Last season, Coach Brian Flores got his team to fight as the team rebuilt. He ran off his best player, safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, in exchange for three draft picks (including a first-rounder this year), then Flores and General Manager Chris Grier chose quarterback Tua Tagovailoa fifth overall in the 2020 draft, over Justin Herbert.
Sunday’s loss at Tampa Bay was a troubling revelation: Flores, who made his bones as a defensive assistant with the Patriots, hasn’t been able to build anything resembling a defensive power in Miami.
If anyone should know how to stop a Brady attack, it’s Flores. Yet Brady was back to his terminator ways, completing 30 of 41 passes for 411 yards with five touchdowns.
That performance came a week after Patriots Coach Bill Belichick had Brady thinking an extra split-second in a tight matchup that presumably provided some reproducible looks. But Sunday’s game was a defensive meltdown in every conceivable way. With Miami in man coverage in the second quarter, Brady knifed a pass to Antonio Brown on a crossing route, and Brown sprinted 62 yards for the touchdown. One nearby Dolphins defensive back who had his head turned couldn’t even see Brown whisking by.
The Bucs finished with 33 first downs and 558 total yards, going 8 of 11 on third down, and never turned the ball over.
In Year 3, Flores’s defense should be humming. Instead, it’s floundering.
Tagovailoa, now a second-year quarterback, will return from his fractured ribs at some point this season, but there’s little hope that he will be able to lead the offense to relevance. The ultraconservative play that doomed him to getting benched for Ryan Fitzpatrick as a rookie, along with the elementary screens and check downs that have been his hallmark, is unlikely to confound division rivals.
The Dolphins’ potential trade for Deshaun Watson will hang over the team until the Nov. 2 trade deadline. Watson faces a potential suspension as part of the investigation of 22 sexual misconduct lawsuits against him.