Dolphins Fall to No. 31 in the Week 9 Power Rankings, and the Detroit Lions Are What's Next
A 13-3 halftime lead bought Miami a 'moral victory' line and the league's second-worst ranking. At 1-6, with Ollie Gordon's temper now a scouting report, the season's hardest question is what the last nine games are for.
The Monday verdict on the Miami Dolphins is one line long. In AZ Central's Week 9 NFL power rankings, published Monday after Sunday's results, Miami falls to No. 31 of 32 — second from the bottom of the league — with the coldest compliment in sports attached: the Dolphins actually had a 13-3 lead on New England at the half, the ranking notes, and at 1-6 are not going to get many more actual wins this season. Buffalo takes the top spot at 6-1; the Patriots who rallied past Miami rise to No. 14 at 5-3. The ranking is an opinion, but it is the opinion the numbers keep writing: Miami led by ten at home, was outscored 21-0 into the fourth quarter, and lost 24-19.
The game's hinge is becoming a reputation. Running back Ollie Gordon II — Miami's best offensive weapon since taking over the backfield — stalled a second-half drive with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after saying something to a defender following a 5-yard carry, and the postgame coverage read this run was blunt about the consequence: opponents now know he can be rattled, and will test him for it. Gordon, to his credit, said it himself afterward, in words reported by Phin Phanatic: it is one of those things where he has to keep his mouth shut and walk back to the huddle, and controlling it is something he has to work on. Malik Willis's line — 21 of 32 for 211 yards and a late 35-yard touchdown to rookie Kevin Coleman Jr. — says the quarterback play is not the crisis. The discipline and the second halves are.
What is left of the season starts Sunday, when Detroit visits Hard Rock Stadium, and continues as a nine-game argument about what this roster is. Drake Maye's performance Sunday — 16 of 20, two touchdown passes and a rushing score, his fifth straight game with at least three total touchdowns — is the standard Miami's own young core will be measured against the rest of the way. A No. 31 ranking in November is not a sentence; it is a starting point with nowhere to fall. The Dolphins' remaining job is to make somebody else hold it.
