Patriots tame Wildcat, Dolphins
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Right now, the New England Patriots are making a strong claim as the beasts of the AFC East.
They’re 6-2 at the season’s halfway point, and the way they’ve played lately, no one appears to be able to match their consistency. Certainly not the Miami Dolphins, who gave it a good go but had no answers for, in particular, New England wide receiver Randy Moss in a 27-17 Patriots win at sun-splashed Gillette Stadium on Sunday.
“What do we have, a two-game lead, something like that?” Patriots offensive lineman Logan Mankins said. “It’s ours until we screw it up, I guess. If we keep winning, we control our own fate. If we start losing, then we’re going to get into some trouble.”
Not if they keep making plays to Moss. With the Dolphins (3-5) leading 17-16, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady hit his favorite target over the short middle and Moss was off to the races, sprinting downfield for about 60 yards of a 71-yard score that helped give New England the lead for good, 24-17 with 3:15 left in the third quarter. He also hauled in a subsequent two-point conversion pass.
Moss finished the game with six catches for 147 yards while former Dolphin Wes Welker had nine for 84. Brady, meanwhile, had his third straight 300-yard game, the 27th of his career, a franchise mark. He finished going 25-of-37 for 332 yards, one touchdown and one interception.
“Those guys made plays and we didn’t,” Dolphins safety Yeremiah Bell said. “We know those guys are getting the ball and it is up to us to stop them.”
And the Dolphins didn’t. Oh, they did a good job of hanging in with New England for awhile, using the Wildcat formation that they unveiled here more than a year ago for about 20 plays, including an option attack as a new wrinkle. They rushed for 133 yards and the formation helped them take the lead, with Ronnie Brown hitting the immortal Joey Haynos for a 1-yard touchdown with 4:51 left in the third quarter. It capped off a maddening 16-play, 66-yard drive after the second half kickoff that chewed up 10:09 on the clock.
“They had a long drive,” Pats cornerback Leigh Bodden said. “Guys were maybe a little winded, but not too much. Sudden changes and things happen in the NFL and we have to go out and do our job and stop them and that’s what we did.”
New England had grabbed a 16-10 halftime lead, getting a Laurence Maroney 1-yard scoring run (set up by a 36-yard pass to Moss in the first quarter) along with two Stephen Gostkowski field goals in the second (2:45 and with no time on the clock).
Miami’s points came courtesy of an early Dan Carpenter 52-yard field goal and Ricky Williams’ game-tying 15-yard run with 6:11 left in the half.
If the game didn’t turn on Moss’ great catch-and-run, it did when the once-inactive Adalius Thomas nailed Dolphin quarterback Chad Henne for an 11-yard loss on the final play of the third quarter. The Dolphins were trying a double reverse, and Thomas stayed home, not buying that running back Williams was committed to carrying the ball upfield. Had he not read the play, Henne had Brown wide open downfield for an almost certain score.
“It was just instinctive,” said Thomas, who had an apparent touchdown off a strip of Henne earlier reversed by instant replay. “I didn’t even see the quarterback coming back. I think Ricky was holding the ball different. It wasn’t like he was trying to run. When he gets the ball, he’s usually full speed.”
Gostkowski booted his third field goal of the day, a 40-yard field goal with 1:09 left that sealed the deal. A much different result from what the Patriots saw here a year ago, when Miami stunned them in a rout.
“Last year, we panicked, we didn’t stay focused,” Merriweather said. “We were all over the place. This year, we were more like a veteran team. It was a huge game for both teams.”
Perhaps an AFC East winning game.
