The question that everyone will be asking after the Dolphins’ 27-14 loss to the Jets on Sunday will be whether Joe Philbin will be the team’s coach when they return from their Week Five bye and it’s a pretty fair question given the way his team played in London.
For most of the game, there was a good battle going on between the Dolphins offense and defense to see which unit was having the worst day. The team’s only points of the first three quarters came after two pass interference penalties set the Dolphins up close to the end zone and the Jets were piling up more than 400 yards of offense a week after getting shut down by the Eagles.
Miami got another score in the fourth quarter after a good Jarvis Landry punt return put them in business, but the day was still marked by an offensive line that couldn’t protect Ryan Tannehill, a run game that only theoretically existed and an unflagging commitment to checking the ball down even when facing third and long. The defense, meanwhile, couldn’t tackle Chris Ivory (who ran for a career-high 166 yards and a touchdown) and couldn’t take advantage of long bouts of inaccuracy from Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick ended the day 16-of-29 for 218 yards, one touchdown and one interception on a poorly thrown deep ball to Devin Smith. He added 40 yards on the ground to those numbers and wasn’t sacked as the Dolphins’ pass rush remained as toothless as it was in the first three weeks.
The win moves the Jets to 3-1, but they’ll have some work to do over their bye week. They committed 14 penalties, many of which helped keep this game from being the rout it looked like on the field and gave the Dolphins life well into the fourth quarter. Their last real gasp came when Darrelle Revis intercepted Tannehill in the end zone with five minutes to play and the nail was placed in the coffin when Marcus Williams did the same a few minutes later.
Now it just remains to be seen if that was Philbin’s last gasp with the Dolphins as well.