Article - ESPN's Cam Wolfe - Why the Dolphins Trust Gaskin

The coaches may not be worried, but I am.

Gaskin could work as part of a running back by committee, but he isn't the answer by himself. He will be break down if he gets gets more than 15 or so carries a game.

In theory, he should be running against Nickel and Dime defenses most of the time. That will help, but going into the season I see a Dolphin team that either scores a TD from outside the red zone or bogs down inside the ten yd line and settles for too many FGs when they can't run the ball effectively.

Please prove me wrong Miami.

We were absolutely planning on drafting Williams out of NC before we got leap-frogged by Denver...the entire league knew that was our plan. I do give the team props for going back to their draft board and not overpaying for a different RB, and we did take Doaks in the final round to provide a little depth/camp competition.

Moving forward though, Gaskin is not a "household name" back and he's not going to terrify any defenses, but I don't think that really matters if the line delivers as promised. As any lineman/line coach will tell you, the first three yards are on the big guys up front and the rest is on the running back. So if the line delivers, then this is a non-issue for Gaskin or any back. Maybe they don't break the run for 20+ very often, but we will move the chains nonetheless.

"KeyFin wrote:

We were absolutely planning on drafting Williams out of NC before we got leap-frogged by Denver...the entire league knew that was our plan. I do give the team props for going back to their draft board and not overpaying for a different RB, and we did take Doaks in the final round to provide a little depth/camp competition.

Moving forward though, Gaskin is not a "household name" back and he's not going to terrify any defenses, but I don't think that really matters if the line delivers as promised. As any lineman/line coach will tell you, the first three yards are on the big guys up front and the rest is on the running back. So if the line delivers, then this is a non-issue for Gaskin or any back. Maybe they don't break the run for 20+ very often, but we will move the chains nonetheless.

Had we drafted Williams, I would feel so, so, so much better about this upcoming season, and the overall direction of the team. As it is, everything they're saying about Gaskin is PR and spin control. They want to make it sound like he was their man all along, but like many, I see him as a nice contributor but I don't think he's ever going to be the man, even for a short span.

Something tells me we pick up a back that is cut/let go in training camp.

I think Gaskin was he man all along. At least they were confident he would get the job done if something better didn't work out, but I don't think they were even looking.
Gaskin had 4 1000 yd seasons at UW, he's VERY dependable, nobody can out train COVID.
Great receiver out of the backfield.
TRUST phin fans,
THE GAS IS ON! HIT THE THROTTLE!
We may not have the Hollywood backfield the sheep all wanted, but we've got some really good FOOTBALL PLAYERS in the room.
Put it this way, Can they, as a group get us 2k on the ground and 1k passing? That would be a par for this course and I think they can get 3k running and 1500 passing pretty easy myself, which is championship football
Will August flipping EVER get here?

They're not going to win by running the ball. The only way this team will ever win is if Tua becomes the elite quarterback I expect him to be.

They focused on that by getting him a bunch of players to throw the ball to.

Running back is a dead position and of little to no importance.

"TheHighExhaulted wrote:

They're not going to win by running the ball. The only way this team will ever win is if Tua becomes the elite quarterback I expect him to be.

They focused on that by getting him a bunch of players to throw the ball to.

Running back is a dead position and of little to no importance.

LOL. A dead position. You think teams are going to be passing the ball 100% of the time soon, like 12 year olds playing Madden?

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

LOL. A dead position. You think teams are going to be passing the ball 100% of the time soon, like 12 year olds playing Madden?

You will be looking at over a 60% pass play selection on average in the NFL this season. And, it will only go up when the NFL catches on to the whole analytics craze.

Passing = points

"TheHighExhaulted wrote:

You will be looking at over a 60% pass play selection on average in the NFL this season. And, it will only go up when the NFL catches on to the whole analytics craze.

Passing = points

Analytics have made baseball much less enjoyable to watch. No shock it would happen to football too, I guess.

They weren’t worried heading into last season and we saw how that turned out... 1.4 yards after contact per rushing attempt (dead last), 3.9 ypc (29th), 2.5 ypc before contact (19th). Only team in football without a run longer than 31 yards.

"Drizzy wrote:

They weren’t worried heading into last season and we saw how that turned out... 1.4 yards after contact per rushing attempt (dead last), 3.9 ypc (29th), 2.5 ypc before contact (19th). Only team in football without a run longer than 31 yards.

At this point, I'm just going to hope that they take the game plan in the home game vs New England, and try to spread it out over 17 games. The Fins had a season high 250 rushing yards that day, and their next best was only 138 vs the Jags. And with that/because of that, I felt that Tua had by far his best day of the season as well.

"Drizzy wrote:

They weren’t worried heading into last season and we saw how that turned out... 1.4 yards after contact per rushing attempt (dead last), 3.9 ypc (29th), 2.5 ypc before contact (19th). Only team in football without a run longer than 31 yards.

