After finishing 2-1 at home during their previous home stand, the Miami Dolphins travel for the first time in three weeks.
The stats don’t lie: Miami is a different team when playing away from Hard Rock Stadium. This season, they’ve only gone 4-3 away from the stadium and haven’t won against a team outside of Miami Gardens with a record higher than.500. The Dolphins give up 16.9 points per game at home this season, but they allow 25.9 points per game on the road.
Lamar Jackson, the quarterback, and the Ravens captured everyone’s interest once more on Monday after overwhelming San Francisco 33-19.
With a victory versus the Dolphins, Baltimore, who has won ten of their previous eleven games, will secure the top seed in the AFC playoffs. Although Miami has defeated the Ravens the past two seasons, both teams are very different this time around.
Home-field advantage is not always a guarantee for the Dolphins. Miami must stay away from miscommunication, wasting timeouts too soon, unusual turnovers, and other mistakes that don’t happen at Hard Rock. Miami is fortunate that the Ravens, who played on Monday night and traveled across the nation from San Francisco to Baltimore, will have a short week.
With Bradley Chubb’s recent domination and cornerback Jalen Ramsey growing more at ease in the scheme, Miami’s defense is heating up just in time. With nearly 5,600 offensive yards this season, the Ravens lead the NFL in total offensive yards, so they’ll need to keep up their good play.
Vic Fangio may seek to employ some of the similar tactics that resulted in four sacks of Jackson in 2021, despite the fact that his defense differs from Brian Flores’ approach by using 43 pass attempts. Miami’s best chance of winning and leaving Baltimore would be to maintain a quarterback spy and hide blitzes to make Jackson complete accurate passes.
It’s still common to hear stories about Miami being a “finesse” squad, even if this is untrue. The Dolphins have the opportunity to silence their detractors even though it is not necessary. The Dolphins are attempting to win a first-round seed for the first time since 1984 and have remained at the top of almost every offensive ranking this season. Without physicality, it is impossible to continuously rank that highly, and Miami must provide just that for the full four quarters.
There are numerous ramifications for this game’s MVP competition as well as the playoff picture. The Dolphins can win one of the biggest games in the recent history of the team if they can ensure that the routines that helped them succeed at home this week.
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