Except my point wasn't that we were supposed to destroy them or anyone else. My point was, and is, that too often the Dolphins have seemed to start with a lack of pep or fire or confidence (call it whatever you will), and there's just this sort of feeling hovering over the team that they aren't quite together and aren't playing as well as we know they can. That's what I'm talking about. We can come up against opponents like the Patriots engaged and on fire and take the fight to them, but then face lesser opponents and it's almost as though there this fear in the air. If that's the case, and it's a thing, then to me, that's a leadership issue and it isn't one that will just go away by itself, which makes it somewhat concerning. I don't care to see the Dolphins destroy everyone, every time - even 'inferior' opponents. I just really want to see them gel permanently, and fight consistently.
Or he had to come up with some sort of effective defense against the same tactics as he saw last week with what is supposed to be one of the singularly best front sevens in the NFL, when he had every reason to believe that was exactly what was coming.
The D allowed 13 points, 4th lowest output for the Jets this year. That's not effective? Second, what you're describing isn't realistic. This team is built to disrupt the pass, that's the identity on D. It's not something you can snap your fingers and change on a whim anymore than Lazor can snap his fingers and make the offense a power run, deep passing unit. So while it's fruatrating to see the Jets running all over the place, stopping the pass is still the key to having overall success on D, even if if doesn't do us much good a few times a year. Meanwhile Rex is riding his ground and pound philosophy right into the unemployment line, like Sparano before him.
The easy answer is loading the box, but that's risky with Wilson and Stanford at CB and it leaves no one to clean up if the RB finds a gap. Also. Had the offense scored some points early on NY would have been forced outta that run, run, run stuff.
Why is it a legitimate weakness? Is the talent insufficient? Is someone hurt? This strikes me as an attempt to create plausible deniability on the behalf of the coaching staff.
We were running a CB off the street and Wilson. That makes it hard to stack the box to stop the run. And hey, don't know if you heard, we actually held them to 13 points and, get this.....we won too. And BTW, if laying out common sense like "scheme can't solve everything", comes across as an agenda, then maybe, just maybe it seems that way because of the OTHER person's agenda.
No, it's not effective given the circumstances. You're not facing a team with an offensive line who can impose their will on you. You're not facing a team you had to respect the pass at all. You're talking as if we're operating under a computer-game slider in which ability to defend the pass comes with the surrender of an ability to stop the run. You could have come in with the depth to run a 3-4 all game without exhausting your Tackles. You could have come into the game heavily running a Bear front to negate the effect of your interior linemen getting wrecked by double teams. You could have gone with any number of running/short yardage packages that everyone has in their playbook.
Yes I would say talent is insufficient to stop the run. Wheeler and Misi are not good linebackers. Put that with our 2nd CB in this game(whether it was Stanford or Wilson) couldn't tackle anything but air, and then our safety on one side not being able to make a tackle, it is a perfect receipt for getting it run down our throats.
No, not really, in the grand scheme of things. Especially not when very early on you know the Jets can't pass the ball.
Great point, i was not aware of that and help to put things in better perspective. It seemed Coyle could have loaded up the box a little earlier when we were getting trampled early on, but you never know- by NOT loading up right away, its possible he saved the D from getting burnt by play action with walk-ons in the secondary. We won with Coyle's defense last night, so i'll take it.
Wheeler has been in fact downright good this year, and Misi most certainly isn't any sort of hindrance.
Yes really in the grand scheme of things. The defense picked their poison and it worked as they allowed only 13 pts.
That's fair, but games like this are normal. Sure, more consistency would be great, but sometimes you just need to give credit to the other team. The Jets had a good game plan. Thankfully, we still found a way to win.
The poison that the defense picked was water, and they had every reason to expect it to be water. On what planet is it reasonable to go into a game and decide you're going to take away the weakness of an opponent?
When you have RJ Stanford as your starting CB. That's the planet Coyle was on. You might not agree, but its not a crazy strategy.
Dolphins have long been this way: at least since the early 90s. All too frequently, they lost those games. Be happy with the win and move on.
RJ Stanford isn't a game-destroying liability. He's gotten playing time before, and has several years experience playing for Kevin Coyle in Miami. He was neither particularly heavily targeted, nor were those targets problematic in practice. Not to mention that it was fairly obvious that there was a huge offensive line issue, as all but two passing snaps Smith was hurried. It was a fundamentally bad strategy.
How was a strategy fundamentally bad when not only did allow for a win but only surrendered 13 points? Yes there was a a lot of rushing yards in the first half, but it literally did not hurt us.
I don't have a big problem with the defensive scheme last night. Taking away the ability to throw the ball in a passing league isn't stupid. We played bend but don't break defense knowing our offense should easily outscore their defense. While our offense was hardly prolific last night, you can't fault the defensive strategy employed. It was a safer/conservative strategy, but one that should (and did) work.
