CK, I thought you mentioned previously that Kaddu at least had some pass-rushing skills, but nothing else. or has he changed your mind since then? If he does, then keep him just for pass-rushing situations. we are in dire need.
I don't see the sense in cutting Olivier Vernon with this roster. Dude has a lot of talent and physical ability. He's a rookie, without a whole lot of playing time in college under his belt. Try to develop him instead of settling for some mediocre veteran who may be a bit better now but doesn't have nearly the upside.
In terms of fan reactions, this might just be the worst draft class ever from round two onwards: Cut the 2nd round DE, the 3rd round TE wouldn't be on the roster if he wasn't a 3rd round TE, the 5th round LB can take the 6th round WR to God knows where, and the 7th round WR is our best receiver not named Bess. But hey, the 4th round RB looks kinda nice
Our secondary seems horrible but I guess that's not really surprising. Seems hard to judge our LB's without our starters playing at all this preseason which I think is going to become a major issue the 1st few games. The WR's on this team could all get cut minus Bess It's crazy how weak we are at this position.
Were not cutting Oliver Vernon. Btw, he was a 3rd rounder. I still think this years draft class is absolutely LOADED with potential. I think its clear that this class is just a raw class.
I still pretty much think the same of this class now than I did in April. Love the Tannehill and Miller picks, really like the Matthews pick, hate the Vernon and Egnew selections, and holding my breath that Martin can make a transition I wasn't sure he could make when he was still a draft prospect instead of a Miami Dolphin.
I'm not the one saying he shouldn't. I'm just saying he does pretty much exactly what I thought he would do.
Read that a couple of times and it is just scary to think how bad our WR group is. We know how bad it is, but just reading that drives the message home even deeper.
Good write-up CK. Agree with pretty much everything except the order of your runningbacks. IMO it should be Bush, Slayton, Thomas, Miller. Slayton really just stands out to me in this running scheme. I would have liked to see him get a few carries with the first team offensive line. Really though they are all very very close, especially Thomas and Slayton.
Honestly between Chandler Burden, Will Yeatman and Will Barker, I'm guessing a little bit. I need a second viewing to determine which should stay or go. The one I know that I didn't like was Andrew McDonald. Despite the athletic ability, the guy can't block.
This is starting to be a trend so I'll take your guys' word for it on Yeatman. I honestly was just guessing as for Barker and Burden. I could swear I saw Burden in particular making some decent blocks. I need a second viewing to weed through those three players in particular. They're the ones I didn't capture as well as I would want on first viewing. I focused on Andrew McDonald, who was pretty terrible.
Ireland knows that the WR's are awful. I don't understand why a competent WR has not been brought in just to get Tannehill a reliable target. The last thing you want to do is destroy Tannehill's confidence by having him throw to pedestrian WR's. My view on Ireland will be cemented on how he handles the WR position. If he is going to be successful then he has to have a WR targeted in a trade or know of a solid WR that is not going to make a talented team. If Ireland does nothing about the WR position then I will be on the Fireland bandwagon.
That's all he has and it isn't even that great. And it only applies as a blitzing Sam from the edge. The rest of his game is absolutely terrible. I haven't noticed him on special teams at all, either. At this point, he was already a confusing fit for me, and so I'd just get rid of him.
Does anyone think they will start cutting players today? They might as well. Or will they wait until tomorrow?
Yeah, McDonald looked really bad out there, run game, pass game, didn't matter. Burden was a little hard to see at LG. There were a couple of replays on run snaps that he was lost between him and Cook (we won't discuss him as he's not even worth discussing). Barker, I haven't really seen enough of but I can guarantee he wasn't worse that McDonald. I'm not sure why Feinga started at LT and then they moved Martin over there for some snaps in the 2nd quarter (I think it was). One of the local media guys said starting Feinga there was a good sign for Long starting the season. But that was before Martin got some 2nd team snaps there last night. Martin looked fairly decent in his pass protection on the left side, so that's something positive. Regardless, Feinga was pretty bad as compared to Yeatman. There was one pass rush that Yeatman got beat on (not sure who the qb was but he heard footsteps and got rid of it). Yeatman didn't even smell the rusher as he went by. Clearly something he did wrong in his initial setup, not a lack of athleticism. You could tell he was pissed off at himself and he came back the next play with a much better setup. I can only assume that the staff knows what they have in Yeatman and are trying to stash him on the PS if not the 53 in deciding not to start him last night. If he doesn't at least make the PS I'm obviously missing something (two eyes).
I didn't say we should cut him either. Bpk is the only one that's gone that far. I feel his pain though. What I said is that while everyone assumes that if you're just looking at tape and you didn't know Michael Egnew was a 3rd rounder, you'd cut him...that's actually not true, and the guy that IS true about is Olivier Vernon, IMO.
Somehow you need to just take over the GM position from Ireland. I'd still disagree with you about some things (who wouldn't with anyone?) but this is great, rational and, unfortunately, probably makes way too much sense for it to be implemented by Ireland and the Dolphins. Great analysis. I was really hoping Moore would have a really solid showing at QB in the final game (that INT was a terrible event for trade hopes) and someone's QB or backup would get hurt and we'd cajole a 3rd or 4th rounder (or steal a 2nd! lol) out of someone. As it is, we aren't likely to get much of anything.
I don't think Wade was that bad a CB. He got burned twice against ATL, but the coverage on that White TD was near perfect. The other in the back of the end zone, ok, it happens, but he is better than Lawrence IMO.
And on top of that, Jonathan Wade had what I thought was a fantastic game against the Carolina Panthers. He was challenged, yet he stayed in the hip pocket and had great coverage. He got called for a deep PI that I thought was BS. It was nothing like Vontae's PI.
