FMIA Week 3: De’Von Achane’s Not-Undersized Impact and C.J. Stroud’s “Grown Men”
First, a pronunciation guide for a player you’re obviously going to need to get to know, a player who might have just had the best offensive day in the grand history of the Miami Dolphins.
“Need to pronounce your name right. I heard it was A-chain,” I said to De’Von Achane late Sunday afternoon. Long “a,” with “chain.”
He said no. “It’s A-chan.”
Okay, we’ve got that down now. Miami’s third-round rookie back from Texas A&M is De-von A-chan. He’s 21. He rushed 18 times for 203 yards in a 233-yard rushing/receiving day with four touchdowns. There’s nothing normal about a 70-20 football game, when a player 94 percent of the country (maybe more) has never heard of has a game like this, when Tua Tagovailoa is 16 of 16 in the first half and no one notices, when Raheem Mostert and Achane both tied the single-game team record with four TDs in a game, when the home teams gains 726 yards and calls off the dogs at the end … or they could have scored more points than any team in a game in the 104-year history of the NFL.
“That’s what I’m saying!” Achane said over the phone from Hard Rock Stadium Sunday. “On the sidelines, we were all talking about it. Like, ‘This is really crazy! This has gotta be some type of record.’”
Actually, two players have never combined for eight TDs in a game before, as Achane and Mostert did. There were 13 team records set or tied, and Miami came within two points and 10 yards from setting NFL records in each.
But I found a couple of things significant about the game—other than the fact that, holy crap, you do not want to be playing Miami right now.
One: Mike McDaniel usually talks to the team pre-game for some last reminders, as coaches tend to do. But this new-wave coach wants the Dolphins to be a player-led team. He had fullback Alec Ingold talk to the team before this game. Nothing Rockne-ish was said, but the message was sent: I trust you guys.
Two: McDaniel is seen as an odd genius type, and he probably is. (Certainly the stuff about his offensive brain is top-of-NFL right now, as was illustrated by Tua Tagovailoa’s no-look designed shovel-pass TD in the first half.) But this is also a coach who has significant love for the game, and the history of the game. He knows it would have seemed crass, bordering on bush-league, to run up the score just so the Dolphins could break a couple of records for points and yards. If you’re not doing it in the regular competition of the game, why do it? Miami ran into the line twice, then did a kneel-down, on its last series.
“It’s not the way you want to get the record,” he said post-game. “I would hope that if the shoe was on the other foot, the opponent would feel the same way. That’s called karma. I’m trying to keep good karma with the Miami Dolphins.”
Karma’s good. Finding an explosive weapon like the 5-8 Achane with the 84th pick in the 2023 draft is better. “Me having 200 yards in an NFL game, that’s a shock to me,” Achane said. “But I think I showed the type of back I am. I don’t think people knew about my toughness, running between the tackles, taking hits. People think I’m an undersized back and can’t take the hits, but as you can see I can take them. I can pick up blocks.”
Every week there’s a new team to shoot for in the NFL. Last week it was Dallas. This week, it’s Miami that’s the dangerous, dangerous team.
Boldface Names
If Sean Payton can lose a football game by 50, if Jacksonville can fall to Houston by 20 at home, and if Taylor Swift can feature in this column prominently, well, we know it’s an absolutely normal NFL season. Because, as usual, nobody knows nothin’. The boldface people and things of week three:
Perfection. Pretty hard to achieve. By midnight tonight ET, assuming the Eagles and Bucs do not tie, the NFL will have three unbeaten teams: 3-0 Miami, 3-0 San Francisco and the 3-0 winner of Philly-Tampa. Five perfectos bit dust Sunday.
The Dolphins. Two running backs down, Jaylen Waddle down. Three of their five starting skill players were Durham Smythe, River Cracraft, Raheem Mostert and Alec Ingold. And Miami, beating Denver at home, became the first team to score 70 points in a game since the AFL and NFL merged in 1970. Dolphins by 50. We all saw that coming.
Josh Dobbs. Sunday was the one-month anniversary of the trade that left him stunned, Cleveland to Arizona. He looked like he’d been a Cardinal for years, not four weeks, against the formerly unbeatable-looking Cowboys. Arizona by 12. We all saw that coming.
C.J. Stroud. Another huge ‘dog Sunday, Houston, snuck into Jacksonville (Remember? My top AFC seed?) and won by 20. We all saw that coming.
Taylor Swift. Yes, T-Swift, jumping and cheering in a box with Donna Kelce, her heart evidently all a-flutter watching her rumored new beau Travis Kelce at Arrowhead. You Need to Calm Down, Taylor; it’s only September. Patrick Mahomes on the more famous person in the stadium Sunday, to FOX: “I heard she was in the house, so I knew I had to get the ball to Travis.” Seven catches, 69 yards, a TD.The Bears! The Bears! The Bears! Chicago entered the season with so much hope. Maybe hope to go 9-8, and solidify the QB spot for years. But this team, and its equipment, and its quarterback, and its ex-defensive coordinator, are watching a Cruel Summer morph into a cruel autumn. They’re 0-3 and Justin Fields might be hurt. This Bears team, again, looks like the favorite for the first pick in the 2024 draft. I remember it All Too Well.
