Here are the top takeaways and highest-graded players from the Dolphins’ 20-19 win over the Eagles.
Miami Dolphins
– It wasn’t the prettiest showing for Ryan Tannehill (+1.0), but he made enough plays to come away with the win. When he wasn’t pressured, Tannehill was superb, completing 12 of 20 passes for 158 yards. Unfortunately, he was pressured on half of his 40 dropbacks Sunday, and under that pressure he went just 9 of 16 for 59 yards and took six sacks. The offensive line unsurprisingly had just one player, Billy Turner (-3.7 overall), grade positively in pass protection.
– The Miami run defense held up far better than I ever would have imagined against the Eagles offensive line. Ndamukong Suh (+4.2) was his usual disruptive self with five stops and Earl Mitchell (-5.7) pulled another disappearing act without a single tackle. But it was the play of defensive end Derrick Shelby (+3.8) that really made a difference against the ground game. Shelby made five stops himself and could have had two more, but failed to secure the tackle. The fourth-year player is quietly grading out among the top 10 4-3 defensive ends in the league at the moment.
– The amount of miscommunications and coverage busts on the Dolphins defense Sunday was alarming. They allowed a ridiculous 148 yards on plays with busted coverage with another huge gain averted by a Sam Bradford overthrow 20 yards downfield (Q1, 2:00). Then, there was the touchdown called back early in 4th quarter where the whole defense was unaware of the play call and Mark Sanchez could have hit two different guys for wide open touchdowns. It was such a stout defensive performance almost ruined by a lack of discipline.
Top performers:
DE Olivier Vernon (+6.9)
DT Ndamukong Suh (+4.2)
DE Derrick Shelby (+4.1)
SS Reshad Jones (+3.1)
CB Jamar Taylor (+2.7)
Philadelphia Eagles
– It didn’t matter which quarterback was out there for the Eagles, there was absolutely no consistency. The entire offense basically stemmed from deep crossing routes against cover 3 when Sam Bradford (-2.6) was in the game. Bradford’s pocket presence was also fairly abysmal as he luckily avoided two huge turnovers with a fumble that he recovered and an interception that was called back. Mark Sanchez (+1.1) at least put together some drives, but he too fell victim to a terrible decision on a crossing route to Miles Austin (-2.4) late in the fourth quarter.
– The Eagles pass blocking was a mess on Sunday. It’s easy to blame the quarterbacks, but really the only plays they had time to survey the field was on play-action rollouts. Lane Johnson (-4.3), Matt Tobin (-6.7) and Dennis Kelly (+0.6) were all dinged for at least four pressures, while Johnson had a handful of bad beats that were saved by the quarterbacks getting rid of the ball quickly.
– Let’s take a second to mention how good Fletcher Cox (+4.9) has been of late. Four of his past five games have been graded at +4.7 or higher and on Sunday he had an eye-popping 12 total pressures to go along with four stops. Only J.J. Watt currently has a higher combined run and pass grade among 3-4 defensive ends.
Top performers:
TE Zach Ertz (+5.0)
DE Fletcher Cox (+4.9)
FS Malcolm Jenkins (+3.7)
DE Cedric Thornton (+2.6)
NT Bennie Logan (+2.6)
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