Between him, Matthews and Devlin, hard to figure out which guy I'm rooting for more. There haven't been many 2nd/3rd string bright spots. But at least we have something in these three guys. Hey, it's better than nothing. If you're going to go back and take another look, check to see if Yeatman is over striding in his drop to the left. Is he leaving himself open to an inside move? I've only seen the games once and honestly can't bring myself to watch again. But to me, he looks well balanced, has a great hand punch and surprisingly doesn't get bull rushed for a guy learning the position. Obviously more impressed with his pass blocking than his run blocking, which is decent as he takes some good angles and has some nice quickness off the snap. But he doesn't drive guys back as much as you'd like, yet anyway.
Just get rid of Naanee. I was so depressed watching our rookie QB place some nice, catchable balls in the hands of the receivers only to be dropped.I agree with the LB's. Actually liked Trusnick alot. Thought he was around the ball often and played great ST's.
I agree. I thought the cutting of Wade was a knee jerk reaction to the Atlanta game. If we'd kept Davis and Wade, the CB contingent wouldn't look nearly so bad depth wise.
Thought this was interesting in a not so positive way , not sure if the quotes is edited : BenVolinPBP Joe Philbin on the #Dolphins preseason: "The only good news is this part is over."
Personally, I think he's done "ok" but no better than that. He's averaged 4.2 yards per carry this preseason but without that 19 yard run last night that would be more like 3.1 yards per carry. I don't want to short change him on the 19 yard run for no reason, but I think you have to actually examine the run to see if he did anything to really earn the big gain. I personally viewed it and thought the blocking did all the work and all he had to do was run off tackle exactly where he was supposed to, and then when it came time to add his own mark on the play by doing something in the open field and/or post-contact, he did absolutely nothing there. Be honest. On that play, blocked the way it was, do Lamar Miller or Steve Slaton gain any fewer yards? Do they gain any more? Because that's what this is all about. That's what it breaks down to. I can't help but think Lamar Miller's speed would have gained more on the play, and I think Steve Slaton would have gained just as much. Outside of that I think Steve Slaton has impressed me with how his cutback style really fits this scheme. I have been impressed how he could find very small seams and still burst through them into the second level. And I think that generally speaking Lamar Miller has produced about the same as Daniel Thomas, and the reason the averages are different is just because of that one 19 yard play which I truly feel Miller could have gained even more yards on. I also feel like his learning curve might be on a sharper incline, and there's no doubt in my mind he provides more in the passing game with his ability to empty out into the slot and catch passes, gain yards. He has caught 7 balls for 56 yards this preseason. You mention that Daniel Thomas has had the most impressive preseason statistically but Lamar Miller has 37 touches for 147 yards and 1 TD, while Daniel Thomas has 17 touches for 56 yards and 1 TD. So, no...I do not believe Daniel Thomas has even had statistically the best preseason amongst backs.
Miller averaged 3.0 yards per carry. If you take away his longest run of 11 yards, he averaged 2.7. So Thomas had good blocking on his 19 yard run. I doubt Miller or Slaton is going to run any better without good blocking. Seems like an odd reason to diss someone's effort, saying he made a nice run but it was all due to blocking. I said most effective btw, not most impressive. As in he had the best average per carry. Maybe that wasn't the best word? Perhaps I should have said most efficient. Had he gotten as many carries as Miller did, who knows how many yards he gained. We'll see how the runners end up stacking up, but IMO Thomas should be 2nd on the depth chart. However with the depth we have there behind Bush, and after seeing what happened to Davis, I guess a trade wouldn't surprise me.
It's not odd at all. It's very intuitive and rational to think about what a player did on a particular play to make it successful, and what other players may have also done or may not have been able to do. It's essential in evaluation. Except he wasn't the most effective, impressive or efficient. The most impressive was Reggie Bush. The most effective and efficient was Lamar Miller who gained 147 yards on 37 touches versus Daniel Thomas' 67 yards (sorry I got that wrong before) on 17 touches. Yes, and who knows how FEW he would have gained, too. Which is precisely why in evaluation we examine the details of what players contributed to plays rather than just looking at a pure average especially from such a small sample pool. HONEST opinion is Steve Slaton should be 2nd on the depth chart, with Lamar Miller 3rd and Daniel Thomas 4th. I think purely as a runner, not as an overall package but pure skills which have contributed to success/non-success on run plays, Steve Slaton has been second only to Reggie Bush. I'm not saying Daniel Thomas is off the roster, but I think he's in a battle for #3 with Lamar Miller and right now Lamar Miller has the edge because of a slightly steeper angle of ascension, and because he's presenting more in the passing game as a route runner and pass catcher. Plus there is the homerun ability that comes with his 4.3 speed.
He wasn't high on the draft board so there's going to be a feedback loop of innuendos and criticism(warranted or no) until something breaks that loop. Olivier Vernon is actually in the earliest stages of this if you have academic interest in watching it happen.
Matt Moore cannot play in this offense. His play has stunned me. I doubt we can get a 6 for him at this point. He has proved he can be effective in other systems. If there is a merciful football god, he will let us package Moore for a decent WR.
Using the eyes, stats being what they were...Miller ran harder, more aggressively, and more instinctively than Thomas. And given their respective size and experience, it should be the other way around.
Chris, what are your thoughts on Hartline? He wasn't exactly a burner before, now he has missed the whole preseason. Why is everybody assuming he is a lock to make the roster? I would much rather trade for Jones and start him Matthews with Bess in the slot. Where do you think Hartline fits in? Thanks, I will hang up and listen!
