Sunday, October 27, 2013

Philbin won't call Dolphins' collapse an avalanche

BY NICK ST. DENIS

The Miami Dolphins were good in the first half against the New England Patriots. In the second half, they really stunk.

Miami headed to the locker room at the mid-game break with a 17-3 lead, and less than two hours later, it left the field for good with a 27-17 loss -- its fourth straight after a 3-0 start.

"I wouldn't call it an avalanche; we didn't play very well in the second half," Dolphins coach Joe Philbin said after the game when asked if the second half felt like -- you guessed it -- an avalanche. "We didn't play well."

They didn't.

After a decent first half, the Dolphins' offensive line went back to suffering from sieve-like symptoms, giving up a whopping six sacks. Kicker Caleb Sturgis missed a field goal and had another one blocked, quarterback Ryan Tannehill threw two picks and lost a fumble, and the Patriots scored 24 unanswered points to run away with it.

"Hey, we didn't make stops, we gave the ball away, we didn't protect our quarterback, and we got a field goal blocked…we didn't play well," Philbin said. "I wouldn't call it an avalanche, but we didn't play good football. Not good enough to win."

Tannehill threw a pair of early touchdown passes to give Miami a quick 14-0 lead, and Sturgis made his lone field goal 30 seconds before halftime to negate Stephen Gostkowski's deficit-cutting kick.

Dolphins cornerback Dimitri Patterson picked off Patriots quarterback Tom Brady's very first pass attempt, which set up the Dolphins' go-ahead scoring drive.

New England's comeback from a 14-point halftime deficit was the team's biggest of that kind since the Patriots erased a 17-point halftime deficit against the Dolphins in December of 2011.

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