Here’s a look at how the Mia­mi Dol­phins (8–7) and Ten­nessee Titans (10–5) match up in six key areas ahead of Sunday’s Week 17 game at Nis­san Sta­di­um (1 p.m., CBS):

When the Dol­phins run: The lat­est devel­op­ment in the Dol­phins’ back­field mer­ry-go-round is a time­share of snaps split near­ly even­ly between Duke John­son, Myles Gaskin and Phillip Lind­say. While they were in the game, John­son and Lind­say saw the most car­ries, with each get­ting 13 against the New Orleans Saints last Mon­day night. It led to Mia­mi fin­ish­ing under 3 yards per car­ry, at 2.9.

The Titans are a run defense of sim­i­lar cal­iber, rank­ing sec­ond in the NFL at 86.7 rush­ing yards sur­ren­dered per game. They’ve only allowed one oppo­nent to sur­pass 100 yards rush­ing in their past nine games. Ten­nessee has Pro Bowl safe­ty Kevin Byard lead the team in tack­les (79). Inside line­backer David Long (66 tack­les) could return for his first game since Nov. 7 against the Rams, and up front in the Titans’ 3–4 scheme is one of the game’s best in Jef­fery Simmons.

It will be tough to man­u­fac­ture rush­ing yards against the Titans, but John­son and Lind­say will look to ground out that tough yardage. The run game will be crit­i­cal, even if not get­ting much, in pro­vid­ing quar­ter­back Tua Tago­v­ailoa the bal­ance in the run-pass-option offense and not putting too much on his shoul­ders. Edge: Titans

When the Titans run: The Dol­phins may just be miss­ing Der­rick Henry’s come­back from a foot injury. Reports indi­cate he may return for the reg­u­lar-sea­son finale to shed rust before the post­sea­son. Even while the bull­doz­ing 2,000-yard rush­er is out, Mia­mi still has a ton of respect for Tennessee’s phys­i­cal nature.

With­out Heny, the Titans’ three backs split­ting time are D’Onta Fore­man, Jere­my McNi­chols and Don­trell Hilliard. Each has had his moments, but none are over­ly impres­sive. Three-time Pro Bowl left tack­le Tay­lor Lewan should return from back and COVID issues on an offen­sive line that still likes to run block and is fourth in the NFL in rush­ing, play­ing the first half of the sea­son with Hen­ry in the lineup.

Mia­mi, on its sev­en-game win­ning streak has the league’s fourth-best run defense in that span. Duke Riley returns off the COVID list to give the Dol­phins more ver­sa­til­i­ty in the line­backer rota­tion with Jerome Bak­er, Elandon Roberts and edge rush­ers Jae­lan Phillips and Andrew Van Ginkel. The Dol­phins keyed in on stop­ping the run well against Alvin Kama­ra and the Saints last time out. Edge: Dolphins

When the Dol­phins pass: Tago­v­ailoa is com­ing off a 19-of-26 per­for­mance where the com­ple­tion rate could’ve been even high­er against a tough Saints defense if he didn’t miss a few throws. Although he hit Jaylen Wad­dle for 10 recep­tions, there was a glar­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty that he missed, going up top to Mack Hollins instead for an interception.

Oppo­nents are able to throw on the Titans as Ten­nessee has the league’s 26th-ranked pass defense. Tago­v­ailoa said he’ll like­ly try to work away from Byard, who leads the team with five inter­cep­tions. Cor­ner­back Janoris “Jackrab­bit” Jenk­ins also got his first pick of the sea­son last week against the 49ers. Between Harold Landry (11), Deni­co Autry (8) and Sim­mons (7 1/2), Ten­nessee also brings a fierce pass rush with 37 sacks on the year.

Expect the Dol­phins to once again be con­ser­v­a­tive in the pass­ing game with quick, short throws and a lot of activ­i­ty for Wad­dle. They’ll open it up occa­sion­al­ly, but Mia­mi will main­ly look to avoid turnovers, get what’s avail­able and keep its defense out of tough spots, espe­cial­ly with Tago­v­ailoa throw­ing behind this sus­pect offen­sive line. Edge: Titans

When the Titans pass: Final­ly, deep into the third sea­son since the breakup, we final­ly have the first matchup of Ryan Tan­nehill against the Dol­phins. His career began to take off since leav­ing Mia­mi for Ten­nessee once he took over for Mar­cus Mar­i­o­ta in that 2019 sea­son, but much of his suc­cess has come off hav­ing Henry’s threat in the back­field. Since Hen­ry went down mid­sea­son, Tan­nehill has five pass­ing touch­downs to sev­en inter­cep­tions, com­plet­ing 68 per­cent of pass­es for 1,325 yards in sev­en games.

Tan­nehill will be the best quar­ter­back the Dol­phins have faced since Lamar Jack­son on Nov. 11. Mia­mi will come after him in waves with Emmanuel Ogbah, Phillips, Van Ginkel, Bak­er, Chris­t­ian Wilkins and Zach Siel­er as the Dol­phins have cat­a­pult­ed them­selves to tops in the NFL with 45 sacks. Lewan will be back, so that shores up Tannehill’s blind side.

Phys­i­cal pos­ses­sion receiv­er A.J. Brown will have to be account­ed for as for­mer All-Pro Julio Jones is on the COVID list ear­ly in the week but could return before the game. Dol­phins coach Bri­an Flo­res often allows cor­ner­backs Xavien Howard and Byron Jones to man up on their receivers to allow for extra blitzers, even from the safe­ty posi­tion. Brown may be wor­thy of extra atten­tion. It will be an intrigu­ing matchup. Edge: Dol­phins

Spe­cial teams: Yes, Dol­phins kick­er Jason Sanders had anoth­er miss against the Saints, but it was from a career-long dis­tance of 59 yards at the end of the half after Mia­mi allowed a bad sit­u­a­tion­al sack that put them out of make­able field-goal range. Titans kick­er Randy Bul­lock is 24 of 28 on the year with three extra-point misses.

Dol­phins punter Michael Palardy con­tin­ues to be a plus the sec­ond half of this sea­son, and Hollins, a gun­ner, beau­ti­ful­ly downed a fourth-quar­ter punt pre­cise­ly at the 1‑yard line off a Palardy boot in that game. The two have con­nect­ed on quite a few of those. Mia­mi seemed to like Tom­mylee Lewis the past cou­ple of games on returns, but he was injured against New Orleans. Edge: Even

Intan­gi­bles: There is a four-day dif­fer­ence in rest and prepa­ra­tion ahead of this game with the Titans play­ing on Thurs­day night last week and Dol­phins play­ing on Mon­day night. It also could be the cold­est tem­per­a­tures the Dol­phins play in all sea­son in a favor­able sched­ule in that regard. Any revenge fac­tor would mean more to Tan­nehill than any one of a bunch of young Dol­phins that weren’t even in Mia­mi when he last played with the orga­ni­za­tion. Edge: Titans

PREDICTION: Dol­phins 20, Titans 16