Anyone else think that maybe this offense was playing a little more Vanilla this past week(less roll outs by Tannehill, less shots at the big play,etc) because we WERE playing Washington? The less tape we have going in to the Buffalo game about our offense the better off we will be...IMO Maybe the team was using these weaker Washington and Jacksonville games to set up something later on? Buffalo's Defense is crazy right now. Rex is a defensive Genius. SO By giving them more tape of our play they would be able to game plan for everything. I think by Playing softer, and more vanilla in these first few games might actually HELP us in the end(assuming we still win) Thoughts?
Sure there could be something to that. Neither Washington nor the Jag's are all that good, maybe you don't want to give up the farm before you need too. If that is the case then we could expect more of the same this week, but I am not holding my breathe on that being the case.
It could also be the reason they didn;t rush Parker in to the game. WHo knows, we are all just speculating here. BUt Part of me thinks they had some kind of plan with these two early games. THe back to back Buf/NYJ games are gonna make or break us IMO. ANd I think the team is looking ahead to those games whether they want to admit it or not.
No chance. Teams don't play vanilla in the regular season. It's a 16 game schedule. Every game is critical. Any coach who would play less than full throttle in a regular season game, to the point where the game is close or in question, should be fired.
I'm sure they didn't want to go too deep in the playbook, but this approach only works if we win. And honestly it got a little too close to not meeting that criteria then I like. I think Tannehill had opening day jitters. There was a lot of hype going into the season. Probably a little more pressure then he was expecting. This guy has stood in the pocket and taken monster hits and has not gotten happy feet in earlier years, but I felt like I saw a little bit of that nervous energy in him every time he dropped back this game. I don't think this is a problem, it will get sorted out. We will probably start seeing the real Tannehill by the 2nd half of this weeks game. For me I have 2 bigger concerns of things we should have seen even if they were holding back in the playbook. 1. We still can't run on short yardage downs. We need this toughness. If we can start doing this we force other teams to try to adjust to what we are doing. Right now we are forced to try to finesse everything, and essentially we let the other team dictate what we do. 2. I expected Suh to bring an attitude to the whole defense. I wanted to see hits that made the other team regret fighting for extra yardage. I wanted to see their team forced to abandon the run. Honestly outside of Jones I really didn't see any hits that made me want to believe in this defense. If they aren't doing this now, when they are all fresh and healthy, I'm not sure we can expect to see it later. With all of that said, every team can have a bad day, and in the end we are 1 and 0. Right now my anxiety is only about a 4 out of 10.
sure they can look at the film of Wallace and hartline and clay....I'm sure that should help them out you don't think the offense made adjustements in the offseason?
Maybe going in to this game they weren't expecting it to be so close. Maybe they weren't expecting the defense to give up 38 minutes of TOP and HUGE time consuming drives. again, this is all speculation, no one knows how it is. These are just my thoughts.
It will help us in the end, but I don't belive it was by design. In Lazor's press conference, he talked about how they held the ball for so little time that he wasn't able to call a lot of plays that he would have liked to.
but IS it the same plays and same playbook? you don't think they are making any changes, adjustments, "wrinkles"?
No sane head coach ( and I'd like to think Philbin included ) , would go into week 1 on the road and think their team is good enough to overlook their first opponent and play conservatively. Talk about sending the wrong message to the players. Huge recipe for disaster. I dont think for one minute our offensive playcalling played down to the opponent purposely.
I'm not sure if they planned to be conservatively but It wouldn't surprise me if they planned to hold something back
I've watched the game a couple of times now and I thought both the offense and defense were very vanilla. I think the idea that the coaches didn't want a ton of new stuff on film was spot on. They didn't exactly pull out all the stops against the Redskins.
What would not vanilla be on offense exactly? What call did they not call that would make them unvanilla?
Even if they went vanilla, if thats possible as Dolphin25 points out, shouldn't they still have whipped a much inferior team, do we have to unleash all the tricks against Wash?
"inferior" is subjective. BUt I don't think the dolphins were expecting the the skins to totally dominate the run game and eat up so much clock in the first quarter.
more rollouts and qb draws for Tannehill. set runs for him to get out of the pocket more More deep shots down field to Stills or other big plays. Maybe they planned to do these but didn't have the time, mnaybe they are saving stuff for straonger teams.
I'm sure there are more plays in the playbook than were used in the Skins game. But I don't think that's due to a deliberate attempt to keep something secret - winning a game is too important for that. I think if they didn't use something in the playbook it's because they didn't think it was necessary.
thats kind of what Im saying. I think they planned on holding stuff back(unless they needed it) as they are going to need something to beat Buffalo...and maybe even the Jets. We CANNOT afford to lose either one of those games. Losing those games at home would be a killer for us this season. We could probably survive one of those as a loss but not both.
I think a good coach always plays to win. looked to me like Philbin & Co. were simply out-coached, winning by the grace of a superior roster. having said that, they better have a thing or two they're still working on to release in the up-coming games...
I think this game had less to do with being vanilla and much more to do with the offense not executing well. Didn't run well in the 1st half and missed on long throws that were there. The designed roll out to the left when Tannehill overthrew Sims in the end zone wasn't vanilla. If Tannehill hits Sims, Stills near the end zone and Matthews with 5 minutes left in the game we wouldn't be talking about a lack of big plays, but how this offense is now incorporating them. We also would have seen the offense score at least in the mid-20s, if not more, rather than a meager 10 points. As far as taking shots at big plays that falls on the QB. Here is a clip from Lazor regarding taking shots at making big plays in which he addresses it answering the first question on the clip (note, this isn't a presser following yesterday's game, but one last December): http://www.miamidolphins.com/multim...-Offense/ee5ff769-337b-41aa-8020-bbe30c3308d9 Personally, one of my biggest criticisms of Tannehill is he doesn't play with a big-play mindset. How many times on a 3rd and long, even when the OL is giving him protection, does he opt to dump the ball off 2-3 yards pass the line-of-scrimmage with defenders in position to easily keep the receiver from the 1st down rather than giving the receivers a chance to get open beyond the 1st down marker. Saw it again yesterday. Honestly, it reminds me a lot of how Henne played the game under Fasano / Henning. There was a lot of talk about getting "chunk yardage" but Henne played for "chunk inches." It is the reason Tannehill's QB rating is a high as it is. The one stat that skews passer rating more than any other is completion %. That stat, more than any other, over-inflates a QBs true effectiveness.
IN regards to the big play mindset I'd kinda have to agree. but in a 3rd and long situation the defenses are setup to guard against that. and most of the time they are successful in the stop. taking the under route hoping your man can break a tackle is probably a better play(percentage wise) than throwing in deep with 5-6 defenders floating around. the problem to me is one 1st and 2nd downs. I sometimes feel like they don't set themselves up properly to make a big play. I really love how well coached teams setup big plays early on by playing with the defenses. Thats what made the play-action so effective for such a long time. Run the ball with success then on 2and 1 when they are expecting you to run again you go for the deep ball. I don't see that type of mentatlity with this team and with Philbin.
That would speak to Philbin being as happy with the game as he seemed to be, and I fully believe teams do that kind of stuff. Even Sporano did it with the WC...that's probably not the best support for the argument, just came to mind.