Ask the Phinsider.

A few people are acting like the Apocolypse has come because he dropped a few passes so far, but it was also raining for both preseason games so far and the ball was slippery. But overall he has been doing pretty well. He has helped out beyond just catching passes. Against the Jags, he had a huge block that took out 2 defenders and allowed our TE Fasano to scamper in for a long TD.

1) Yeah, Henne looks to be our QB for the future. He still has a few things in his game that he needs to work on, like his touch passes, but a lot of that will come as he gets more experience. He still has less than a year of starting experience at the NFL level as he didn’t start for us until Pennington went down last year. But from what we are hearing from practices and training camp, he has made some good improvements to his game from last year.

2) So far Ronnie has looked to be doing ok. They haven’t used him as much as they would normally so far, but that is to be expected with the injury that he had last year as they don’t want to risk re-injuring him before the season starts. But even already, he looks like he could be back to his normal self. He will probably see more playing time against you guys this week.

3) Yeah, Ricky is still with us. His contract expires at the end of this year, and there was talk about him retiring, but from what we are hearing he may be changing his mind and wanting to play for another year or two. He even fired his old agent and signed up with Rosenhaus, so I would say that it looks pretty good that he will be playing for at least 1 more year after this.

He’s already got the #2 WR position pretty much locked up for us this year, although like in Marshall’s case, some people are starting to freak out because he dropped a few passes. I however, am not worried about him because he showed us last year that he can make some outstanding catches and big plays. And that was when he was across from Ted Ginn Jr., whose idea of a big play was to go into the fetal position when the defender was still 30 feet away.

Last year, Hartline drew more coverage since teams knew that Ginn would only catch 1 out of every 10 passes his way. This year with a legitimate receiving threat in Brandon Marshall who will be drawing a lot of the extra coverage, Hartline should be able to work more in one on one matchups, and I think that the skills he showed last year are going to help him put up some pretty good numbers this season.

1) Odrick seems to be getting better rather quickly. He was making lots of plays in the Bucs game, including a fumble recovery, and in the Jags game he was getting double teamed quite often. He has shown enough push and has been getting enough penetration that teams are focusing on him more and giving his guy some extra help. Which is a good thing because if he is drawing more blockers, that is helping to free up other guys.

2) As of right now, the starting NT is going to be Randy Starks who moved to the position from DE. He seems to be handling the position fairly well, although he has not been as dominant at the position like Ferguson was or the other NTs in our division (Jenkins, Wilfork). However he seems to be picking it up pretty good and looks like he will work. Our backup for Starks is Paul Soliai. He’s been with us for a few years but has never been consistent enough to make a shot for the starting position. He’s shown some flashes off and on, but that leads back to his inconsistency.

3) As you listed, Wake and Misi have so far been handling the pass rush from the DE postion. Wake is an absolute beast on the pass rush. Last year he had almost the same amount of production as either Joey Porter or Jason Taylor, in terms of sacks, QB hits, and QB hurries, but only had around 1/3 of the snaps as either of them. Misi has been doing ok, but not great so far. But at the same time, Mike Nolan has not been calling hardly anything other than vanilla plays this preseason, so we haven’t been rushing more than 4 guys. I expect once Nolan starts pulling out some of his more exotic blitzes, we’ll see the production on these guys go up.

4) I am very excited about having Dansby. One of our big weaknesses at the ILB position was the fact that none of our guys were very good at dropping back into coverage. Dansby has shown to be pretty good in that department, which means we can have guys like Channing Crowder focusing more at run stopping, which is where he is much better. I think that having Dansby in there will make the whole LB corp more fluid and able to play more to their strengths, and thus maximize their effectiveness.

5) Hard to say so far. They were getting good reviews from training camp, that they were shutting guys down, including Marshall a few times. But in the first 2 games, they have been off and on. At times they were looking good and keeping their guys tightly covered, but then other times they were blowing their coverage, making mistakes, and giving up big plays. WE’re all hoping that they calm themselves down and get consistent enough to be able to play man to man so we can utilize more of Nolans blitz packages. A good number of his plays have a safety blitzing and we can’t run those if we have to keep giving the CBs safety help over the top.

Aaahhhh, the Pat White experiment. In my opinion, it is a failed experiment. He hasn’t shown anything so far and hasn’t even really shown much improvement from last year. In fact, he hasn’t been in any games except for 3 snaps, 1 run play and 2 kneel downs. Sparano even said that he wouldn’t bet on seeing White get any action in this weeks game in an interview, so what that says to me is that White’s time in Miami is coming to an end real soon.

The two of them have a lot of potential and have shown flashes of great cover skills, but this is still only their 2nd year and they are still making some mistakes. Obviously we want them to become a dominant cornerback duo that we haven’t had since Madison and Surtain, but they still have some stuff to learn. For one, they haven’t had a lot of experience at man to man coverage at this level. Most of last season they were playing zone, with each guy taking one side of the field. It almost seems to me that they are just going through the normal learning process of playing man coverage regularly

However, there is a bit of impatience with them as we want to see just how effective Mike Nolan’s defensive scheme is going to be, and a big part of that scheme is having the corners in man coverage to free up the safety. I think that once they get a little more used to the nuances of playing man coverage, they will settle down and start to play better and more consistently. I just hope that happens sooner rather than later.

On one hand, Cam has always been a great, reliable receiver for us who caught damn near everything thrown in his vicinity (he can even make a catch using only his leg and butt). Those sure hands helped get us through the Dark Ages, otherwise known as the Ted Ginn era.

On the other hand, Brian Hartline is a receiver in the same mold as Cam. Both guys have the same type of receiving play and skill set. The difference between them is that Cam has better hands and doesn’t drop passes as much as Hartline, but Hartline is much younger and actually has a little bit better speed and has more upside.

And at the same time, we had some concerns about our secondary with Vontae and Smith having been inconsistent and Will Allen not sure if he’ll be ready to go by week one. So this move makes sense as we get some more depth at the CB position.

In the home opener against the Jets.

the wonderful orange jerseys will be making their appearance on our home opener against the Jets. And especially since it’s the Jets, we’re hoping that their undefeated streak continues.