With a rookie QB that struggled pushing the ball down the field and one of the youngest OL’s in the NFL. That’s gonna get better with the speed we added, hopefully Tuas development and a better OL.

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

At this point, I'm just going to hope that they take the game plan in the home game vs New England, and try to spread it out over 17 games. The Fins had a season high 250 rushing yards that day, and their next best was only 138 vs the Jags. And with that/because of that, I felt that Tua had by far his best day of the season as well.

In that game, we basically "New Englanded" the Pats by demanding for them to stop our run game before we'd focus on anything else. I remember thinking how great it was to beat them with their own game plan.

From 2001 to 2021, the Patriots had 11 different running backs lead the team in rushing and they won six Super Bowls.....I'm not worried about our running game. It will come.

"Ronnie Bass wrote:

From 2001 to 2021, the Patriots had 11 different running backs lead the team in rushing and they won six Super Bowls.....I'm not worried about our running game. It will come.

The running game will solve itself with a great passing attack.

Look at recent super bowl running backs...

Damien Williams
Sony Michel
James White
Legarrete Blount
CJ Anderson

"Ronnie Bass wrote:

From 2001 to 2021, the Patriots had 11 different running backs lead the team in rushing and they won six Super Bowls.....I'm not worried about our running game. It will come.

I don't believe that you can extrapolate anything that the Patriots have done to another team, for many reasons. When you remove them from the equation, you get a much better average for how the rest of the league really operates.

And when you look at the other teams that make it to the Divisional Round of the playoffs every season (ie, the top quarter of the league essentially), most of the time they have a good running back.

"Unlucky 13 wrote:

I don't believe that you can extrapolate anything that the Patriots have done to another team, for many reasons. When you remove them from the equation, you get a much better average for how the rest of the league really operates.

And when you look at the other teams that make it to the Divisional Round of the playoffs every season (ie, the top quarter of the league essentially), most of the time they have a good running back.

Devin Singletary - 700 yards rushing
Clyde Edwards Helaire - 800 yards rushing
Ronald Jones - 1000 yards yards rushing
Aaron Jones - 1100 yards rushing
Alvin Kamara - 900 yards rushing
Cam Akers - 600 yards rushing
JK Dobbins - 800 yards rushing
Nick Chubb - 1000 yards rushing

Some of them are good players but I don't believe they are relied upon as much as you think. Just look at the quarterbacks of those respective players teams. They all have elite/elite-ish quarterbacks. None of those teams were saying we're going to rely on our running game to advance us in the playoffs.

"Drizzy wrote:

They weren’t worried heading into last season and we saw how that turned out... 1.4 yards after contact per rushing attempt (dead last), 3.9 ypc (29th), 2.5 ypc before contact (19th). Only team in football without a run longer than 31 yards.

Definitely more on the offensive line. I'm fairly sure PFF is very adamant about running success being more reliant on offensive line play than who you have at running back and I actually trust them on that. Having a talented running back on a rookie contract is a nice luxury but the value would need to be pretty damn good and you're team would have to be at the right stage of their respective evolution to warrant taking a guy high anymore.

"KeyFin wrote:

We were absolutely planning on drafting Williams out of NC before we got leap-frogged by Denver...the entire league knew that was our plan. I do give the team props for going back to their draft board and not overpaying for a different RB, and we did take Doaks in the final round to provide a little depth/camp competition.

Moving forward though, Gaskin is not a "household name" back and he's not going to terrify any defenses, but I don't think that really matters if the line delivers as promised. As any lineman/line coach will tell you, the first three yards are on the big guys up front and the rest is on the running back. So if the line delivers, then this is a non-issue for Gaskin or any back. Maybe they don't break the run for 20+ very often, but we will move the chains nonetheless.

Yeah I'm not sure. It seems like this regime doesn't prioritize the position like that. We've now had 2 years of evidence. It could be the spin cycle but apparently Holland was the target. We had no qualms moving up for an offensive linemen so why wouldn't they have moved up for Williams if they wanted him so desperately?

"invid wrote:

Yeah I'm not sure. It seems like this regime doesn't prioritize the position like that. We've now had 2 years of evidence. It could be the spin cycle but apparently Holland was the target. We had no qualms moving up for an offensive linemen so why wouldn't they have moved up for Williams if they wanted him so desperately?

You're probably right, but all I can do is hope that they change their minds about it, because I'm not changing mine. *shrug*

"invid wrote:

Yeah I'm not sure. It seems like this regime doesn't prioritize the position like that. We've now had 2 years of evidence. It could be the spin cycle but apparently Holland was the target. We had no qualms moving up for an offensive linemen so why wouldn't they have moved up for Williams if they wanted him so desperately?

He fell to us as expected, then Devner jumped us at the last second and took him 1 pick earlier.

"KeyFin wrote:

He fell to us as expected, then Devner jumped us at the last second and took him 1 pick earlier.

Yeah but there have been reports that even if Williams had fallen to our spot, we would have still picked Holland.