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When Life Gives You Lemons…

Cleo came in the Nick of time to save the day…

So the hook was pulled on the Joey Harrington show at half time. I can only imagine what the conversation was like in the locker room. Enter, Cleo Lemon. Tony K on the Monday Night Football crew made the astute observation that if Cleo Lemon is so good why has he not been a starting QB before. Well Tony, because he is not that good! That is the problem here folks. QB. In fact in runs all the way to the front office. We need a GM who is offensive minded. Has any other Dolphin fan seen a “big play” from our offense in years? Nope. The Jets pickup the win last night in a wet Dolphin Stadium. 13-10. Last second field goal by Mike Nugent. Really pathetic. Of course there are some questionable decisions throughout this one like usual. 4th and inches on the goal line. Questionable timeout usage. Questionable challenges. Abandoning the run when a fresh legged Ronnie Brown was gutting the Jets D-Line left and right for gashes of 9-12 yards a carry. In fact there were some series where we didn’t even run once. 3rd and inches and we do not pound the ball with Ronnie and let Joey run around like his ass is on fire? This Alabama job for Nick Saban is sure sounding much better to me this morning. He is starting to look like a stash-less Wannstash.

How can you not feel for this guy? He puts in one of his best seasons of his career, will probably get the Defensive Player of the Year Award, and still does not have more then a handful of playoff wins in his career to his name. The defense is not to be left off the hook in this one either, but is it really our cornerback’s fault they suck? Considering our head coach is such a defensive “guru” you would think our corner positions would be stocked. Yeremiah Bell who is normally reliable had one of his worst games ever. It amazes me that a noodle armed quarterback like Chadwick Pennington can throw jump passes and floaters into his receivers and not be picked off at least 4 times last night. Michael Lehan, don’t get me started.

Let’s take a look at some post game comments…

From the Sun-Sentinel:

“It’s sad, they run a screen play for however many yards as they did,” defensive end Jason Taylor said. “It was obviously a play that was not meant to go that far. We had chances at it.”

Harrington has alot of respect for Saban but it was tough getting yanked in the second half for Cleo:

“It was tough in that first half,” Harrington said. “The score indicated that. It was 0-0 at halftime. But the fact was we weren’t scoring any points. That facilitated the change.”

From the Miami Herald:

When asked who will be under center in the final game of the season:

”We need to sort through this [today] as a staff,” Saban said. “We feel good about both guys. We’ll probably end up playing both guys against Indy.”

”I thought Joey did a decent job,” Saban said. “It was a difficult circumstance. We decided to go with Cleo to see if it gave us a bit of a spark. He could move around a little bit. I thought he did a decent job of moving the team.”

Cleo on his chance to get some playing time in the final few games:

”It just feels good to compete,” Lemon said. “That’s what you want to do. You want to play. We didn’t get it going in the first half but we got some momentum going in the second half. I just want to show what I can do.”

Make sure to check out Dolphin Central from the Miami Herald for post game interviews, audio, video and game photos. Check out the Central here.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday. Hopefully we can end the season on a high note. Ronnie Brown is 110 yards away from a 1,000 yard season. Considering Ron Dayne gashed the Colts for 150+ and my fantasy team in the playoffs, I do not see it being a problem unless Mooolarkey goes away from the run again.

Speaking of fantasy football. Congrats to The Sonic Death Monkeys for taking the crown in the SporTech Matter 06 league. What a weird season with ties all over the board. I will continue the fantasy talk in another post in the upcoming week. Hope everyone enjoys going back to work!!