Miami Dolphins finally play four full quarters of football

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
The Miami Dolphins have been struggling to play a full 60 minutes of football throughout the season so far. In fact, they’re one of the league’s best in the second half but could never seem to get it going in the first half. On Sunday against the Chicago Bears, the Dolphins finally played a four full quarters of football.

“We deferred the last couple and quite frankly I think we had given up a touchdown on the first two possessions of the opening game – the Green Bay game. We looked at the tape, we felt like we had an opportunity to get off to a fast-start on offense against this football team. Plus part of it was just mindset, we wanted to get the ball and get going,” Joe Philbin said. “We meet at the end of every week, I told the coordinators I wanted the ball first. It didn’t actually pan-out; we got sacked on our first play. It wasn’t the exact fast-start I was thinking about. We decided that earlier in the week and that’s the way it went.”

Despite the Dolphins not having much success in their first drive, they turned it around quickly and ended up scoring 14 points in the first half and could’ve had another 3 points had Caleb Sturgis made the 50-yard field goal. However, between their offense making plays all over the field and their defense making Jay Cutler's life a living hell, they were able to make good things happen.

“I thought the team played well. I thought we got off to a better start this week than we had in the past,” Philbin said. “I thought our defense really set the tone early in the game. I don’t think they [the Bears] had a lot of offensive production in the first half. I thought, offensively, we had pretty good balance. We were able to run the ball and that set up some things in the passing game. I thought it was a good team win.”

The Dolphins will face the Jacksonville Jaguars this coming Sunday in Jacksonville and will look to continue to their dominant performance another four quarters.