Interesting read on Lazor

I always get glassy-eyed whenever I read an article based on "someone I trust told me".

The rest of the article we already knew.

 

I think many people on this forum are so happy Sherman is no longer the OC, they probably give Lazor more credit than he deserves as savior for the Dolphins offense going forward. The fact is that Lazor has NEVER been an OC in the NFL before. At Virginia, as the OC, the offense did not improve year to year, but instead its stats went from good to bad over his three years on the job.

Perhaps Lazor will come in and be a better OC for the Dolphins than Sherman was, but right now he is just another first time coordinator in the NFL who needs to show he can develop offensive games plans which actually work against NFL defenses.

 

"However, it's safe to say that the days of defenses knowing what the Dolphins are doing, the days of seeing Mike Wallace only lined up on the right side of the field, and the days of seeing WR screens on 4th & 5 are long gone."



That alone gave me a stiffie.

 

When did we run a WR screen on 4th and 5? Haha, we weren't THAT smart. It was a TE screen and thankfully Charles Clay is a good player.

 

I don't think many of us truly believe that Lazor played a bigger role than Chip in Foles' development. Kelly is an offensive genius who has made super-efficient QBs out of pretty much every one he's coached. I remember hearing an interview with him where he said that big hands are the main things a QB needs. He said he can make any big-handed QB good. Foles is the case in point.

The main reason for optimism is that Lazor isn't Mike Sherman. It's that simple for me. I do give Sherman credit for getting Tannehill to this point. But clearly he didn't have NFL chops when it came to play design and play calling. Hoping Lazor brings those two things to the table.

 

Its a case of not really knowing what Lazor brings, but we do have to assume he will bring some more modern concepts than Sherman. Unless of course Philbin is the one behind the garbage play calling we have had on offense the last two years. We will see. If we are still making inept calls at the worst times or making no halftime adjustments then we have to assume Philbin is to blame and we need to move on from him.

 

The fact Philbin didn't want to fire Sherman but was forced to by Ross, leads me to believe that Philbin was happy with the play calling the past two seasons. Philbin's job is on the line this season and therefore it would not surprise me in the least if he takes more control over the play calling. You have to wonder how much confidence he will have in an OC who has never held that position in the NFL before.

 

Sherman openly blamed the lack of offensive production on poor play execution though, and to some extent that is true. We didn't have the players, primarily on OLine and running back for some of what he wanted to do - but he continued to call plays we were poor at executing and rarely adapted to his player's strengths, while his play design never seemed to improve at all.

Lazor should have an easier time of it with the revamped OLine, healthy receivers, and Moreno in the backfield. The fact that Lazor has worked under so many good coaches, should help us immensely.

 

My issue with Sherman's offense was that it failed to build in good RAC opportunities and get guys in space. This is partly because of Tannehill's comfort level, but so many of Sherman's plays called for routes that either came back towards the LOS or broke directly towards the sidelines in small areas. Receivers cannot turn those routes into big plays. These kinds of passes made Tannehill do all the work himself because we were getting so little RAC yardage.

I see so many other offenses give their QB an easy throw while also giving the receiver an opportunity to do something with it after the catch. This offense (and Tannehill) needs easy yards in the worst way. It always looked like a huge effort for us to get even two first downs in a row because Tannehill was usually squeezing it into tight windows and the guy got dropped right away. Throwing to Moreno should make a difference.

 

That was thoroughly depressing. No, even though Kelly may have been responsible for a lot of Foles' success and it was his ideas and schemes, etc, I have to believe Lazor had to pick up and know those elements of his game. He had to help implement and coach up those Kelly philosophies or whatever. Kelly couldn't have implemented it all himself, He has to have help from his coaches to get it done. Lazor worked with Kelly and Foles. So, I don't think that necessarily discredits Lazor and what he can bring to the table. If anything, just the opposite. The article could just be a bit of stirring the sh-t storm. They know that a lot of fans have been really looking forward to what Lazor can do with Tannehill, so it may be just a way staring some controversy for ratings and hits or whatever. Who knows? Man, we have to hope. What else?

