Dolphins - 19, Bengals - 7
Q. It looked like early in the football game, the screen game, getting the ball out quickly, screening to the tight end, wide receivers doing a good job blocking, that paid some dividends for you early on, didn't it?
DREW SAMPLE: Yeah, we had a good game plan going into it. We knew they were going to try to do some different things. That was one of the ways that we had kind of dialed up to take advantage of some of the looks they gave. And we were able to make some good, positive plays there in the first half.
Q. And then to return the favor, the receivers were blocking for you, and you get a great block for Tyler Boyd and he takes it to the house, 70 yards, how did it feel being an integral part of that play?
DREW SAMPLE: That was great. We knew they were going to get in those zero looks. And teams that have struggled versus them, not been able to have answers. And we knew that play had a chance to go big the whole week. And we were able to execute it. QB was able to get to the sideline. I was able to block my guy. O line was able to give BA enough time. So it was a well-executed play across the board. And it felt good having that long touchdown.
Q. The offense played, I guess, okay in the first half. But things kind of fell off the rails there in the second half. What happened?
DREW SAMPLE: They made some adjustments. And so did we. And I just think we weren't really able to get in as good of a rhythm in the second half. We weren't executing as well in the first half. We were kind of grinding it out in the first half. The second half we weren't really able to sustain any drives. So I think that was one of the things that hurt us for sure.
Q. Did they back off the blitz a little bit or did they keep --
DREW SAMPLE: They kind of attacked it a different way. They didn't really bring much zero. They've done that a lot with teams. They kind of try to play man, give different fronts and different looks. We were hurting them with some of our play-action stuff in the first half. But in the second half I don't think we were able to get any rhythm going and didn't execute as well either that we could have.
Q. Did they do anything the run game to take away the run?
DREW SAMPLE: They did. They kind of moved the front around. Tried to -- I think they had some injuries too. That might have played a part in it, too. But they were giving us different looks. Like I said, we weren't able to execute against them.
Q. When they went cover 2 toward the end of the football game, the latter stages of the football game. Did that really surprise you?
DREW SAMPLE: Not necessarily. I mean, we knew that they put basically everything on tape. They pretty much do it all. So when they kind of got way from more their pressure stuff, we knew that was going to put them into zone looks and man. So we were -- I don't think it was unexpected. Like you said, they've shown a little bit of everything. So we were prepared for them to do that, to mix it up against us.
Q. Don't see five ejections in a game very often. Did it feel chippy and a little over the top from the get-go? Or do you think that maybe the ejections right before half kind of set things off?
DREW SAMPLE: I'm not really sure. I feel like probably the ejections for us kind of set it off. They were a tough-nosed ball team. We were blocking in the trenches. It didn't seem really chippy until that point. But obviously it's game on, and different things happen. It's really hard to say.
Q. Did you think that was a turning point; you had a shot to go up 10-3 there? What do you think that kind of impact had on you, that play?
DREW SAMPLE: Yeah, I think that was tough. Obviously losing TB, having those penalties and not getting points on the drive. And we had kind of a good drive going. I think that definitely hurt us in the long run.
Q. Have you ever been in a game where the officials take 20 minutes at least to sort things out like they did and assess penalties? How hard was it to restart the engine?
DREW SAMPLE: That was definitely -- that felt like a college game. I think we did a decent job of being ready to play after those. But that's just something that you really can't control. The refs gotta do their thing, and we've got to go out there and play when it's time to play. So...
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports