Miami Dolphins secondary was a mixed bag of results against Packers

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
The Miami Dolphins secondary was inconsistent against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. At times, they made great plays but at other times, they slipped, miscommunicated on various coverages and failed to tackle. 

On one play, safety Louis Delmas slipped in the end zone, which allowed Randall Cobb to score. Kevin Coyle said that particular play, along with several others, could’ve been the difference between winning and losing.

“He [Delmas] slipped. We had slips on the other couple of plays that I just mentioned, but that’s football. Guys are running around, starting, stopping short and quick and the quarterback (Aaron Rodgers) is outside of the pocket on a couple of those plays. He was able to extend plays like we had talked about last week. He does it better than anybody in the game. Looking back on it, there were 17 snaps in the game where we either hit him, sacked him, or flushed him, where he was running, some that he scrambled, some that he just scrambled to throw the ball. We surely would have liked to get him on the ground more, but we affected him throughout the game. His numbers at the end of the day, he completed some big balls for them, but he was I think 24-of-42 and, for him, his percentages are usually a lot higher than that.”

Overall, Coyle said that the cornerbacks competed and it was expected that they would lose some and win some. He mentioned the fact that Cortland Finnegan missed a tackle early in the game but said that this happens in the NFL every week. Coyle said that playing cornerback and having to tackle guys in space is the hardest job on the field. With that said, he was happy the defense didn’t give up many explosive plays but ultimately, the players slipping did them in.

“I think they competed all day long. We won some battles, we lost some. When you go against a great quarterback that’s got weapons, that generally is the way it goes. We didn’t give up any real explosive plays, the biggest I think they had a 28-yard pass, but that was early in the game. The other long pass was when we missed a tackle and he ran down the sideline. We did limit the explosives, no one got up over the top of us, which was good, but yet we’ve got to do a better job of tackling on the perimeter and staying on our feet. We lost a couple of third downs because we slipped.”

The secondary will have a much bigger test on Sunday when they go up against some of the tallest and biggest receivers in the NFL. We’ll see if they are able to match up or if they will be thrown around due to their smaller size. 

---