 

The first paragraph is an absolute contradiction, if Sherman did well with catering the offense to Ryan's strength he would of used more rollouts...dumb

2nd paragraph is on point, Ryan does not have good touch when he needs , he's gets lucky from time to time, but he struggles when it comes to touch throws, and that goes for anywhere on the field..I see him improving a big but it's one of his weaknesses.

 

I think this is partly due to our WRs as well. Brian Hartline is a magician near the sideline. Over the middle though he's highly mediocre. Once we lost Gibson we didn't have a guy who could go over the middle and make catches. Please don't tell me Rishard either guys, I've never seen a Dolphin who contributed less get more praise. Hes the 4th/5th WR on most teams.

We need to not only run schemes yhat create space but have players who can use space well and create extra.

 

Well the new offense looks brighter to me thogh...
At least it SHOULD BE better than Sherman did. Otherwise we will lost faith on Tannehill, Lazor and even Philbin too.
All i want to see is development.

 

Not sure what the worrying is about. This:

That's the only important bit of info. In improving the play calling (plus the improved opine talent and coaching we got) Tannehill will make a dramatic improvement.

 

I have heard the same with respect to Kelly's micromanaging the quarterback. Lazor had a very defined set of duties in Philadelphia, from what I heard.

 

Slightly off topic alert: It's interesting to me how despised Mike Sherman is and how much Dan Henning was defended back in the day. Henning was so much more inept than Sherman, IMHO.

Don't get me wrong. I lost no sleep when Sherman was fired, but there were times that I didn't hate his play calling. He was aggressive even if it didn't always work.

Back on topic: I'm with everyone else, I don't think many of us really thought Lazor had more to do with Foles than Chip Kelly. But here's hoping he can improve Miami's offense and not end up just being Tony Sparano's Brian Daboll to Joe Philbin. Different players, different coaches, different styles, etc. etc. but history has an ugly way of repeating itself with these Miami Dolphins.

 

I consider Dan Henning to be a lot more of a dinosaur than Mike Sherman for sure.

I don't even consider Sherman to have been particularly bad. I think was very unhappy with some of the parts he had to work with and he called plays as if he were unhappy with those parts. You could especially see this on short yardage plays when he consistently chose non-traditional play calls over straight up dive or QB sneak plays. This was more a reflection on his unhappiness with the state of the roster than it was his inherently being a poor play caller.

 

I don't think anyone thought Chip Kelly played no role in Foles' development, and I have no real solid evidence on how much was Lazor and how much was Kelly (or how much was just the light coming on for Foles regardless of coaching), but I think there is reason to doubt that it was mostly Kelly. First, Kelly was never a QB or a QB coach, so it's not like developing QBs has really been his thing. He started his career as a defensive coach and also coached RBs and OL before becoming the OC at Oregon in 2007-08. At Oregon, he never developed any QB into an NFL starting-caliber QB or even an elite college QB, except Mariotta (we'll see what he becomes in the NFL). Last year, in his first NFL head coaching gig, I think it is pretty doubtful that he spent much of training camp, preseason or the first month of the season tutoring the backup QB. Yet, when Foles was thrust into the starting role he succeeded immediately. In his first 2 starts, he was 38 fo 56 for 493 yards, 5 TDs and 0 INTs, with a rating north of 120. It seems pretty doubtful that, with all of the responsibilities of HC, it took Kelly just a week or so to get Foles from raw 2nd year guy to one of the most efficient QBs of all time (albeit in a very small sample size). And Foles pretty much stayed at that level for the rest of the season -- it's not like he improved dramatically as Kelly got more time to spend with him. Of course, that doesn't mean the credit all goes to Lazor either. But I find it incredibly hard to believe that Kelly spent much, if any, real time developing his backup QB during his first preseason and first month as an NFL head coach.