Kelly: The standard for this Dolphins season needs to be avoiding blowouts | Opinion

There’s often a moment leading up to a loss when the doubt creeps in, the confidence gets rattled and the composure gets compromised.

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There were probably many of those moments for this young Miami Dolphins team, which unraveled in the third quarter, allowing 21 straight points in San Francisco’s 35-6 win.

But the one that stands out the most was Dolphins punter Bradley Pinion letting the ball slip out of his hands while trying to punt the ball away after Caleb Douglas dropped a reception that wouldn’t have converted a third-and-15.

When Pinion gathered himself and the ball, Brayden Willis power drove him into the Levi’s Stadium sod, turning the ball over on Miami’s 28-yard line to the 49ers with 3:49 left in the third quarter.

Two plays and 28 yards later, the 49ers built a 35-6 lead after scoring a third third-quarter touchdown, and that score difference forced Jeff Hafley’s team to play on its heels the rest of the game.

The 49ers got super aggressive while sitting on a 29-point lead, and that style clearly eroded Miami’s execution, and maybe the team’s confidence.

But how did a game that was competitive in the first half begin to unravel?

We can start with the Dolphins offense not capitalizing on red-zone opportunities.

Kicker Riley Patterson missed the game-opening field goal on the game’s opening drive, preventing the Dolphins from taking their first lead of this young season.

Miami struggled converting on third downs, much like the previous week’s season-opening 27-13 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, a game where Miami was 2 of 9 on third-down conversions.

The Dolphins defense failed to create pressure on the opposing quarterback, hitting Brock Purdy all of five times during Sunday’s game.

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Without Chop Robinson, who was sidelined by a concussion, Purdy had all day to find open targets down field. And it didn’t help that Robinson’s replacement, Rob Beal Jr., left the game in the second quarter with a hamstring injury.

Much like the previous week, the 49ers committed the team’s first punt four minutes into the fourth quarter.

So that’s two straight contests an opponent sparingly has to punt, and when it does, it’s after the game has pretty much been decided.

That’s certainly not an encouraging sign to the Dolphins defense, which allowed the 49ers to convert on 5 of 6 third-down opportunities.

While the Dolphins came into Sunday’s game as the biggest underdog of the week to the 49ers, an aged and experienced football team led by coach Kyle Shanahan, who is one of Hafley’s mentors, there should have been more fight from this team.

It’s never a good sign when an opponent benches its quarterback with more than six minutes left in the game, but that seems to be Miami’s reality at this point.

Maybe it’s the new bar we should require in this rebuilding season, where playing time will be invested in youngsters, and standards are subdued.

This team’s confidence needs to remain uplifted, but that’s going to be monumental task to manage if the blowouts begin the pile up.

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