Wilfork welcomes Miami fight

FOXBORO - They fool no one, which is something Vince Wilfork [stats] likes, but what he likes even more about the Miami Dolphins [team stats] is that they come to do what he comes to stop.

Whatever else you may say about them, the Dolphins come to the stadium to run the football and Vince Wilfork comes there to prevent that from happening. There is nothing fancy about either end of that equation. For both, it means a day of pain and for one it likely means a day of frustration that will spell defeat when it’s over.

It is not often in this day of “hands off the quarterback” refereeing and “hands off the receivers” defending and “hand off the ball only when you have to” attacking that you will find a team that approaches offense the way the Dolphins do. They don’t play West Coast offense. They play “West Side Story” offense. They come to punch you in the mouth.
Vince Wilfork is all for that.

“One thing is sure, we’re gonna have to tackle,” Wilfork said yesterday of the task that awaits Sunday in facing the NFL’s third-most productive rushing attack, one that attacks not only with Ronnie Brown or Ricky Williams but often with both of them in the hybrid, Wildcat offense that undressed Wilfork and his teammates when first unveiled a year ago. “They want to run the football. That’s the challenge for us. On Sunday, you’re gonna see a big-time match.”

To date, that match has served the Dolphins well, although judging from their 3-4 record, not as well as the Dolphins would have hoped. They are third in the NFL in rushing, averaging 153.4 yards a game on the ground, and have been gashing defenses for 4.6 yards a carry.

When they have gone to the two-back, no-quarterback Wildcat (in which Brown takes the direct snap and most often either runs a sweep, hands off to Williams on a speed sweep or bolts up the middle), they are averaging 5.8 yards per carry, having used it 44 times (40 runs, four passes) this season. In other words, they move the chains by moving back guys like Wilfork.

What Wilfork surmises from this is, Wildcat or not, the Dolphins are coming to Gillette Stadium hell bent on running over him, around him or through him. This intention is verified in many ways, but the easiest is the fact that of the 32 teams in the NFL only three - the Dolphins, the Jets and, surprisingly, the Saints - run the ball more often than they throw. The likelihood that will suddenly change Sunday is like the end of most soccer games: nil and nil.

Some people who do what Wilfork does for a living (which could be loosely described as hand-to-hand combat without bayonets) might not be too excited about spending an afternoon slugging it out with such a team, one that has rushed for no less than 137 yards in five of the year’s first seven games.

Wilfork pondered that fact and what it meant for a moment before concluding, “Gonna be a fight.” He did not seem daunted by the thought.

“We’re going to have our mind right,” Wilfork said, smiling broadly. “That’s my style of game. They’re not trying to trick you. They’re going to try to run the ball.”

Stopping the run is what Wilfork is built to do. Nose tackle in a 3-4 front is a job requiring many things but the major prerequisites are relentlessness, a blind refusal to acknowledge pain and a low center of gravity. That and, in Wilfork’s case, surprising athleticism for a man who is 6-foot-2 and weighs somewhere between 325 and a few steaks more than that.

It is a nasty job under the best of circumstances and Sunday it will be at its nastiest because Wilfork must not only cope with an offensive line that averages 325.6 pounds and is surly by nature but also with two of the league’s most dangerous combinations of power and speed, Williams and Brown.

Wilfork willingly acknowledged all that yesterday. He talked about how Miami’s linemen are “powerful, strong, physical guys.” He said Williams is “a tough runner to bring down and Ronnie Brown is, too, now.”
He gave them their props, and then he had a little reminder for them.

“They’re strong, they can move, they’re powerful and they want to be physical,” he said. “If we don’t have our mind right it’s going to be a long day for us, but I think we understand how we want to play this game. We’re looking forward to it and I’m sure they’re looking forward to it.”

He wasn’t smiling then. Not smiling at all.



(bostonherald.com)