August 28, 2022
MIAMI GARDENS, FL. — It was an interesting week in South Florida, one where the Eagles arrived thinking there would be two joint practices with the Miami Dolphins.
A stomach virus that was getting a little too troublesome in the Dolphins locker room had Miami calling out sick on Thursday, however, and giving the keys to the Baptist Health Training Center to the Eagles, who tried to make the most of a bad situation with a high-intensity, intra-squad practice in the heat and 103 percent humidity of Miami Gardens, a number which is somehow both accurate and against the laws of data science.
As far as Nick Sirianni was concerned, the practices were serving as the real work for his key players and Saturday night’s game was for everyone else.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel may have even had a similar plan until Thursday was scrapped for his team, but it certainly seemed the rookie mentor was always thinking about cameos for his core players.
“I think it felt good for them,” the rookie coach said at halftime of the preseason game. “They’ve put in a lot of work, but it doesn’t matter until you do it in a stadium in front of fans.”
The divergent philosophies were almost a call back to a different era when exhibition games were somewhat more valued. To me, the competing theories were defined by Dennis Green and Marv Levy with the former believing winning was a habit (and by extension, so was losing), and the latter used the preseason to find the final five or so on his talented Buffalo rosters.
The result on Saturday night in Florida was utterly predictable, but a little too ugly, a 48-10 drubbing by Miami in which the tone was set on the first offensive play. That's when Tua Tagovailoa immediately went deep to Tyreek Hill, the most dangerous player in football, who was being checked by Mac McCain and K’Von Wallace.
There hasn’t been a bigger squash match than that since Frankie Williams ran into Roddy Piper on WWF TV.
Tagovailoa didn’t even deliver a good pass, but Hill was so wide open it didn’t matter. A potential touchdown was replaced by a 51-yard gain and it only took the Dolphins three more plays to get into the end zone.
"We had to decide with plays what openers we wanted to go with. So knowing that Tyreek was playing, he wanted a go-ball," Tagovailoa explained. "We gave him a shot. The throw wasn’t to my liking. That whole spiel. If it was a better ball, if it was probably more in front of Tyreek, you know, we could have scored on the first play probably."
By the time Tua left the game, the Dolphins had scored on all three of their possessions and led 17-0.
The rest was just bookkeeping.
Sirianni wasn’t happy with what went on but was not taken by surprise.
“Mike and I talked a bunch this week and I knew they were playing them [the starters],” Sirianni admitted.
The specter of what McDaniel planned never changed what Sirianni wanted or expected, though.
“I felt like our guys got two good days of work in while we were here,” Sirianni said. “I thought they were ready for that week and I didn't want to over-push them coming into this game after the amount of work that we did in those two days, so I was comfortable with the starters.”
The comfort level dropped after you got past the 33 players who didn’t suit up whether by deference or injury.
“Obviously when you play like that — but it's not acceptable no matter who is against who, but they did a nice job moving the ball and stopping us, but obviously that's not up to our standard,” the Eagles coach said.
As a competitive person, you could sense Sirianni’s frustration at times on the sideline, particularly when he lashed out at special teams coordinator Michael Clay after the Eagles were one player short on the field.
Logically, the loss was meaningless. Of the 22 expected starters in Detroit on September 11, perhaps one played in rookie first-round pick Jordan Davis and that lasted for all of seven defensive snaps.
Viscerally, the setback was everything, a performance that had the blood boiling for some fans who believe the only thing that separates anyone who wears their favorite color from the Pro Bowl is playing time.
“You lose something like that bad, that's tough to stomach,” Sirianni admitted. “You never want to come out there and lay an egg like we did.”
And Sirianni took a little bit more than the 10-minute cooling-off period to talk with his players, some of which won’t be a part of things moving forward.
“My message was we got to look at it and we got to all look at ourselves in the mirror and get better from it,” said Sirianni.
The message should have been to flush it, ignore emotion and embrace common sense by quickly refocusing on what really matters. And that’s never preseason football.
John McMullen is a contributor to PhillyVoice.com and covers the Eagles and the NFL for Sports Illustrated and JAKIB Sports. He’s also the co-host of “Birds 365,” a daily streaming show covering the Eagles and the NFL, and the host of “Extending the Play” on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com.
