NFL Week 5 Byes: Looking back, looking forward

We’re through the first week of byes in the 2014 NFL season, after a week where many of the top teams got a breather. The NFL loves to get a whole bunch of teams taken care of in the first week of byes and as a result, the next few weeks only give us a handful of teams getting time off.

That’s good for football fans and fantasy football owners alike, as having more teams on the field produces more exciting football.

This week we get just two teams—the Oakland Raiders and Miami Dolphins—who also just happen to be the two teams returning from the first of three London based football game of the season.

They also happen to be two teams in need of some retooling—especially the Raiders.

How did the start of their seasons go? What can they do to improve on their performance?

Let’s take a look at both teams as they sleep off some serious jet lag.

Miami Dolphins (2-2)

After four games, the Miami Dolphins haven’t really answered a ton of questions.

The defense is solid, ranked No.7 in the league overall, No. 6 against the pass and No. 13 versus the run, where they allow just a 3.8 per carry average, though they have allowed three touchdowns. And while the No. 6 pass defense ranking is good, allowing seven passing touchdowns is not.

In fact, they are playing the reverse of last season where you could move the ball on them but not score. Now you can score almost more easily than you can just move the chains.

That’s what led them to get trounced by both Buffalo and Kansas City.

Still the defense has played well on the3 whole and just needs to tighten up the red zone play. If they can get back to the “bend but don’t break” style of defense from 2013, they should be fine or at least keep the team in close games.

The real issue is the offense and I’m not even talking about the apparent Ryan Tannehill/Joe Philbin feud The Miami Herald’s Armando Salguero wrote about recently.

Sure Tannehill hasn’t been great, although he looked really good against the Oakland Raiders—which most people do right now.

But the run game has been abysmal since Knowshon Moreno got hurt and parts of the offensive line have struggled. Meanwhile, aside from Mike Wallace, the receivers aren’t playing well either.

Maybe that can all be blamed on Tannehill as he gets a bit wild with his throws at times, but the offense in general looks shaky.

The Dolphins have a chance to take the AFC East As nobody looks good and for once, that includes Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. But they have to pull it together, and do it soon.

After the break they see the Green Bay Packers, head to Chicago to face the Bears, then Jacksonville to take on the Jaguars before welcoming the San Diego Chargers and then heading to Detroit to play the Lions.

That’s a really tough slate of games and one which features offenses that can run away and hide if the Dolphins can’t stop the bleeding on scores.

To do this,  Philbin needs to find a way to make nice with Tannehill. Nobody seriously believes Matt Moore will be a huge upgrade over Tannehill do they? And as we just talked about, it’s not all on the quarterback.

It could be that, come the end of this season neither gentleman is still in Miami. For now though, they’re stuck with each other. The Dolphins will struggle if the head coach and quarterback are at war with each other.

As the head coach, it is up to Philbin to make this right. It isn’t overstating it to say the season could hinge on it.

Oakland Raiders (0-4)

The bye week kicked off in fine form by Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer reporting that the Raiders had fired head coach Dennis Allen, the sixth time they have fired a head coach in the last decade and their tenth coach since returning to Oakland for the 1995 season.

I was hearing rumors as far back as the middle of the 2013 NFL season that Allen could be let go, so this didn’t come as a shock. Nor do the struggles the Raiders have had this year as they loaded up with an odd combination of old and inexperienced players.

Allen never got the most out of his players, and you could make an argument that GM Reggie McKenzie did a lousy job putting him in position to succeed and perhaps at the end of the season, he will follow Allen out of the door.

ESPN’s Jim Trotter reported Tuesday afternoon that the team promoted Tony Sparano to interim head coach and one could imagine that the team will take the bye week to try and get everyone to adjust to the new, temporary, regime.

Well, it’s hard to feel all that hopeful about that.

Sorry, I’m a huge nerd.

Consider that we haven’t even touched on the 0-4 start, an injured rookie quarterback, a ridiculously overpaid Matt Schaub or a schedule which has games against the San Diego Chargers, Arizona Cardinals, Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos over the course of the first five games after the bye.

It really doesn’t seem to be a very hopeful time to be a member of Raider Nation.

But here are a few things which should give Raiders fans hope.

Derek Carr has proven to be a solid prospect. He’s not Peyton Manning and probably never will be, but for a raw rookie quarterback who would have been better served sitting a year, he’s held his own. Especially given that the offensive line has been a mess most of the first four games and his receivers have largely been either hurt (Rod Streater) or underwhelming (Denarius Moore), as is also the case in the backfield.

That’s something to build on, as is the success of James Jones and the play of Rod Streater prior to injury.

Defensively, Justin Tuck has shown he still has gas left in the tank and rookie Khalil Mack has been phenomenal. There are problems of course—as good as Tuck has usually looked, Lamarr Woodley has looked bad and while Mack has been a great pick so far, 2013 1^st round pick D.J. Hayden continues to be injured way too often.

The truth is that the Raiders were going to be a long-term, deep rebuild and weren’t likely to turn things around fast. But they have some pieces and if they can get the team healthy, they could be a pain in the rear end for a lot of AFC teams.

Hopefully they finally find the right guy to lead them next year and find some more help in free agency and, more importantly, the 2015 NFL draft.

With what they have and some careful off season work, they could have a lot to work with.

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