Dolphins fend off Rams rally for win

As it has in all of Miami’s victories, it was the Dolphins defense that carried the team to the win on Sunday in the low-scoring affair. While the defense did keep the Rams out of the end zone, the team’s run defense allowed quite a lot of yardage. Nonetheless, the team’s defense extended an impressive streak, as noted by Kevin Nogle of SB Nation’s Dolphins blog, The Phinsider.

Odds/Gambling: The Dolphins came into the game as 5-point favorites, so their 3-point win was not enough to cover. The over-under was 38, so if you went with the under, you were happy with just 31 points scored for the game.

Injury info: There was some concern early on about Oliver Vernon, who appeared to be injured in the second quarter. He came back, however, and picked up arguably the biggest sack of the day when he stopped Bradford with four seconds left and the Rams threatening.

He lays out, backwards, catches it with one hand and still manages to stay in bounds. Someone should probably check on the DB, and maybe bring get him a juice box or something.

The surprising Dolphins are 2-3 and two of their losses came in overtime. If the league’s No. 1 run defense can do better than being last in the NFL in touchdown passes, maybe they do more of this business where they take the lead in games.

Their season has made so little sense after watching what looked to be a team thin on talent on “Hard Knocks,” but at this point we shouldn’t be surprised with anything they do. Even scoring touchdowns.

The full inactive list is below:

St. Louis Rams

Not much was expected from either the Rams or the Dolphins at the beginning of the season, but headed into Week 5, St. Louis has a 3-2 record and a point differential of +2 while Miami has a 2-3 record and a point differential of zero.

For two teams that combined to win only eight games all of last year, that’s quite the turn-around.

Among the ESPN writers and personalities who have made their picks, only Mike Ditka has picked the Rams. At 44-33, Ditka is tied for second from the bottom of ESPN’s picks competition. In addition to those picks, ESPN’s Accuscore game simulator is also calling for a Miami win. Over at Yahoo! Sports, Jason Cole and the collective Yahoo! users have picked the Dolphins to win. Les Carpenter, also at the bottom the picks competition, forecasts a Rams victory. CBS Sports, where the experts pick both against the spread and straight, are more split on the game. It’s 4-4 with Miami -3.5, but when picking straight up only Mike Freeman and Ryan Wilson back the Rams.

The game is scheduled for Sunday at 1 p.m., ET and will be broadcast on Fox.