After a thriller win on Sunday Night Football, can the Buccaneers regroup and dominate the Dolphins as the online oddsmakers suggest?
Sunday, October 10, 2021 – 01:00 PM EDT at Raymond James Stadium
The Buccaneers won a thriller on Sunday Night Football against the Patriots with Tom Brady returning to New England for the first time since leaving to play for Tampa Bay. Before playing the Patriots, Brady had defeated every team in the league except for the Patriots. He accomplished that feat last week and has now beaten every single team in the league.
Beating the Dolphins is nothing new for Brady. Brady and the Patriots would play the Dolphins twice a year in New England. He likely won’t need much offense to beat the Dolphins this time around. Miami is currently without their starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa due to a rib injury. His return will likely be the week after this game. This means that Jacoby Brissett will take on another former team in the Patriots on Sunday.
The Dolphins have scored just 15.5 points per game with 277.8 yards per game on the offensive end. The pass protection has been horrendous and the run block hasn’t been much better. This is one of the reasons for the lack of offense for the Dolphins. Defensively, the Dolphins have played much better but have still allowed 405.3 yards per game along with 27.3 points. The box score doesn’t really prove exactly how the Dolphins have played on the defensive end. They’ve struggled to tackle and missed plenty of those but overall, they’ve put together a solid rush defense, pass rush and have a reliable unit in the secondary.
The Buccaneers, on the other hand, have allowed 26.3 points per game including 389 yards on the defensive end with 341.5 yards coming from the pass game. The Buccaneers are absolutely worse on the defensive end compared to Miami but the reality is that the Buccaneers offense is far and wide better than the Dolphins. Even against Tampa Bay, it’s hard to trust the Dolphins to score points. After all, they’re averaging less than 300 yards on offense and have scored just over two touchdowns per game.
Offensively, Tom Brady and the Buccaneers struggled last week in a chess match between Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Belichick ran so many different packages against Brady that it kept him off-balanced, forcing Brady and the Bucs to run the ball a little more than they would’ve liked. The weather was also a factor as it was pouring rain all throughout the game and on top of that, two main targets for Brady were absent due to injury with Rob Gronkowski and Giovani Bernard out due to injury. Both of these guys were major contributors to the start of the season.
The Dolphins can be sneaky on the defensive end like the Patriots and will probably take some notes from that game. But nobody plays chess better than Bill Belichick. Brady and the Buccaneers’ offense will score on enough drives and limit the Dolphins offense that just can’t get anything going. For your NFL picks, take the Buccaneers -10.
NFL Pick: Buccaneers -10 at (-112) with BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.