Caleb Williams. Just thought of this. Would choosy Caleb Williams exit USC if his NFL fate lay in Chicago? It’ll take someone Fearless to turn this ship around.
Zach Wilson. Anti-Hero. Bad Blood with 70,000 at the Meadowlands. All the Patriots had to do was score Fifteen for win number Fifteen in a row in the series.
(I give! Enough! Not funny! Back to our regularly scheduled programming!)
Matt Gay. Kicking on the turf of the man who could go down as the best ever to kick a football (Justin Tucker, M&T Bank Stadium), Gay had the greatest day an NFL kicker’s ever had. Four field goals of 53 yards or longer, including the winning 53-yarder in OT for the first-place Indianapolis Colts of the AFC South.
Jordan Love. Remember all the trashers of Love before the season? After coming back from 0-17 in the fourth quarter to an 18-17 win, Love said he remembers. “I don’t get flustered by anything I hear or anything that’s out there. Who are they to tell me who I am as a player?” Good attitude to have for a 2-1 player.
Puka Nacua. He gets introduced to National TV America in the Monday nighter at Cincinnati. Bet you can’t guess his first position in youth football. Give up? Left tackle.
Buddy Teevens. Every coach, and every fan who cares about the future of the game, needs an education about the late Dartmouth football coach. You’ll get it in this column.
John Lynch turns 52 today. He chose careers wisely, despite what the scouting reports apparently said.
Brock Purdy. It’s amazing to me, after he begins his career 11-0 in games he’s played at least three quarters, that there is this universal asterisk on his competence. More ridiculous than amazing, really.
Four Stories
The stories that stood out to me Sunday:
Stroud handled the heat wonderfully in Jacksonville. Remember all the stuff about C.J. Stroud struggling to process information under pressure, and without the supporting cast he had at Ohio State, he’d struggle in a relative startup in Houston? I take you to Jacksonville, with the Texans having trouble running it Sunday, and even more pressure on the shoulders of the rookie in his third NFL game. I watched good chunks of this game, and Stroud’s performance under pressure in the 37-17 rout of the Jags was notable. NFL NextGen Stats backed that up. It was Stroud’s composure against the blitz that was crucial in Houston winning this game.
When blitzed in Jacksonville Sunday, Stroud completed eight of 11 throws for 130 yards and two TDs. When facing a regular rush, he was an efficient 12 of 19, without the difference-making TD plays. Add to this the fact he had two injury replacements at tackle and didn’t get sacked, despite the 11 blitzes from Jacksonville.
“I think I just learn from week to week,” Stroud told me post-game. “A lot of the sacks and hits that happened last week were on me. I gotta get rid of the ball, get it out on time. This week, I think I fixed that issue.”
Watching Stroud (20 of 30, 280 yards, two TDs, no picks, 118.8 rating), it seemed like he had more answers for what the Jags threw at him than young quarterbacks should have. Maybe we expected the learning curve, and the rebuilding process in Houston, to take longer. He didn’t think the word “rebuild” was one his team places much stock in. “We’re grown men,” he said. “We’re NFL players. Why can’t we win any game we show up to play? That Jacksonville team’s a top 10 team in the NFL, but we knew we could play with them. I’m nobody’s fish. I’m not somebody a team can tee off on. I compete. We all compete. The way I look at it, all pressure is a privilege. It helps me prepare, it helps me win. I love it.” It showed Sunday in Jacksonville.
You could see during the game why Stroud and fellow rookie Will Anderson were named captains. It’s not just their pedigree. With Stroud in particular, the way he seems to command his huddle and play with a calm but commanding demeanor is easy to see. “I don’t think leadership has an age,” Stroud said. “It’s something that’s in you. I didn’t come in demanding respect. I came in wanting to earn it.”
Jordan Love is passing every test. In the first seven series of the Saints-Packers home-opener for Green Bay Sunday, Jordan Love went 0-for-7 in productivity. Four punts, two failed fourth-down conversions and an interception, all in the game’s first 47 minutes. These are the times that try a quarterback’s soul—and the times a quarterback has to just forget it and move on to the next series.
Love will be linked to Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers forever, or at least as long as he’s the Packers’ quarterback, the third in a 32-season line of quarterbacks that have kept the Packers relevant for a third of a century. At least early in his career, Love has something in common with Favre and Rodgers: they’ve all beaten the Bears, and they’ve been good (mostly) in crunch time when needed.
In the final 13 minutes, Love went field goal-TD-TD, capping the last drive with clutch completions to Jayden Reed and Romeo Doubs to pull out an 18-17 win. His 30-yard throw up the seam for Reed was a great throw and better catch; his eight-yard throw to Doubs was perfectly placed.
“I didn’t feel nervous at all,” Love said from the Packers’ locker room. “I just stayed even, trusted the team and trusted what we were doing and kept pounding away. That’s what everyone did. When you’re down like that you gotta make plays, and everyone was confident we would. I could feel it.”
Interesting, the similarities (other than accuracy) in the first three Packer starts of the last three starting quarterbacks:
Love’s got miles to go before he sleeps, of course. But he’s started well. Most importantly, he’s been cool when the games get hot. That’s something you’d better be able to do in the NFL or you won’t last long.
