Dolphins film study: Another look at the missed opportunities in Miami’s comeback bid

The Dolphins left Frankfurt, Germany, last Sunday with a missed opportunity.

An opportunity to enter the bye week with the best record in the AFC and a head-to-head win against a conference opponent that could be key in deciding home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

Instead, Miami lamented a series of mistakes and miscues in its 21-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, none more significant than the two that occurred on the offense’s final drive.

The Dolphins had the ball at the Kansas City 31 with a little more than a minute remaining after a pair of runs from Raheem Mostert. However, three incompletions in a row from quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and then a botched shotgun exchange with center Connor Williams quickly ended any comeback bid.

The last two plays for Miami’s offense were particularly damning. On third-and-10, Tagovailoa targeted wide receiver Cedrick Wilson Jr, who had 1-on-1 coverage downfield with cornerback Jaylen Watson. Wilson, who caught a 31-yard touchdown pass earlier in the game, had a step on Watson for what appeared to be the tying score. Tagovailoa’s pass though, dropped to the turf at Deutsche Bank Park well behind Wilson — and even Watson.

Both Tagovailoa and Wilson characterized it as a miscommunication and coach Mike McDaniel, while accepting blame for the error for not enough preparation during practice, gave more insight into what went wrong.

“He signaled kind of one route, and that has a conversion,” McDaniel said, “and Cedrick interpreted it as another thing, and that’s just things that when you’re working together as a football team and you have the right effort and mentality from all your players that it’s one hundred percent something that I can control personally.”

It’s possible that Wilson had an option route, which would allow him to choose between running a pair of routes based on the coverage and alignment of the defensive back. Regardless, the route that Wilson ran was not the one that Tagovailoa expected, which resulted in the awkward-looking pass that floated behind its target.

The next and final play was doomed from the start because of Williams’ off-target snap and Tagovailoa’s inability to corral the ball. But had the exchange been cleaner, the Dolphins likely would have had a walk-in touchdown from wide receiver Jaylen Waddle to tie the score.

The Chiefs’ defense was in Cover 0, an all-out blitz concept with man-to-man coverage and no deep safety. As the ball was snapped, Waddle began to run a post route in the middle of the field. Cornerback L’Jarius Sneed was lined up about 10 yards from Waddle and if Tagovailoa was able to hit him in stride, it would have been difficult for Sneed to make up ground before Waddle reached the end zone.

Instead, the ball slipped through his hands and Tagovailoa fell on the ball for a game-ending turnover on downs.

“They played [Cover 0],” Tagovailoa said, “so we had routes for — it was really one-on-ones on everyone. It was really our best match-up. That’s how you look at that.”

If there is any solace for the Dolphins — and specifically, the offense — it’s that the margins have thinned in each defeat. After struggling thoroughly in a 48-20 defeat to the Buffalo Bills in Week 4, Miami was driving for a game-tying touchdown against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 7 when Tagovailoa was intercepted on a target to Mostert early in the fourth quarter. Last Sunday, against the reigning Super Bowl champions, if not for the botched exchange, Miami likely tied the game with about a minute remaining in the game.

But the close margins by which the game was decided — and the self-inflicted mistakes that came with it — are also what made the latest loss to an elite opponent difficult to digest entering the bye week.

“When we lose, we beat ourselves,” McDaniel said. “And it so happens I think in this season, that when we have beaten ourselves, there’s been three teams that have really taken advantage of that and they all have winning records. Correlation, causation? The bottom line is we’re finding different things out that have nothing to do with our opponents, in my opinion, as much as they deserve credit.”