Reactions to Dolphins Second Preseason Game

Happy week three of the NFL Preseason. The week that is typically the most important one (preseason wise) for teams. The game where we may find out who might be our starters for the upcoming season. But, first, let’s go back to Friday. How are you all feeling after last week’s performance? Before we discuss the reactions from fans and Dolphins’ Twitter, let me vent something real quick.

The most annoying thing about NFL preseason is the fact that they don’t air all these games for free. If you’re a dedicated fan of your team (like all of us), you’re going to watch your team play every week and probably other games as well, right? We all probably spend enough money watching, attending, buying NFL related gear etc., so the least they could do is air these games for everyone. Even if it was only available online. I personally think it would help build up the hype for the regular season, but whatever. I say all of this because I was unable to watch the the Dolphins’ game against Tampa because it wasn’t aired in my area and I was unable to find a replay of it. I have U-Verse at my place and earlier in the year AT&T ended things with NFL Network and I legit cried a little. I’m sure I can find an app and pay for, yet another, streaming service but until I do, I miss a lot of daily football news. So, I can’t personally give any feedback on how the team did, but I did read some game reviews and listened to a few podcasts to catch up on what I missed.

Dolphins Loss to Buccaneers

I checked Twitter some throughout the game and then followed up afterwards and this is basically what I got from the game.

-Dolphins offensive line was...well...perfectly summed up by this tweet.

I’m guessing based on all the various other tweets I came across the o-line is still in trouble.

Is this basically the reaction you all had when watching Friday’s game? Do the Dolphins have one of the worst o-line units in the NFL? We know it’s definitely their weakest, as far as a unit on our team. According to the recent press conference Coach Flores has faith in them improving.

I guess we’ll see what happens this week and how our new offensive line coach does these next few weeks. I just know I’m waiting for the day when we fans won’t always be saying to each other, “If we just had a decent offensive line”.

As far as quarterback talk from the game, I mainly heard about the top discussed play that Fitzpatrick did since, well, he really has no protection with our line.

Apparently he is known for similar plays like this with his previous team and the Buccaneers weren’t overly shocked by it. Oh and now we’re calling him, “FitzTRUCKSTICK” too. Well, alright then. I’m kinda sad I missed watching this during the game, to be honest.

Other players I saw mentioned that had positive remarks:

Actually quite a bit of praise for Sam Eguavoen on my feed the past couple of days. I believe I even saw a few peeps mention he could one day potentially be on the level of our beloved and dearly missed Cameron Wake.

Does he have what it takes? I’m not sure yet, but I’m excited to watch this guy develop this season. I’m sure there were other guys worth mentioning from last weeks game, but like I said, I missed the game so just gave what players stood out according to fans on my feed.

Chatter From This Week and Third Preseason Game

The Dolphins released their 3rd depth chart.

If you checked out last weeks, you’d notice it’s basically the same. Not much to say about that, so moving on.

The most talked situation that’s been filling my newsfeed, and various podcasts, is the reaction to the quarterback situation. I feel like our fan base is split on this one. I also believe many of you had this reaction when they heard Fitzpatrick would be starting this Thursday.

Many fans believe that Coach Flores should be having Josh Rosen start week three and start the season for us. I mean, I can see that point. We got a young second year rookie quarterback. We want to see if he will be our next franchise quarterback. So, you’d think Flores would want to start him, right? We need to see how Rosen does and if he is terrible we’ll know we need to draft another quarterback in 2020. Perfect plan!

Well....not so fast. I see how people can think that and I see it differently. We have a tough opening schedule. We play Ravens and then Patriots at home, off to Dallas and back to play Chargers at home before our bye week. Those are not going to be easy games. Flores did just come from the Patriots and is very familiar with their play. Does he believe Fitz would be best suited for that game? Maybe. Let’s be real, our offensive line will probably not be improving too much in the next two weeks and we know how that works with our quarterbacks. Do we really want to send in a rookie to get possibly slaughtered early on or do we send in a veteran quarterback, who we know from past teams has typically has 3-5 solid performances in him. What if the plan is to have Fitzpatrick start the season and then Rosen takes over after the bye week? I’ve heard that idea mentioned a few times and I kinda like it. Let’s be real, nobody really knows who will start come week one. No final word from Flores has been said on who has secured the starting spot, but Flores did discuss how Rosen could increase his chances.

Basically he needs to do better. They both do. I personally would be cool with Fitz starting us off and then Rosen stepping in later in the season. Maybe it’s that slight fear of having Rosen start and repeating the whole Tannehill journey of yearly excuses of it being our offensive line’s fault at why our quarterback isn’t playing better. Nobody wants to go down that road again and I’m quite certain Coach Flores knows not to as well.

Speaking of Tannehill, I wish him nothing but the best.

The guy gave all he could when he played for us. I hope as a fan base we wish him to do well with his new team.

Other news related to our team. A few players were back at practice this week and others were out.

Very happy to hear that Jones and Grant were both at practice on Monday. Hopefully they both continue to get healthy.

I saw this posted on Twitter about Kiko Alonso.

Kiko has definitely had his ups and downs and has had a few plays that brought him bad attention in the NFL. Does he fit into the Dolphins scheme? Is his salary worth keeping him? I’ve always liked him, so I hope ends up making the roster but just something to think about.

The Dolphins next game is Thursday night, 8pm, at home against the Jaguars. It’s the dress rehearsal game. The game will be aired on Fox so no excuse to miss it this time. I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone plays. As always, let’s hope for an injury free game and a Dolphins victory.

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your week!

P.S. College football starts Saturday!

Fins Up!