It is now Wednesday and Dolphin fans everywhere have had time to allow last weekends tremendous victory over the New England Patriots to sink in. I said last week that Joey Porter foolishly opened his mouth and let spew some tongue in cheek smack talk about the Patriots, and I stand by my criticism of Porter. The fact still remains that Joey Porter is not the same player he was in Pittsburgh, he in fact hasn’t been for awhile and his parting with Pittsburgh was partially (if not entirely) based upon lower performance.

By no means do I wish to belittle the effort our Fins put in this past weekend. The coaching staff put together a masterful gameplan and the players executed it to perfection. That being said, Miami fans need to temper their enthusiasm with some perspective.

First off, this was the New England Patriots WITHOUT Tom Brady. From the moment Tom Brady went down in week 1, anyone watching Cassel take over in that game and in week 2 could tell this team was not going to be the same without him. Porter was right, Cassel is no Brady and that offense in New England was built for Tom Brady. The Patriots are tailored perfectly for Tom Brady to run that offense and the Dolphins defensive pressure and presence proved that on Sunday.

Secondly, the Dolphins blew the doors off the New England defense, a defense that was in question from the start of LAST season. Not only has the Patriots defense not infused themselves with young talent, they have let what young talent they did have go, most notably Asante Samuel. Bruschi, Vraebel, and Harrison are not the same spring chickens that started this Patriots dynasty in 2001, but they are going to be around to see it fall apart.

All these things taken into consideration, the Miami Dolphins made good strides in beating the Patriots in Foxboro last weekend. Porter still should have kept his mouth shut, but for now he gets to live on having survived his comments. His time will come though when he makes more stupid remarks. The important thing for the Dolphins to focus on is Tom Brady or no, this Patriots team still had Randy Moss and Wes Welker and those two were not allowed to have a field day. The Dolphins applied the lessons learned a week earlier facing Fitzgerald and Boldin in Arizona and kept a lid on Moss and Welker. 1-2, not a bad position to be in, now its time to build on it!