MIAMI GARDENS — With all the things the Miami Dolphins have had to worry about lately, there is one subject that hasn’t come up. At least not collectively.
Revenge.
“Honestly, we hadn’t even talked about that,” running back Raheem Mostert said.
That doesn’t mean that when the Dolphins line up against the Tennessee Titans on Monday night — with newly signed Tyler “Snoop” Huntley at quarterback — revenge for last year won’t be on their minds. It will be. It’s simply understood.
“Everybody knows,” Mostert said.
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It was on Dec. 11 that the Dolphins were 9-3 and on a three-game winning streak about to turn into four, surely. They had a 27-13 lead over the Titans with 4 1/2 minutes to play. Even after the Titans drove 75 yards in less than two minutes, there was nothing to worry about. Except the Dolphins went three and out, so with 2:15 left, Will Levis and the Titans got the ball again. They needed just four plays and 26 seconds to find the end zone for a 28-27 victory. That alone would rank among the most stupefying collapses in Dolphins' history, but the team sputtered home after that, winning only two of their final five games.
“That could have changed the whole trajectory of our season, you know what I mean?” running back Jeff Wilson said. “… We could have been a No. 1 seed, a division champ, the whole nine yards. We had everything in front of us and they took that from us. It is hard to forget.”
Mike McDaniel tried to create a mystery at quarterback
The schedule won’t let them. Even at this early point in the season, the Dolphins face a crossroads with the same, non-divisional opponent on the same field in the same setting, a Monday night. Revenge is only a subplot among many, not the least of which was a minor mystery coach Mike McDaniel tried to cultivate by not announcing who would start at quarterback even though he had a pretty good idea all along.
The certainty was it wouldn’t be Tua Tagovailoa, who isn’t eligible to return off injured reserve for a concussion until the Oct. 27 game vs. Arizona. That left Skylar Thompson, Tagovailoa’s backup who suffered a rib injury in Seattle and was severely limited all week in practice, or two QBs with virtually no experience under McDaniel: Huntley and Tim Boyle.
All along, signs pointed to Huntley, who can make plays with his legs. Saturday, McDaniel finally fessed up and announced it would be Huntley, who won three of the nine games he started for the Baltimore Ravens from 2020-23. Huntley, who attended Hallandale High, was claimed off the Ravens’ practice squad Sept. 16.
“Snoop has started multiple and many big games,” McDaniel said. “As a quarterback, understanding exactly what is required to win over teammates, to take the place of somebody else and be able to assert their own personality, their own skillset, their own traits within the offense and to lead people, we’ve been very high on Snoop.”
Dolphins' offense at a low point under McDaniel
Huntley will be charged with trying to revive the league’s lowest-scoring offense (33 points). Four teams — including the Carolina Panthers — scored more than that last weekend alone.
The Titans are 0-3, yet oddsmakers think so little of the Dolphins minus Tagovailoa that this has hovered around a pick-‘em game until Miami was installed as just a one-point favorite.
“They can put us under, over, in the middle, in-between,” Wilson said. “It doesn’t matter. We’re going to come out and we’re going to be ready to play Monday night.”
The alternative is almost too brutal to think about. Lose to the Titans again and the Dolphins would be 1-3 despite having played three of four at home, with the toughest part of the schedule still ahead of them.
“It’s not fun being on the short stick of a bad offense, man,” receiver Tyreek Hill said. “But I look at it like this: I’d rather us go through this adversity early, figure it out, and then begin to gain momentum toward the end. Because we usually start off hot. My first two years here with Coach McDaniel and the staff with the Dolphins, we started out hot every year and we slowly began to trend down. … We’ve got a beautiful thing going right here, man. So it’s either we’re going to be a part of the (solution) or we’re going to continue to add on to the problem.”
Huntley, 26, was undrafted out of Utah and has thrown 342 passes in his four-year career, completing 221, with eight touchdowns and seven interceptions. Although his passer rating is 79.0, it is 99.3 in limited duty this season. More intriguing is his quickness, which enabled him to rush for 294 yards and a 6.3 average while spelling Lamar Jackson in 2021.
“What I’m expecting is him to be comfortable making plays in various ways,” McDaniel said.
Hill said he watched tape of Huntley to grow accustomed to his game.
“This dude can make every throw,” Hill said. “This dude is special with his legs. Like he's a special talent.”
Red zone just one worry for Dolphins' attack
The offense can use every bit of caffeine it can get. The three points in Seattle represent Miami’s lowest-scoring total under McDaniel, surpassing seven in the wild-card game in Kansas City last season. Those are the only two games the Dolphins finished in single digits with McDaniel. Miami’s offense ranks in the bottom third in the league in yards per play, rushing yards per game and per attempt, percent of passes intercepted, first downs, fourth-down efficiency and points.
“We’re going to learn a whole lot more throughout the next 15 weeks about the type of guys in the room, the type of character in the room, the type of offense that we want to create,” Pro Bowl fullback Alec Ingold said.
A good start would be the red zone. The Dolphins are tied with the Steelers for last in the league in red-zone efficiency, scoring touchdowns on only two of eight trips.
“Everything changes, right?” Ingold said of inside the 20. “The horizontal length of the field is all of a sudden a lot wider than the vertical length of the field. So the dynamics, the play calls, all change. And when you have that change, when you have that uncertainty, when you have a new opportunity in that red zone, it’s about really getting that play call and being able to execute.”
While McDaniel knows it’s human nature to take what happened last year into account, he doesn’t want players dwelling on it Monday.
“The teams are the same, the stadium is the same and the night’s the same,” McDaniel said. “And I’m sure it crossed the minds of everyone — myself included — when the schedule came out. But one important lesson we’ve learned this season that I hold very true and dear — because I know it to be true — is that while about 40 percent lived and had that scar from 2023, it doesn’t do justice to the 2024 team to do anything but worry about how they play together. … That focus to me prioritizes any score that needs to be settled from last year’s team, however visceral that scar is.”
Monday's gameTitans at Dolphins7:30 p.m., ESPN
Dolphins reporter Hal Habib can be reached at hhabib@pbpost.com . Follow him on social media @gunnerhal. Click here to subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Miami Dolphins vs. Tennessee Titans, MNF: Revenge, Tyler Huntley take center stage
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