3 Dolphins most responsible for Week 14 loss to Chargers

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An important playoff seeding game saw the Miami Dolphins travel to California to take on the Los Angeles Chargers, a game that saw Miami struggle heavily on both sides of the ball. A failure to move the ball on offense matched by the defense failing to stop just about anything the Chargers threw their way.

From Justin Herberts 367 passing yards on 51 attempts, to 26 receptions combined between Austin Ekeler, Keenen Allen and Mike Williams, at a 50% third down conversion rate allowed, the Chargers and their offense went through, around and on the Dolphins defense efforts.

A lot of things went wrong for the Dolphins on Sunday, but these three people are the main reasons why.

3. Tua Tagovailoa

It’s not just because of the call of the game, and it’s certainly not just on the shoulders of his pass catchers Tua Tagovailoa finally had one of those plays (again) that put him back in the game. headlines, and not for good reason.

Completing just 10 passes in the entire game, Tagovailoa was extremely inefficient, inconsistent and a hindrance to attacking success. His poor decision-making has kept this team grounded, and a long TD to Tyreek Hill is the only reason he even produced more than 100 passing yards.

The offensive game plan for Miami seems to be built more around what Tagovailoa can’t do and less about what he can do, focusing on how best to hide his weaknesses. But when Tagovailoa’s few positives go south, that offense turns into a puddle of nothing, exactly what we saw in Week 14.

2. Mike McDaniel

While saying that Tagovailo’s fearsome performance mostly rests on his left arm, it also rests on the shoulders of Mike McDaniel. Admittedly, it would have been too difficult to rely on the ground game dropping to 17-7 before halftime, but just running the ball 19 times (16 runs by RB) put too much on Tagovailoas’ shoulders.

Turning away from the run can certainly be attributed to scoring, but a sign of a balanced offensive offense is success back and forth, and McDaniel is certainly very aware of that. With only more runs per game on average than the Buccaneers (22), Miami is used to not running the ball much, but they still fell below their season average on Sunday.

If this team wants to make the playoffs, they need to trust Raheem Mostert and the rest of the backfield, especially since a sustained ground attack opens up more opportunities for Tagovailoa.

1. MIA defensive secondary

In this case, the initials MIA do not refer to Miami, but to their missing pass defense in battle. Herberts 51 attempts showed Brandon Staley was unafraid of the style of offense he wanted to execute, yet the Dolphins couldn’t stop them.

In the PFF game ratings, it’s no surprise that there are no Miamis high schoolers in the top 5, but there are four in the bottom 5 Xavien Howard, Kader Kohou, Jevon Holland and Keion Crossen all ranked with grades below 60 players.

When considering a rating based solely on achievement coverage, Howard, Kohou, Eric Rowe, and Crossen all produced ratings below 60, a direct representation of the difficulty of this unit.

Expecting the Dolphins to produce an off performance when guarding opposing wide receivers is a bit out there, but simply asking for an average performance would have been better than what this secondary provided on Sunday.

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