Jaguars Beat Dolphins
Jacksonville beat Miami 28-21 in the first regular season meeting of the 2 Florida
teams. After Olindo Mare missed a 54-yard field goal which would have broken the
21-21 tie, Mark Brunell threw a 56 yard touchdown pass with 2:36 left in the game
for the victory. Dan Marino got back the ball on his own 34 yard line and drove
to the Jacksonville 38 before having Tony Brackens strip the ball. The Dolphins
had one final chance with 49 seconds remaining, but were pinned on the 8 yard line
and unable to significantly move the ball. The officiating was questionable for most
and lead to some breaks. The Dolphin wide receivers finally had a good game. Dan
Marino completed 30-of-49 passes for 323 yards and 2 TDs.
"We did a good job tonight,'' Dolphins receiver Lamar Thomas said. "But if we had
done a great job, we would have won, and one of us would have made the game-winning
catch."
"I didn't know how open he was," Mark Brunell said of the game winning throw. "We
worked on that, it's a new play for us this week. We hit it twice, fortunately.
You throw it up there and hope the timing's there and it came down where it should,
and Keenan made a fine play."
"This is something you can take into the future, "Troy Drayton said. "When you have
the kind of success we had spreading it around tonight, that shows we can do it. It
should give Danny confidence in his receivers and everybody confidence in the
offense."
"When you play man-to-man, you put pressure on yourself, "Calvin Jackson said, "but
that's the way it is. They just made more plays than we did."
"I basically lost the game on that play. It was basic man-to-man coverage and I
didn't get it done," Terrell Buckley admitted. "I pride myself on making plays when
it counts and I didn't do it tonight, so I'm very disappointed."
"We found a way to win and I'm very happy about that," said Jacksonville coach Tom
Coughlin. "These are two very aggressive football teams. Tonight we faced one of
the best defenses so far this year. It was a very good test for us." "
Player Quotes
"The offensive line did an outstanding job most of the night," Dan Marino noted.
"They gave me plenty of time to make plays I need to make. I just didn't make
enough of them at the end."Coach Quotes
"I thought the offense did an excellent job," coach Jimmy Johnson said. "If we build
upon this and get better, which I think we can, you never can tell. We may be playing
these guys again. Jacksonville had two weeks to prepare for us and they showed us a
few things defensively, and really crammed up the running game to put us in a
position where they were forcing us to throw the ball. So we did."
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