I have mixed feelings on this one. Watching them run all over us in the first half was maddening. It is hard to imagine going into a game against the Jets with Geno Smith at QB and not making stopping the run your top priority. Forcing Geno Smith to beat you in the air should have beent he obvious strategy. To see us fail to employ that obvious strategy and just get pummeled by their runnign game was infuriating. On the other hand, our defense is built to stop the pass first. That is the strategy and it is generally a good one. Few teams have the patience to stick to the run even when it is very successful. Eventually they get into a third and long (or even medium) and throw, and if you can stop those throws the drives end. The Jets, however, did have the patience. And even with that patience and doing it pretty effectively, they generally demonstrated why stopping the pass first is a good strategy -- because it is really hard to consistently score when you have to do it all on the ground. Despite their running success and lack of turnovers (until the INT at the very end), they still only scored 13 pts. Also, we did make adjustments to stop the run and did a much better job of it in the second half. I'd have liked to have seen it much earlier, but the bottom line is that we gave up only 13 points and won the game.
My only gripe with that strategy is the Jets were dominating TOP, and our offense could only muster one touchdown last time we played them.
Because those points allowed resulted in you trailing for most of the game, in something that you consciously committed to contest as a ball-control, low-scoring affair. It represents a decision to play a game on what essentially are the most favorable possible terms for your opponent. You had the option of forcing Geno Smith(a quarterback who can't beat anyone) to try and beat you in a situation when you clearly could knock the **** out of him virtually every time he attempted a pass.
It's also rare that you'll find a game in which a team wins convincingly on the basis of such a lopsided emphasis on the run. There typically needs to be balance, as well as efficiency in the passing game. The Jets had neither balance nor efficiency in the passing game. Consequently they were hanging on by a thread even while dominating in the run game.
Stanford has like 6 games where he saw more than 30% of the snap count as a rotational or package guy, and has multiple years in the defense. There's a reason why he was able to come off the street and start here and it wasn't entirely desperation.
Yea standford ws Def one of the reasons Davis and taylor never got on the field. Annoyed me last year but worked out for us this week big time
There's a chance clay, finnegan and taylor all return for the Baltimore game. Oline might be a struggle but whatever, we're clearly used to that
True. One of the reasons for that is that it is hard to consistently compile 12-14 play drives on the ground and actually execute in the red zone when you are one dimensional. I'd have much preferred us to stuff the run and force them to try to beat us with the pass. That said, it may have only taken 2 lucky or fluke plays (or simply good plays by a dangerous player like Harvin) for that strategy to have generated more than 13 points. So while I don't like how we did it, I kinda sorta understand it and find it hard to criticize it too much in light of the result.
I think what's even worse in regards to the defensive coaching is that the solution was so simple, easy, and effective- and it was basically the players who had to ask for it. They just put a freaking safety in the box. They went from giving up 210 yards on 29 carries to giving up 69 on 20. Their yards per rushing attempt went from 7.2 to 3.4, more than in half. They didn't get gouged against the pass. The Jets didn't even try it. RJ Stanford had one completion against him in the second half, on the play right before the interception on that final drive. This game was basically a fish in a barrel type situation, and it's almost like the coaching staff did the equivalent of giving the fish a gun to try and see if it wouldn't shoot back in the middle of its flailing.
The Dolphins very much made a decision to keep it close to where those fluke plays could be an issue. Tannehill made a couple of early mistakes, so they turtled it the entire game as low-risk as possible until the end, where they essentially were forced to play mistake free football or lose.
Point taken. You're basically saying that Coyle strangled the Jets offense when he should have just walked up and shot them in the head. I don't agree but I respect your POV. I wonder how things would have gone had our players done a better job of playing what Coyle called. Dion Jordan, what was he doing on the TD, searching for loose change? Delmas and Wilson let a 7 yard run go for 46, diving at ankles, was that Chris Johnson or Earl Campbell?
The defense called had little bearing on the offense. We trailed because the offense took too long to get going. Again, allowing 13 pts to a hated division rival on primetime, is a recipe for successful defense not failure.
That defense last night is DEFINATELY a recipe for disaster. While giving up 13 pts last night was great...any team that could throw the ball at all would have torched us. The jets were not even thinking about passing. Can you admit being a bit worried about our run defense at this point, because it really scares me.
I think the issue is incorrectly applying what happens in one game to what might happen in another. We are not that team anymore. I've been saying for awhile that you have three different philosophies in winning/coaching: A. Teams that adapt to their own players. B. Teams that adapt to the other team. C. Teams that do both. Philbin and this team is B. Its why our "level" of play changes per opponent. Its why our 3rd quarters this year are so stellar. Its why we're so hesitant with rookies or young players or players who don't get it right away. I don't think we'll look like the same team against Baltimore that we did against the Jets. Just as we didn't look like the same team against Jets that we did against Denver. On top of all that, it was division primetime game.
