First thing’s first. This game ruled. It started with a 100+ yard kickoff return. It ended with 28 fourth quarter points for the Miami Dolphins and what I’m sure was a whole bunch of all-caps tweets from the friendly psychopaths in Tuanon.
At first, the title of this article was going to be: Lamar Jackson might just get that fully guaranteed contract (but he’ll probably still have to work through two years of franchise tag hell). Then it was: the Dolphins invested heavily in Tua Tagovailoa and it’s paying off in a massive way. Then I realized the aerial fireworks and last-second heroics of Sunday afternoon were what we’d all hoped for on Thursday night, only for Los Angeles and Kansas City to reward us with a merely fulfilling prime time game.
Let’s start from the beginning. For three quarters, this was Jackson’s day. He thoroughly diced up a high profile secondary through the air. He gashed a Miami defense that held the Patriots to seven points a week before en route to four touchdowns in the game’s first 45 minutes. He had 91 more rushing yards than all his tailbacks combined.
LAMARVELOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TUNE IN ON CBS! pic.twitter.com/nCyyHMqU0G
— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) September 18, 2022
The Ravens weren’t exactly reinventing the wheel with their offense, either. Jackson had 228 passing yards, three touchdowns and three incompletions after three quarters despite only targeting four players. Baltimore had a plan and ran out to a 35-14 lead beating the Dolphins over the head with it.
That’s when Tagovailoa realized the gifts he’d been given. At Alabama he’d played games against Mercer and The Citadel without throwing for six touchdowns. But with recent additions Jaylen Waddle (2021) and Tyreek Hill (2022) in tow, Tua treated a typically scary Ravens defense like 2019 Ole Miss.
Below are not the numbers of a Madden simulation. These are straight out of someone’s Miami Dolphins fan fiction they’re too scared to read in public:
And yet, against the Ravens’ secondary this was very much real. Tagovailoa threw for 469 yards, 361 of which went to his top two wideouts. Much like the Ravens offense early, Miami found what worked, spammed it into oblivion and dared Baltimore to stop it. They could not, and Waddle’s seven-yard touchdown reception with 14 seconds to play proved fatal.
TUA TO WADDLE. @MIAMIDOLPHINS LEAD.
📺: #MIAvsBAL on CBS
📱: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/LqzAxQaA7Q pic.twitter.com/Em9iy53QIS— NFL (@NFL) September 18, 2022
None of this was remotely possible two years ago. Tagovailoa dropped back to pass 51 times and was sacked once, owing greatly to an offensive line now anchored by Terron Armstead and also featuring recent acquisitions Liam Eichenberg and Connor Williams. When he needed a big run to set up that last-second touchdown, he turned to Chase Edmonds to shake off a pitiful performance to that point and break free for 28 yards to set up what would be, at the very least, a chip-shot game-tying field goal. Edmonds wasn’t a part of the 2019 roster whose leading rusher was 37-year-old quarterback Ryan by-god Fitzpatrick.
Then, most obviously, there’s Waddle and Hill, two players acquired through three first round picks and change, either on draft day or via trade. They were, between them, responsible for 19.2 expected points added (EPA) per the NFL’s Next Gen Stats model. Mac Jones, who led the Patriots to their first win of the season Sunday, has been good for 0.6 EPA in two games combined this fall.
The Dolphins did this right. They gave Tagovailoa the weapons he needed to thrive and hoped he could make a leap like Josh Allen did in Buffalo two years ago. On Sunday he rewarded that faith by leading Miami to victory on a day where Baltimore’s win probability peaked at 98.7 percent heading into the fourth quarter.
But let’s not brush off Lamar Jackson and the Ravens just yet, because that guy was awesome, too.
