Is Fitz Ready for Another Strong Rebound Game?

Miami Dolphins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick played much better than his stats would seem to suggest in Week 1, but he's still looking for redemption

Ryan Fitzpatrick has been around a long time and he's developed a reputation for being a very hot-and-cold quarterback who can go from one extreme to the other very quickly.

It's one reason why the overreaction after his three-interception outing in the 2020 season opener against the New England Patriots was out of line. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that two of the three interceptions were not his fault.

Unfortunately, it's just very simple to look at the stat line and come to the conclusion the Dolphins need to make a chance because, oh yeah, they have Tua Tagovailoa waiting in the wings.

As someone who's been around a long time, Fitzpatrick understands how the game is played. He understands interceptions will become a poor reflection of the quarterback regardless and that good team players will take the blame instead of pointing out the real reasons for the first and third picks, that Preston Williams got bumped off his route by Stephon Gilmore and that Mike Gesicki was interfered with on the third.

The reality is that Fitzpatrick was NOT the Dolphins' major problem on offense against New England. The biggest problem was the receivers' inability to get open.

Fitzpatrick explained after the game that New England is a heavy man defense team, which puts the onus on receivers to win one-on-one matchups. The Dolphins didn't do that very often in Week 1.

But Fitzpatrick was focused on his own performance when he spoke to reporters this week.

"Obviously you don’t want to have weeks like I had last week," he said. "That can’t happen if we’re going to win football games. Put everything that I have into this week and move on. For me and the rollercoaster I’ve been on, I have an easy way of putting things like that behind me and moving on.”

This was the second time the second time Fitzpatrick threw three interceptions in a game with the Dolphins and, perhaps not coincidentally, the first time also came against New England — in Week 2 last year.

All told, Fitzpatrick had three games in 2019 where he threw more than one pick and here's the interesting part: In the three games following his multi-pick outings in 2019, his passer rating was 118.7, 118.7 and 113.7.

Those kinds of passer ratings puts guys in the Hall of Fame.

Fitzpatrick explained how he tries to put behind bad outings.

"It’s one of those things where you walk into the locker room after a game when you know you didn’t do your best as a quarterback and let the team down, that’s hard," he said. "t’s hard to face those guys. The best thing that I’ve learned is just to pour everything that I have into the next week of preparation, into the next game. There is a fine line there, there is a balance too because I can’t sit here and put so much pressure on myself to go out there and be perfect. At the same time, I’ve got to move on from last week, I’ve got to do a great job of getting everybody where they are supposed to be, throwing the ball to the right spot and doing the best we can on offense to generate some more confidence and some more rhythm, and that falls on me.

"A lot of it for me is just the week of preparation and how we’re doing practice Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, the discussions, the communications, the talk, making sure that everybody is into it and everybody knows that this is a new week. Those are the type of things you really try to focus on after a bad week.”

Of course, Fitzpatrick is going to need more help from his offense to succeed against a very good Buffalo defense — even without starting linebacker Tremaine Edmunds and Matt Milano.

And it doesn't help that he might be without the team's best wide receiver, DeVante Parker, who will be a game-time decision because of a hamstring injury.

But Fitzpatrick has confidence in offensive coordinator Chan Gailey, with whom he has a long history, to come up with a strategy to attack the Bills.

"The great thing with Chan and the way that this system works is it’s really you try to figure out each week the best way to attack a defense," Fitzpatrick said. "He’s very multiple in what he can do. Sometimes it will evolve week to week, sometimes it will look the same. I think we felt very comfortable going into the game with the plan that we had. I think guys did a good job of understanding what we were trying to get done.

"Each week is definitely different and one of Chan’s strengths is being able to change it up from team to team and make it easy on our guys mentally.”