Professor Will's report card

MIAMI – What a difference a week makes. As much as the Dolphins opening week win against New England was impressive, Sunday's loss to the Bills sends Miami back to reality. The reality is this -- let's slow down on the Dolphins being a new team talk. This team has a long way to go, and Sunday proved that. I won't get too extreme and say this is the real Dolphins team, but the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Offense- D

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If not for Mike Wallace making a couple of plays and an amazing one-handed touchdown, this would have been an F. Truthfully, it should be an F; it was a failure in every way. The offensive line looked like last year's debacle, Ryan Tannehill continues to have accuracy issues and the ground game couldn't get going, especially with Knowshon Moreno leaving the game early with an injury.

This looked more like last year's offense and that is a scary thought. With the prospect of not having Moreno for a while, Sunday's setback doesn't bode well for Miami.

Defense- C

The defense actually wasn't terrible, given the fact the offense couldn't get going. Miami had issues slowing down CJ Spiller on the ground, but the real problem was controlling Bills exciting rookie Sammy Watkins. He touched Miami for 117 yards and a touchdown.

EJ Manuel was basically EJ Manuel, but the defense still couldn't force him into an interception. Again, while the defense wasn't the reason the Dolphins loss, they didn't make enough plays to turn the momentum. Still, considering they held Buffalo to just three first half field goals, the end result could have been much worse.

Special Teams- F

What else needs to be said? CJ Spiller had a game-changing kick-off return for a touchdown, and the Dolphins also muffed a punt that gave Buffalo great field position. Throw in the fact that Brandon Fields had a bad game and it's easy to see why this unit was awful.

Coaching- F

I hate being too hard on coaches because it really is up to the players to make the plays, but we saw too much of the same from last season's Sunday against Buffalo. That is unacceptable. Miami had the same problems they had against the Bills twice last year. A coaching staff must learn from mistakes and figure out how to fix those problems; that clearly didn't happen in Buffalo.

In-game adjustments were also not enough, and the bottom line is this -- the Dolphins didn't look ready to play and match the emotion the Bills had from the start. That falls on coaching.