Beyond being one of the Miami Dolphins’ five best players this year, Calais Campbell can also give a mean press conference.
So it was completely in character for him to provide the most poignant take on the Dolphins’ slump-busting 23-15 win over the Los Angeles Rams on Monday night.
“To create a wildfire, it only takes one spark,” Campbell quipped after giving the Dolphins’ defense a sack, a tackle for a loss, and two batted passes (including one that resulted in an Anthony Walker Jr. touchdown) on Monday.
Campbell is right. If the Dolphins are able to salvage their season after a 2-6 start, we’ll look back at Monday’s gut-check win as the first step out of the abyss.
And while the defense deserves all the flowers — they held a Matthew Stafford-led Rams team out of the end zone for 60 minutes — things could have been completely different had Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel not shown the courage and confidence he lacked in a similar situation two weeks before.
Mike McDaniel Trusts Miami Dolphins Offense Late
In Tua Tagovailoa’s first game back from IR, the Dolphins had a 1st-and-10 near midfield, up two points on the Arizona Cardinals with six and a half minutes left in regulation.
The Dolphins’ offense had roasted the Cardinals for most of the game and were at most two first downs away from a field goal that would have made things really tough on Arizona.
But instead of stepping on the Cardinals’ throat, McDaniel trod lightly, dialing up a standard run play (which gained no yards) and two short passes (that gained one yard total).
After punting to Kyler Murray and the Cardinals’ offense, the Dolphins didn’t see the ball again. Murray orchestrated a perfect drive that ended with a game-winning field goal on the last play of the game.
Fast-forward two weeks, and McDaniel faced a similar situation. And this time, he didn’t play it safe.
With the Dolphins up eight in the final half of the fourth quarter on Monday, Tagovailoa basically won the game with clutch intermediate throws on consecutive plays — the first for 11 yards to Odell Beckham Jr. on 3rd-and-6 from the Dolphins’ 34 and then for 17 to Malik Washington on first down when everyone in the stadium expected a run.
That helped set up a clutch 50-yard field goal from Jason Sanders, which not only sealed the Dolphins’ first win since Oct. 6 but also bolstered their meager playoff hopes.
The Dolphins are now up to 21.6% to reach the postseason, according to PFN’s Playoff Predictor — an increase of more than 12 percentage points over where they were this time last week.
If they’re going to make the run that they and their fans hope they can, the Dolphins must be bold over the season’s final eight weeks — and McDaniel must show the killer instinct that seems to have waned after his first two moxie-filled years in Miami.
“You have firm belief and that you don’t just create [it] out of thin air,” McDaniel said. “You base it upon the teammates that you have and the type of football you think you’re capable of playing. If you don’t have the results that you’re kind of striving for, I think you maintain your confidence by taking hard looks at everything you’re doing and critically assessing everything you do.
“It ends up giving you more conviction in everything you’re doing because you’ve combed it more,” he continued. “I think that’s something that, across the board, has been very prevalent with this team, all season.
“It’s nice that the team has shown it as opposed to just talked about it. I think everyone’s very confident because they’ve been working hard at getting it right. So you feel that much more convicted and invested in all of it.”
READ MORE: Dolphins Playoff Scenarios and Chances: Can Tagovailoa, McDaniel Make a Run?
The Dolphins certainly have to like their chances, particularly with a soft part of their schedule upcoming. After four straight games against playoff contenders, three of their next four are against teams with seven losses after 10 weeks.
However, they won’t get into the playoffs by beating the dregs alone. They’ll probably need to beat two of the Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, and San Francisco 49ers to get in. And to do that, they can’t play scared.