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DAVIE, Fla. -- You could see the frustration on Miami Dolphins coach Adam Gase's face as he was forced to send the field-goal unit out again on Friday night. Xavien Howard essentially gift wrapped the Dolphins' offense a touchdown after returning an interception inside the Carolina Panthers' 10-yard line. Penalties -- a holding call on Laremy Tunsil and a delay of game -- derailed a potential touchdown drive.  It's just the preseason, but some of these are spring errors occurring in mid-August. The Dolphins are a team devoid of any true superstars, and there are low expectations from many in the media. They're the type of team that can't afford to be sloppy, but yet here we are. There are still 2½ weeks before the regular season begins, but the Dolphins need to make significant progress to get on track. “I think it’s coming down to cleaning up the details. It’s like those little, tiny things that, big picture-wise, if you see something negative happen and you start going, ‘Why is that happening? Why did that happen?’ Then when you go back and start watching the film, you start correcting them, you really get encouraged, because you’re going, ‘We can fix this,'" said Gase, who is entering his third season as Miami's head coach (16-16 record). “We’ve got two more weeks to clean it up. That’s where our focus has got to be.” Hope for a successful season isn't doomed. It's not hard to see a scenario in which Kenyan Drake and Frank Gore become a strong 1-2 punch behind an improved offensive line; Ryan Tannehill and Gase pick up where they left off in 2016 in creating an up-tempo offense; and the defense makes plenty of splash plays, led by the Cameron Wake-Robert Quinn pass-rush duo and Reshad Jones-Minkah Fitzpatrick playmaking twosome on the back end. It's not hard to see a 9-7 or 10-6 season and a wild-card berth in a weak AFC race, if everything goes right. But right now, they aren't there, and the clock is ticking. A continued lack of discipline and identity could doom the Dolphins' season. Gase's Dolphins have ranked in the bottom five in penalties in each of his first two seasons as a head coach. That's a problem. Teams with loads of talent or superstars often can overcome those mistakes. The Dolphins have neither. They need to play clean, disciplined and fundamental football to push for a playoff spot. Otherwise, they will be faced with another 6-10 season -- or worse. Heavy bouts of penalties often indicate a lack of discipline, sloppiness and overaggressiveness. Tannehill believes they are "self-inflicted wounds that we can totally correct." Gase said there is no central reason for the penalties -- just all individual little mistakes. But discipline was a big question mark from the 2017 Dolphins, shown by blowups such as offensive line coach Chris Foerster's drug scandal; Gase's midseason tirade that led to the Jay Ajayi trade; and the ejections of Jarvis Landry and Drake after fighting in the season finale. A week ago, multiple kerfuffles broke out during practice. In the biggest one, more than a dozen players were involved, and it ended with Gabe Wright charging and delivering a cheap shot on a helmetless Drake. Wright was released less than 24 hours later. Discipline doesn't just relate to penalties and fights, either. Little mistakes added up to a big issue during Christian McCaffrey's 71-yard TD run right up the middle of the Dolphins' defense on Friday. Several defensive linemen and linebackers took the wrong gap or couldn't get off blocks. T.J. McDonald took a bad angle. Bobby McCain had a chance to save the day, but he was too aggressive. Gase sought to change the locker room this offseason by adding mature veterans such as Gore, Josh Sitton and Danny Amendola to help the offense. Some players have indicated it has helped, but we should have a better idea of the true progress by midseason. If they find a way to fix this issue, another one still lurks: What do the 2018 Miami Dolphins want to be? After getting rid of Landry, Ajayi, Ndamukong Suh and Mike Pouncey in the past 10 months, there is no central personality, voice or sense of identity coming from the Dolphins' locker room. Will the youth movement with Fitzpatrick, Howard and Drake start to take over? Or will veterans such as Gore, Amendola, Tannehill, Wake and Kenny Stills hold the keys to the team? That's something Gase is still trying to figure out, as well. “I still think it’s going to take a little time at least in the -- I shouldn’t say that -- the next couple of weeks to really define that," Gase said. "Our coaching staff has a better feel right now, but I still think we’re trying to sort a few things out of who our starters are going to be and who our role guys are going to be and what they’re going to do. Once we end training camp, I think we’ll be able to nail that down a lot better than right now.” The clock is ticking for the Dolphins to be something different than we've seen thus far.
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