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Drinking Lemon-ade instead of Beck’s: Cleo Lemon to start against Ravens

And the other shoe drops. It is now official that all Cam Cameron cares about is now, winning a game, and saving his skin. It was announced today that QB Cleo Lemon will start Sunday’s game against Baltimore, returning rookie QB and supposed franchise savior John Beck to the bench.

As I said when Cameron yanked Beck after 3 series in the Bills game, this move makes absolutely no sense. This season is no longer about wins and losses. It’s about developing young talent and getting them used to NFL speed. Some are saying it’s good to start Lemon against Baltimore because the Ravens blitz schemes might confuse the young Beck. Yeah, and it’d be terrible if he got confused. We might even, I dunno, LOSE? We’re only 0-13. Beck needs to get used to complex blitz schemes. Beck needs to stare down Ray Lewis across that line and still make plays. I want to see how Beck handles the worst situations, the toughest defenses. Does he have what it takes?

I hope to goodness that the Dolphins front office doesn’t think they have their answer already. After 4 games? You cannot use those 4 games, with the talent around him, as an indicator! He needs more time, more seasoning, more experience. The only way this doesn’t fall back on Cameron is if it’s coming from higher up. I could see Huizenga ordering Cam to start Lemon, to try and avoid 0-16.

But for some reason, I just see this as Cameron’s call. He’s the coach, and Huizenga has always been a hands-off owner as far as who is on the field. If Cam wants to start Lemon, Huizenga says OK.

It’s funny. When we hired Cam Cameron, I was fairly excited about it, as Cameron was seen as one of the up and coming coaches in the NFL. But a small part of me was disappointed that we couldn’t wait one more year, with guys like Bill Cowher, Bill Parcells, Bill Marty Schottenheimer coming available.  But maybe we have anyway.  Cameron seems to fit a stopgap mold, 1-and-done.

Now, I don’t want anyone to take this article as any sort of Lemon-squeezing.  He is, right now, the better QB.  He’s the QB that has led the team to their last 2 TDs, a feat Beck has yet to accomplish.  He definitely can help us beat the Ravens and make this Dolphins team just bad instead of historically bad.

Right now, 1 win doesn’t matter.  What happens if Lemon loses to the Ravens, with a seemingly unwinnable game against the Patriots after that?  There are 3 games left to see what we have with John Beck, and I think it’s more than we’ve seen so far.  Cameron should have stuck to his word and started Beck the rest of the year.  Just one more mistake the coach has made in a season full of them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Miami Dolphins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.