Somehow, someway, Miami is 2-2 at the quarter pole of the season. Somehow, someway, that record is actually BETTER than last year’s mark of 1-3 through four games. Unbelievable. My fiance and I took her mom out to dinner on Sunday night, so I didn’t get to writing a blog on Sunday. Then the Chris Foerster video happened. Straight out of ‘Ballers’ or, if you remember the short-lived ESPN series, ‘Playmakers’. Absolutely unbelievable.
Now, as I sit here on Tuesday having full taken in the events that transpired late-Sunday and into Monday, Miami’s got a trip to the Atlanta Falcons. Woof.
If you listened to the “Phinalysis” Podcast in the past, Travis called me the “Defensive Coordinator of Perfectville” on the show. I love me some defense. Sunday’s game against the Titans was arguably the best defensive performance I can remember during the Adam Gase era. The only games that come close in my mind are the 2016 opener against Seattle and the Rams game last year in Jared Goff’s debut. Sure, the Titans missed Marcus Mariota, and that played a part in their performance. But think about all the backup QBs over the years that have played well against Miami. Think back to last year when Tennessee absolutely GASHED Miami on the ground riding DeMarco Murray and Derrick Henry to 235 yards.
This past Sunday? 69 yards rushing. Of that total, Murray and Henry combined for 67 yards on 18 carries. That’s a 3.7 ypc average. More than a full yard better than Miami’s 4.8 ypc average of last year. Talk about improvement. Miami’s defense was damn impressive against the run on Sunday, against a Titans team that was averaging over 125 yards a game rushing.
Oh, by the way. Miami’s defense notched 6 sacks, 10 QB hits, 9 knock downs, 2 FF (and recoveries, something Miami was bad at last year) and Reshad Jones smartly didn’t give up on a play and housed one. As for the sacks, how’s this? Andre Branch had 2, Charles Harris had 1, Ndamukong Suh had 1, Kiko Alonso had 1 forcing the fumble that Jones scored on, and Cameron Wake and Reshad Jones each got credit for .5 sack on the near safety late in the game. What a difference it makes having a D-line that can dominate and LBs that can make tackles. A healthy Reshad Jones helps too.
Miami’s defense currently stacks up across the NFL like this:
4th in the NFL in points/game allowed at 16.8
8th in the NFL in total defense giving up 309.5 yards per game
22nd in the NFL in passing defense giving up 234 yards per game
4th in the NFL in run defense giving up just 75.5 yards per game
One interesting note, perhaps to me only, is that the three teams who run the wide-9 defense – Dolphins, Eagles, and Lions – are all in the top 4 rushing defense through the week 5 games. Philly is 2nd, Detroit 3rd.
This unit will be put to the test Sunday against Atlanta’s potent offense.
The offense, however, was offensive. One might say that through four games, it blows. Get it? Okay, that was bad. Miami ranks last in points scored, total offense, passing offense, and second-to-last in rushing offense. Miami did get a little bit of a spark in the 4th quarter, so that’s a tiny shred of something to build on.
As CK point out in a thread here earlier today, perhaps the Chris Foerster situation is something of a “circle the wagons” moment for the team. Consider, also related to the O-line, back in 2013 when the Jonathan Martin “Bullygate” hit. Miami ended up winning 5 of the next 7 games after he quit, and the two losses in that span were by a combined 7 points (granted, one came to the winless-at-the-time Buccaneers). We all know how Miami collapsed after that final win, against the Patriots, but that was the Joe Philbin-led team. He couldn’t handle adversity. Adam Gase seems to thrive on it. At least so far.
I won’t pretend to know how to fix the offense. Perhaps not having Foerster at the helm of an underachieving O-line will help. I thought that against Tennessee Miami made a concerted effort to hit some of the cutback lanes, and they were running the ball efficiently up until Jay Ajayi fumbled. With Atlanta having one of, if not THE fastest defenses in the entire league, they may be susceptible to some of those cutback plays. Disgustipate, who is VERY knowledgeable, surmised that might be a way to get Kenyan Drake involved a little more as well; fighting speed with speed on cutback runs. Hopefully Jay Ajayi is able to get going this week. I fear what the Falcons pass-rush will do to Miami if the O-line falters again. Though, it would seem that at least PFF has liked Laremy Tunsil’s work in pass-pro (as have I) the past two games, giving him a 96.3 grade in pass-blocking efficiency the last two games, allowing 0 sacks, 1 hit, and 2 hurries.
