I was just thinking the other day that Dave Hyde hadn't seemed to have written anything monumentally soppy or boneheaded in a good long while. Was he getting better or did I just not give a damn anymore?
I didn't know until now, the beginning of the football preseason. He's still the same old Hyde.
If y'all missed the Dolphins' first preseason game against the Jaguars Saturday night, it had some good and bad. The bad was the team's first-string offense, with Trent Green failing to electrify (imagine that!) and Ronnie Brown finding little room to run.
Ho hum. Anybody who expected much out of Green doesn't know football. He's an old man and a
stop-gap. He took one of the most vicious hits in NFL history last year, one that knocked him silly and had him sitting for more than a month. All the Fins can hope from Green is that he stewards the offense without a complete meltdown until the future -- aka John Beck -- steps into the pocket. My prediction from before the game was that Green lasts half a season, if he's lucky.
But here comes Hyde whining like a bitch under the telling headline "Same old Dolphins."
Quarterback Trent Green looked old, not experienced.The offensive line acted like enablers, not protectors.
And the last anyone saw of Ronnie Brown, he was buried under an ugly pile of Jaguars.
In other words, for all the talk of the Dolphins' new offense, it would have been nice to see just a glimpse of it before all the second-teamers arrived, wouldn't it?
Sure, Dave, sure. You are undoubtedly right, it would have been nice if Green would have performed better. It would also be nice if you started writing decent football columns instead of crying like a little girl every post-game day.
He reminds me of the oppossing team fans at my son's AYFL football game Saturday. They're screaming at the ref -- who happened to be former NFL star Benny Blades -- about offside calls on the opposing team that were so obvious the yellow flag had to be thrown. I was on the sideline next to Blades during the game marking downs, listening to the garbage with him. He just turns to me and says with a smile that the next whiner is going to cause him to throw a flag for unsportsmanlike on the fans.
Hyde comes off in his column like one of those schmucks in the stands. If he's going to write about the struggling first-team O, find. But give us some insight, something we didn't know, instead of numb-headed grousing. The real story of the game is that Beck led a fourth-quarter drive to win the game in his first appearance as a Dolphin. The other story is that the Fins have two running backs you never heard of -- Jesse Chatman and Patrick Cobbs -- who are both big and run like hell. Chatman got the big play -- a 74-yard TD -- but Cobbs was the man on the winning drive with Beck that ended with his sensational three-yard impromtu dive into the endzone.
You're saying, yeah, but it was against back-ups. Well, the game is the game and that's what happened. And I think all three of those guys have obvious quality. The Fins are just going to have to prove me wrong that they have a stacked stable of strong running backs this season. If Ronnie Brown doesn't come around, there's capability behind him. (Not that it's going to matter if the O line doesn't improve, but oh well). The real question: Should Beck just go ahead and start?
The answer is no. Green is the buffer, let him do the job. If he can hold the fort for a .500 record the first half of the season or more, Beck should be ready to take it over down the stretch.
