was filling out the probowl ballot and Roy Williams appears as a cowboy.

Dallas’s Roy should be under Strong Safty not WR (If you’re referring to the Detroit WR)

Oh all right my bad, talking about WR´s, do you think it was a good move to get rid of Chris Chambers last season? he is an elite WR and we do have a lot of cap space this year. What do you think about Ricky Williams till now? I think he is a class act. mm what else I actually now realize trading jason was a good move. Whose jersey would you buy, Pennington, Ronnie or Porter?? What do you think about sunday´s week? P word?? Well if anybody else is bored out of this world at school or work feel free to start a conversation, feel free to throw baseball into the mix

we make him read 600+ randomly pointless comments, he makes us read the words Cam Cam multiple times. I hate you Matty lol.

As far as the column, Matty, you’re right about Ronnie and kneeling at the one. There were quite a few people in agreement with you during the post-game thread because the smartest thing to do is to take the TD and then make them go score a TD. If we kick, then they can kick, and teams usually only need to go about 40 yards to get in FG range after a kick return. Take the TD, see if your D steps it up. By next year, I would expect the D to get a back-breaking pick to seal the deal in those kind of games.

Yes. Last year sucked. Thanks for bringing it up. Moving along…

October 14 2008 will forever go down as John Beck Breakup Day. Congrats Matty, I went through it in the preseason, just watch some Chad Henne highlights to help you get through. Miles Austin is an interesting player, but I doubt we can get him. If Dallas is looking to trade a WR, it’s most likely Crayton. Austin is supposedly untouchable right now (notice I said right now) unless the deal is crazy. JJones really likes him.

Sparano said this in his post game comments….
(On if it’s easier to regroup from a loss after a couple of wins) – “I said it to the team last night. I said, ‘One of the reasons you feel like you do right now is because you have had some success.’ And I think that that’s important. The fact that we’ve won some ballgames and won some ballgames after we lost a few ballgames, I think gives us some confidence to understand that we can do this. We’ve already done it in the season. We played hard last night. We didn’t play well enough last night. That’ll be what we take out of that and we’ll move forward. I think we’ll get better this week. It will change the way we practice. It will change the way we practice. There will be some things we’ll do differently.”

This man knows how to learn from this kind of loss and motivate his team to get better. I have completely changed my mind about the coaching. I think we have a great one in coach Sparano

about taking a knee. Unless your name is Matt Ryan and you’re playing against the Chicago Defense, its MUCH harder to get in field goal range in under 25 seconds and no time outs than it is to score a TD with 1:40 and 2 T.Os. You can calmly lead a drive down the field, and teams practice the 2 minute drill all the time. When you can’t stop the clock, you are forced to go out of bounds, and teams can play the sidelines.

The only possible argument you can make against this is that we’ll give up a huge return, which we did earlier in the game. That just shows a lack of confidence in your kicking game.

anyway you go you can´t leave 1:45 seconds on the clock with two time outs to a team that has been destroying your defense all game. I was really surprised Sparano went for the TD so fast. In my opinion that was some poor game management.

but I think almost everyone around here agrees that we should have run out the clock a bit more or at least make them spend their time outs, i mean that was football coaching 101 I was watching the game with a guy that barely knows what the game is about and he was like whoa why would you score so quick. Giving them almost two minutes with those lethal weapons they had as receivers… i dont know. But yeah that 4th and 10 was ridiculous and that 4th and 2 without a single linebacker … a blind man could have seen that run coming.

Yatil this is what you’re not understanding here. There’s NO GUARANTEE that you score. So let’s do this your way. Ronnie jukes Mario Williams out of his pants then walks to the 1, then falls down. 2nd down we botch the handoff, Houston recovers, we lose.
OR
2nd down, 3rd down, both times we get stuffed. The FG gets blocked and run back for a TD, we lose.
OR
It works according to plan, then they get a big runback, throw one 20 yard pass, and beat us with a FG.

Our D won the game for us in San Diego. They had numerous opportunities to end the game Sunday. Any one of those plays is made, and this isn’t an issue. You take the TD. It’s harder to score a TD to win than a FG, no matter the time difference. You can stand by your statement, but just know that it’s wrong. Scoring a TD is NEVER the wrong decision when you’re playing from behind.

Who says that shit?

I’m pissed that we didn’t go for it on 4th and 1 at midfield when we were only up by a point. WTF was that? What happened to the wildcat there? It’s like it was abandoned after it was doing so well.

Yeah, we hadn´t been a point spread favorite for a while, let´s keep it going guys let´s keep rolling. Just got my Joey Porter jersey and hope I can fly over with my dad for next week´s game. Quick question, what part of the stadium is the better one to watch the game? sideline, endzone ??

I understand why people are getting creative with the “take a knee, run out the clock” argument. It might have worked. And I must confess, I thought the same thing when Ronnie ran it in with a minute 45 left. I had been looking for the first down.

But I agree 100% with you for 3 reasons:
1) Noone knew that Ronnie was going to be able to score on that play. It opened up and he took it.
2) You have to take the points. Like you said Matty, the Fins were behind and had to have points to win. Any number of goofy things can happen in a game, and you take the points when you have the opportunity. Different story if the Fins are ahead by 1.
3) With 1:45 left, you HAVE to be able to trust your D to prevent a TD. The Texans could not win with a FG. 9 times out of 10, this will pay off. This time the Fins D didn’t get it done. But the Offense did their job.

But I’ve moved on. My Dolphin flag is waving above my ghosts, tombstones, and pumpkins. I’m ready ti kick some Raven ass. God I love Dolphin season, I love it that we are in every game(well maybe not the AZ massacre). Get me a cold Leinenkugel’s, turn on the plasma, and watch the wildcat run. Oh. . .good post Matty, Now talk more smack will ya?

and john beck to sneak to the ravens sideline and then karate chop him in the neck

and like 15,000 more fans jump him after the game

this was a great game….it came down to the last second.

there’s lots of teams with worse records than we have right now…

still a LOT of football left to play guys.

Hey we got 5 of the next 6 games at home and the one we play away is at denver, in the cold weather where our style of game will be much more useful than theirs. We win 4 out of these 6 and we are looking at a playoff run. Believe and if you don´t just look at the Tampa Bay Rays, yeah that´s right.

You are righ Matty, as Herm Edwards so famously said “You play to win the game, Hello? You play to win the game”

Attempting a FG is not trying to win the game, its trying not to lose.

ravens game this week it comes down to same scenario…what would you do?

Taking a knee no… but going down at the one maybe…

Matty…

if ronnie picks up the first down without scoring, the fins win if the game if they can snap the ball to Penny 3x and then kick and extra point lenght field goal with zero time on the clock….. much better option than giving the ball back to houston with 1:40 left on the clock…

and to say that there are so many things that can go wrong, well if a pro team can’t take a knee 3x and kick and extra point lenght field goal, how can you expect them to win any week… are there 4 simpler things that they could do?

Now I wouldn’t expect any player, aside from mssr. westbrook being able to know/execute this in the midst of the game… but it IS something the coaching staff should have brought up once they had 1st down at the 12…
and I would have loved to have heard one of the (….) beat writers ask sparano about it though.