Perhaps, and this is something I’ve opined about on the forum, that will help Miami to find their play-action passing game.
Jay Cutler’s NFL QB Rating: With play-action – 91.8 Without play-action – 68.4, per PFF.
Just something to chew on until Sunday.
Hell yeah Ro…
fu## offense!!!
Great write-up, man!!
I knew out defense was playing well, but it wasn't until I was doing the legwork for "***THE Official Miami Dolphins vs Atlanta Falcons Gameday Thread***" that I realized just HOW dominant our defense has been playing.
If our offense could play just HALF as well as the defense has been, we just MIGHT be 4-0 right now
Hope we don't need a new review of our DB's after we play a team that actually throws the ball….
Now if your talkin D-line …you have a point…but IMO the pass defense still is in question in order to claim Dominant status…Truthfully haven't seen them being close to dominant or even better than mediocre….
and the Falcons should be a decent barometer to give us a better idea and I am hopeful but not expecting a lot….
I agree. I think this is the big, if not the biggest, test the secondary will have this season. I was encouraged by the play of Tank and X against the Saints. However, I think Atlanta's got more weapons (though Sanu hasn't practiced this week to my knowledge). That being said, I do wonder if Atlanta's able to exploit our LBs in coverage with Freeman/Coleman.
I'm still wondering what they'll do with the safeties when T.J. McDonald returns. I've not watched much of his Rams tape to know whether or not he can play deep; my understanding is he operated some as a robber, much like George Iloka does with the Bengals. But, you may be robbing Peter to pay Paul a bit by making Reshad Jones play as a high-safety.
we pretty much shut down rivers and breeze….and have looked even better since tank has been put in the line up….D has been great O has been terrible.
The pass protection has been miserable IMO, and against the Titans we (Def.) looked good but then the Titan were a run oriented team pressuring and testing mostly the DL. and LB's who did nicely too I must admit, but Cassell a #2 backup QB whos arm is not that frightening isn't a huge test. Just from previous games our db's have been miles away from WR's and seem like their only job is tackling and not so much stopping completions. Maybe they have improved but not IMO to a dominant level such as in the case of the improved DL which can ( not always does) be of that dominant persuasion a few of the Fans are expressing here.
T.J. Mc. will be a welcome improvement just considering his experience but he will not be playing for another month ( 4 games). Tank looks like we may have something here and X. Howard too but DB isn't an easily position to move into and the young guns will definitely need time to develop (possibly the season). Hoping the coaching staff tightens them up considerably so that they are at least in the same zip code as the WR's, which surprisingly the coaching staff hadn't done yet enough, though the Titans game look as if sometimes they were playing a bit tighter. Though Titans game wasn't really a good test to judge if their actually was improvement in our pass protection. Theirs a lot to upgrade there and I'm looking to see not domination but a steady improvement would be sufficient. We'll get a better idea against Atlanta to make a fair and balanced judgement on the real level of the so called dominant defense..
Just allow the secondary to play man to man, not a novel idea, they are young and it is their best traits, and we should be ok..
Like Ive stated before DB is a very difficult position to come in as a rookie or inexperienced and achieve the kind of success we all hope for. If our secondary is allowed to continue to play 4-5 yds off WR's were going to continue to get beat and see the on going lack of success on 3rd downs .
Glad to see your confidence but I have not felt I ve seen enough to feel that kind of confidence. The Falcons game will be a telling sign of improvement or stagnation in our secondary in which the Titans match up was not a fair team to evaluate were we truly are in this particular area with the players and just as essential the coaching staffs evaluations.
I think that's fair to say with respect to the secondary and the passing defense in general. I do think we've seen enough consistency with the run defense to know that it's improved — by a lot — from where it was last year.
LB's also part of that upgraded improvement in the ground game, gonna be interesting to see how that LB-ing core functions in the protection area most likely tested considerably this week, cause I don't think the Falcon are going to plan on running on us for success…