Two of those players that I believe have not been playing near as well as I thought they could are Vontae Davis and Sean Smith, but the biggest surprise to me has been Vontae Davis' performance.
I may be the only one who thinks this, but I feel like Davis has been consistently beat one on one this season. The best shut-down corners don't get beat like he has been beat so far. I honestly thought that he was among the best corners in the NFL, like Darrelle Revis and Nnamdi Asomugha, but he hasn't showed me that he's even close to them.
I have no numbers to back up my point. I can't think of any specific example that makes me feel like he has fallen off. I just feel like whoever Davis is covering is getting open pretty frequently.
I'm sure you guys remember when Vontae said that he and Sean Smith were the best cornerback tandem in the NFL. Well, we obviously know that isn't true.
I believe that Vontae's comments reflected a bigger problem among the rest of the Miami Dolphins defense. They spent the entire offseason and preseason talking about how good they were, and they obviously didn't put in enough work to be that good. I don't really blame the players, either. Their coaches were the ones telling them how good they were. I can remember hearing numerous times from numerous players about how highly the defense would have been ranked if you eliminated the last game of last season against the Patriots. I am almost positive that it was Mike Nolan who told them this, too.
There are a few problems with that argument, but the biggest is that you're playing the Patriots to open the season. Instead of acting like the game never happened, why not acknowledge that it did and focus on how to stop the Pats? They obviously didn't prepare enough, because Tom Brady set a new career-high in passing yards.
If Mike Nolan and whoever else hadn't spent so much time telling the players how good they were last year, maybe we wouldn't be in the same hole that we are in this year. The Dolphins defense came in to the season feeling like a million bucks, only to find that that million bucks was just monopoly money. You can't win football games without a lot of preparation, and the conditioning of the defense in that season opener tells me all I need to know about their preparation before.
I'm sure some of you disagree with me, but I am also sure that I am not alone in my thoughts that I have put up above.
Thank you for stopping by, and let me hear your reaction. I am sure that you have thoughts on this topic.
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