The Dolphins don’t figure to walk into many games this season with obvious edges, but Sunday in Las Vegas looks like one of them.
When Miami meets the Raiders at 4:25 p.m. at Allegiant Stadium, the Dolphins can point to three areas where they should have the upper hand: the ground game, special teams, and the quarterback spot.
Start with the run game, where Miami has the better top-end back and the sturdier interior presence. De’Von Achane is coming off a Pro Bowl season after piling up 1,350 rushing yards and 12 total touchdowns, two years after he set an NFL record as a rookie with 7.8 yards per carry. Las Vegas has its own promising runner in Ashton Jeanty, who earned PFWA All-Rookie honors after rushing for 975 yards and five touchdowns, but he’s still being asked to make a second-year jump and is working back from an ankle injury suffered late in training camp.
The matchup in the trenches tilts Miami’s way, too. The Raiders did upgrade their offensive line with Tyler Linderbaum, but the Dolphins can throw Zach Sieler, Jordan Phillips and Zeek Biggers at the middle and make things uncomfortable for Jeanty. On the other side, Las Vegas’ interior defensive line - with Adam Butler, Tonka Hemingway and late addition Folorunso Fatukasi - doesn’t look as imposing against Achane.
Special teams is another area where Miami enters with a clear edge, even after Las Vegas made changes. Riley Patterson was steady for the Dolphins last season, hitting 27 of 29 field goals and going perfect on 11 tries from 40-49 yards, while also making 3 of 4 from beyond 50. He kept that touch in the preseason by drilling a 53-yard field goal against the New York Giants.
The Raiders went in a different direction at kicker, moving on from Daniel Carlson and bringing in Matt Gay. Last season, Gay made just 17 of 23 field goal attempts between Washington and San Francisco, a 73.9 percent clip that ranked near the bottom of the league. He was also only 4-for-9 from 50 yards and beyond.
Miami’s advantage shows up even more sharply in the punt return game. The Dolphins averaged 13.3 yards per punt return last season, seventh-best in the NFL, while the Raiders managed only 6.0, which ranked 31st.
Much of that production came from Malik Washington, who averaged 13 yards per return and broke one for a 74-yard touchdown against New England. He also averaged 26.8 yards on kickoff returns and had four returns of at least 40 yards.
Las Vegas got better kickoff work, but the punt return game never found that same spark. Alex Bachman averaged 5.6 yards on 22 returns, and Tre Tucker averaged 7 yards on seven attempts. The Raiders spent a lot of the preseason searching for answers there, cycling through return options such as rookie Malik Benson and free agent signee Dareke Young, but they still don’t enter Week 1 with a proven weapon like Washington.
At quarterback, the comparison is more complicated, but Miami still has reasons to like where it stands. Three solid starts over the past two seasons don’t automatically put Dolphins quarterback Malik Willis ahead of veteran Kirk Cousins, but Willis brings a different kind of stress to a defense.
His legs are the biggest separator. In two seasons in Green Bay, Willis ran for 261 yards and three touchdowns on only 42 carries, averaging 6.2 yards per attempt. Miami has already built designed runs into training camp, a notable shift for a team that would have flinched at the idea of its quarterback being used that way just a year ago.
That could matter against Maxx Crosby. If Willis is a threat on designed reads, Crosby can’t just tee off and crash downhill every snap. He has to stay honest on the edge.
Willis also gives Miami the stronger arm talent in the matchup, and he has shown good ball security as well. Over his two seasons in Green Bay, he threw six touchdowns and no interceptions, and he largely kept mistakes out of his game throughout his first training camp with the Dolphins.
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