The Dolphins Blew A Chance To Stun The Bills On A Delay Of Game On 4th And 1

The Miami Dolphins nearly pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NFL Playoff history on Sunday afternoon in Buffalo, as the Skylar Thompson-led ‘Fins somehow erased a 17-0 first half deficit to tie the game late in the second quarter and keep it within a possession all the way to the end.

With under five minutes to go, the Dolphins got the ball trailing 34-31 and had a chance to go for a game-winning, or at least tying, drive. Thompson hadn’t been dynamic, but he did enough to take advantage of short fields to keep Miami in the game and came up with a big throw to Jaylen Waddle on 3rd and 10 to get the drive going.

Miami would then move out near midfield and find themselves with a 4th-and-1, with the game on the line, as they’d burned all three timeouts already to prevent delay of game penalties, as they struggled with the play clock all afternoon. However, Bills defensive lineman Ed Oliver went down with an injury, meaning the Dolphins got a play clock reset and had an extra 10-plus seconds to get a playcall in, but somehow were only breaking the huddle after the reset with four seconds on the play clock. The result was an all-time awful delay of game call.

To be clear, the play they had called was awful and got blown up — why that was anything other than QB sneak is mind-blowing — so it gave them second life, but Thompson couldn’t complete a desperation pass to Mike Gesicki, allowing the Bills to run out the clock.

Buffalo would pick up a first down on a third down run to guarantee the win, but it was much more difficult than it probably should’ve been. For the Dolphins, they played a fairly incredible game but the inability to get plays off on time was an issue all game and something Thompson and Mike McDaniel never made the proper adjustment to and it ultimately cost them in the most pivotal moment of the game.

To make matters worse, McDaniel said after the game the issue was that they thought they had a first down (when no one else anywhere was confused by that) and didn’t have a fourth down play call ready.

That’s fairly inexcusable in that spot for the Dolphins staff, particularly McDaniel.

Source: https://uproxx.com/sports/dolphins-delay-of-game-fourth-down-bills-video/