Miami Dolphins K Jason Sanders named AFC Special Teams Player of Week

Miami Dolphins K Jason Sanders named AFC Special Teams Player of Week

It’s Jason Sanders’ world; we’re just living in it. For the fourth time in sixteen weeks, Miami Dolphins kicker Jason Sanders has been named the AFC Special Teams Player of the Week. This week’s clutch performance brought the Dolphins a dramatic last-gasp win over the Las Vegas Raiders on Saturday night, 26-25. The win, which sets the stage for Miami to collect a playoff berth this weekend with a win or with a loss from one of the three other AFC contenders vying for a spot, was as improbable of a victory as you’ll find on this side of the Miami Miracle.

And the deciding score came off the right foot of Sanders, pushing Miami to the lead and catapulting Sanders to another weekly honor.

Sanders’ latest award sets the stage for a potential springboard into greater accolades — most specifically the AFC Special Teams Player of the Year. You won’t find a more deserving candidate, not in 2020. The worry is whether or not the award will fall back onto more “household names”; but if the award is given out this year on account of merit alone, Sanders has won the weekly honor one out of every four times he’s played this season and he secured back to back monthly honors this season as well.

For the year, Sanders has kicked 34 field goals and scored 136 points — those two figures rank No. 2 all-time in Dolphins franchise history, trailing only Olindo Mare’s epic 1999 season. There’s an outside chance Sanders can threaten Mare’s franchise record of 39 field goals in a single season (1999), but he’s better off setting his sights on the Dolphins’ single-season points record.

He needs just 8 points to tie Mare and 9 to overtake him for the record. Sanders has scored 8+ points in 11 of 15 games played this season.

You’d like to think an all-time great franchise performance would be enough to collect the annual accolade; especially if Sanders is a critical piece of a Dolphins win like he was on Saturday night.