From the Depths of 0-3, the Dolphins have climbed back to .500 with, appropriately enough, a 5-5 record.   After a tough battle against the Panthers, we now have to travel up to Buffalo to take on a struggling Bills team, who at 3-7, have nothing to gain but ruining our season.

As you may remember, the Dolphins domination of the Bills at home was their first win of the season, and the first start of Henne’s career.  You would think after the way we handled them that it should be a breeze of a game, but much has changed since then.  For the Dolphins, they will be without defensive anchor Jason Ferguson (lost for the season with a quad injury), and maybe more importantly, Ronnie Brown.

In the first match up, Ronnie Brown toted the rock 20 times for 115 yards and 2 touchdowns.  Those yards aren’t going make themselves up out of thin air if we hope to win at their house.  Lex Hilliard will have to pick up some of the slack, but it isn’t fair to put it all on him.  No- if we hope to have success again I believe that Henne and the receiving corps will have to make up a huge chunk of that production, because Ricky and a few rookies will not be able to shoulder the rushing load of a back as talented as Brown.  In the first match-up, Henne only threw the ball 22 times (completing 14) for only 115 yards, and 1 TD.  He also absorbed 6 sacks.  The production from Henne will absolutely have to go up, and the sacks are going to have to come down.  He has progressed nicely in his decision making recently, and has been taking dump offs and throwing the ball away when necessary.  Hopefully it carries over into this game, and he can make a few smart plays.

On defense, we are going to have to focus on stopping the run without starting nose tackle Jason Ferguson.  Paul Soliai will have to step up, but he is unlikely to match the ability of Ferg.   It is especially tough since Buffalo will probably have to run the ball a LOT.  After firing head coach Dick Jauron, and promoting their D Coordinator Perry Fewell, they benched Trent Edwards for Ryan Fitzpatrick- who is pretty terrible.  They will try to jam the ball right at the spot where Ferguson used to reside, and we will have to shut them down.  If we can do that, then we shouldn’t have much trouble with this game.

It projects to be about 45 degrees with a chance of rain for tomorrow, so no snow.  I really don’t feel like any kind of cold weather or snow will be an issue anyways, as this Dolphins group is a big, smash mouthed football team and not really dependent on flinging the ball around, and starting QB Chad Henne has a ton of bad weather experience from his time at Michigan anyways.  If the Dolphins can just execute like they are supposed to, they will take this game.