Tannehill, Wake and Vernon talk about improved play in second half

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
The Miami Dolphins were outscored and outgained in the first half of yesterday’s game. In fact, it looked as if the New England Patriots were well on their way to another easy victory. That is, until the Dolphins came out in the second half and to put it bluntly, kicked some Patriots ass by outgaining them by 200 yards and holding them to less than 100 total yards.

“I thought we had a good plan. We had a lot of time to work on this plan. I thought it was good. The only thing I said to the offense at halftime – we thought we had some plays we didn’t’ make in the first half that were there,” Joe Philbin said.

Ryan Tannehill spoke about how the offense responded and also gave credit to the defense for stepping it up a notch.

“We didn’t make the mistakes. You think back to the first half, they didn’t really stop us that much. We stopped ourselves with turnovers. You can’t have three turnovers and expect to win like we did. To be able to turn the ball over like that, the defense shutting them out in the second half and then being able to score, speaks to the resiliency of this team. We’re only one game in but we felt like coming into halftime, we were only stopping ourselves and we needed to play better and we needed to take care of the football.”

On the defensive side of the ball, Olivier Vernon and Cameron Wake talked about how there weren’t any huge adjustments but instead, just the fact that they played better and were more settled.

“Oh man, it was big, man. You know, like I said, defense, we knew we had to get that production, man,” Vernon said. “We knew we had to stretch Tom Brady, we knew we had to force turnovers, man. Turnovers win games. Hey, I’m just proud we got this win. Offense showed up. Defense showed up. It was a team win.”

“We came together as a defense and said ‘listen, that’s just the way it is. That’s the card that we’re dealt. We go to go out there and do whatever we can to get the ball back, give it back to our offense and let them do their job,” Wake said. “So, it’s not offense, defense, it’s the Miami Dolphins. We got to play together as a unit. Some days they had it bad and we don’t. Today, we played together.”

If the Dolphins can play a full 60 minutes with the type of defense they did yesterday in the second half, it’s going to be very hard to move the ball against them throughout the remainder of the season.

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