Wallace, Gibson and Jenkins offer the ideas on why the team starts slow

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
Another week has come and another week is spent on talking about how the Miami Dolphins can get off to a faster start when the game begins. We’ve heard from countless plaeyrs such as Ryan Tannehill, Knowshon Moreno, Cameron Wake and Brian Hartline about how the team can come out faster out of the gate. However, we haven’t see any results. This week, it was time for Mike Wallace, Brandon Gibson and Jelani Jenkins to offer their ideas on how the team can do better.

“I know the problem is that we’re not scoring fast enough on offense,” Wallace said. “Our defense is playing great in the first half and we’re not giving them any help. Every single game, we’ve gone into halftime down, we haven’t been winning yet. That will be a good change if we could get there and will give ourselves a better chance of winning the football game if we could start faster, give ourselves some momentum and some leeway. I feel like coaches have been putting us in great positions, but we might miss a ball here or somebody misses a block there, misses a throw here, but we can’t do that. You might look at it like you might only have one mistake, but as a team, they pile up faster.

“I think guys just need to be more assignment sound, everybody, every single person on the field. All of us need to be more assignment sound and work together better as a team, complement each other instead of the defense starting fast and then we come out in the second half doing well and then they’re not doing well or special teams. We just all have to be on the same page. If we do, we’ll be a lot better.”

Jelani Jenkins, a member of the defense that has tried to save the team so many times after being put in bad spots after a short drive or a turnover, said it gets frustrating after a while, but not because of the offense.

“It’s frustrating knowing that you’re probably the reason those points were there in the first place. You just make the adjustments going into halftime and you can’t get too down, you’ve got to have that next play mentality. It makes it very difficult actually. But that’s our job, to keep giving the offense the ball, keep giving them opportunities and doing the best we can at it. It puts us in an easier situation when we are up, so we have to do a better job of starting off faster. But at the same time, that’s what we’re called on to do every time we go out on the field, keep giving the offense an opportunity.”

Brandon Gibson said it’s all about execution and if they do that, they’ll be just fine.

“Yeah, I mean it’s that everyone’s got to do their part. Offense has got to help defense. Defense has to help offense. Special teams helping offense and defense. We’ve just got to a better job of executing what’s called and us making plays.”

We’ll see on Sunday if the Dolphins can get out to a fast start against the Oakland Raiders. It would be a promising thing to see and one that would go a long way in determining how the Dolphins play the rest of the half. 

---