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Dan Carpenter kicks the game-winning field goal against the Raiders
Carpenter and Cobbs: This Week's Heroes
Each week it is someone else stepping up. The Miami Dolphins are undeniably an equal-opportunity football team.
Last Sunday on a sun-splashed afternoon at Dolphin Stadium, it was Dan Carpenter nailing a 38-yard field goal with 38 seconds left and it was Patrick Cobbs scoring a touchdown, and making some huge tackles on special teams. New game, different players, familiar result.
This is how you win four straight games when there are those who wondered if you'd win four all season. This is how you find yourself one game out of first place a week before Thanksgiving with a huge showdown - maybe the biggest home game in five years - against New England looming next Sunday.
Put simply, the Miami Dolphins aren't good enough to rely on one or two stars week after week. They've got to spread it around. They've got to find different players to do different things at different times.
You can surely make the case that the Dolphins should have never been in position to lose a game to the Oakland Raiders. They should have never been down 15-14 in the final minute and should have never given up a 93-yard punt return (yep, the special teams again). They should have put this team away much earlier, like so many other winning teams would.
But nobody ever said the 2008 Dolphins are a polished football team. Nobody ever said things would be easy. But the fact they are winning football games, regardless of whether there are style points involved, tells you how far this franchise has come since last season.
Most impressive to me, though, is how many players are making key contributions. One week it is Chad Pennington. The next Ronnie Brown or Ricky Williams. One week it could be Joey Porter, the next Yeremiah Bell.
This time it was Carpenter and Cobbs, one a rookie kicker, the other a third-team running back who, when training camp started, wasn't even supposed to make the team.
Now, they are making headlines. Last Sunday, they were beating the Raiders.
Carpenter did it with that clutch kick. It was the first time in his short career he had been asked to win a game. And with a rookie kicker, you never really know if he's got what it takes until the heat of that moment. The Dolphins took a gamble of sorts keeping Carpenter in the preseason and releasing veteran Jay Feely. They easily could have been second-guessed big time. Not anymore. Last Sunday's game-winner was clearly a defining moment for Carpenter.
In a one-on-one interview a few weeks ago, General Manager Jeff Ireland indicated that finding Carpenter was the personnel move he might have been most proud of. After all, this is a kid who kicked in college at Montana, not exactly a big-time powerhouse. Now, Ireland is looking awfully smart.
The Dolphins are looking awfully smart for keeping Cobbs as well. The third-year running back out of North Texas not only scored a third-quarter touchdown on a nifty run up the middle and not only converted a couple of big third-down plays in the first half, he also made some huge plays on special teams. And, heavens knows, the not-so-special teams certainly needed it.
Huge, like the tackle on the kickoff following his third-quarter touchdown. Huge, like the tackle on the kickoff following the Carpenter field goal. That last tackle left the Raiders at their own 20-yard line and helped set up the last defensive stand.
With another coaching staff in another season, a player like Cobbs could have gotten lost on the depth chart, if not on the waiver wire. But give Tony Sparano and his staff credit for recognizing his talent, even with two legitimate stars in Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams ahead of him. Without Cobbs, the Dolphins don't win this game.
Now, there were certainly other memorable performances. Vonnie Holliday and Porter each had 1.5 sacks and Pennington did connect on a huge fourth-and-5 completion to Ted Ginn Jr. that set up the winning kick.
But this was a game decided on a few plays, and Cobbs and Carpenter clearly had the most memorable ones.
And now the Dolphins must prepare for New England, knowing that they can't play the way they did the last two weeks against Seattle and Oakland and hope to win. The offense needs to be sharper and the defense needs to force some turnovers. But none of that compares to the legitimate concerns on special teams.
This is an area that could prove fatal to this team's hopes of making the playoffs. There was no way the Raiders were going to drive the length of the field the way the Dolphins defense was playing. But the 93-yard punt return made it easy. If this were an isolated case, it would be one thing. But all season we have seen major breakdowns, missed tackles or penalties from the kick coverage teams.
There don't appear to be any easy answers. The Dolphins waived a player and signed another last week with special teams in mind. It obviously didn't make much of a difference.
The Dolphins have done a remarkable job putting themselves in this position with just six games left. Each game now matters. Each win makes the next week even more important. The Dolphins have a chance to beat the Patriots twice in the same season and in the process put some heat on the first-place New York Jets.
And, like always, the Dolphins will need a lot of players stepping up in a lot of different areas.
This week it was Carpenter and Cobbs.
The beauty of this team: Nobody can really predict who will be next.
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