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In Overtime, Redskins Make the Dolphins Pay
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"Sudden change," Williams called it. And the best defenses he ever coached not only could handle it but thrived at doing so, he said.
In the end, the Redskins held the Dolphins to 66 yards rushing and running backs Portis (playing his first game since late last season) and Ladell Betts combined for 157 yards rushing. But the most important fact was how the Miami defensive players felt at the end of the game. Despite training in sweltering conditions in South Florida, the Dolphins struck the Redskins as tired. A point of emphasis for this Washington team in the offseason had been trying to wear opponents down at the end of games. Yesterday it worked.
It only took nine plays to get in position for the game-winning field goal, including a savvy 10-yard pass from Campbell to tight end Chris Cooley on a third-and-seven play. Among the Redskins players there was a belief they could have kept pounding the ball all the way to the end zone if Gibbs had so chosen.
Later, as he stood in the Miami locker room, Taylor scowled as someone asked if maybe he and his teammates were too tired.
"If they would turn the scoreboard back on, we'd go back out there and play," he said.
Former Redskins assistant coach Cam Cameron, in his first game as Dolphins head coach, talked around the same question, saying vaguely that he would try to figure out what had happened in overtime, address the problem and forget the game this afternoon.
But the Redskins were certain they knew what had happened. They want to pound the ball this year -- a less wide-open offense -- and in the first game, in the late-day sun, they pounded the Dolphins until they broke.
Linebacker London Fletcher ran along the sidelines in overtime, laughing at his fellow defensive players who were preparing to go back into the game. "We're not going back out!" he shouted. "It's over here."
And, sure enough, it was.
"That was a textbook example of how you run your offense in overtime," he said.
Just a game, but a good sign nonetheless.
