The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Eli just got his head almost taken off. Ran into his RB witch knocked his helmet half off then he got hit into someone's face mask and the blood was squirting out big gash on his head.

why did both teams keep their starters in so long? Were they trying to give the fans their money's worth for the stadium opener?

Considering the Giants and the Jets only see each other only once every four years in the regular season, their annual preseason matchup is a little more hyped than others.  The same could be said for the Dolphins-Bucs. 

I've noticed that prior to the early part of this decade, the Dolphins would just play select teams at random in the preseason.  Now they play Tampa, Jacksonville, and either Atlanta, Carolina, or New Orleans in the preseason on an annual basis.  Have teams now taken to playing the ones in close proximity in the preseason?

The Chiefs and the Rams play every year for the Governor's Cup.  That went back to the Cardinals years also.

On the replay, I can't really tell what's hitting Manning -- it's the other guy's facemask scraping the front of it?

There's almost certainly a tendency -- it would certainly make sense -- but there are a lot of exceptions as well. (Pre-season) Week 1 we had Titans @ Seahawks and 49ers @ Colts, and Bears @ Chargers which is about as far apart as you'd expect a random week to feature, in addition to a host of "pretty far" games like Broncos @ Bengals and Saints @ Patriots.