One thought on Tannehill and the offense.....So Far...THis Season.

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.

"Tin Indian wrote:

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.

not to mention you don't think they have film from last year????

"dolphin25 wrote:

not to mention you don't think they have film from last year????

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?

"MonstBlitz wrote:

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.

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 is the same plays and the same playbook. It should not matter who the WR's are.

"cdnfinfan wrote:

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?

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.

"dolphin25 wrote:

It is the same plays and the same playbook. It should not matter who the WR's are.

but IS it the same plays and same playbook?
you don't think they are making any changes, adjustments, "wrinkles"?

"dolphin25 wrote:

It is the same plays and the same playbook. It should not matter who the WR's are.

While I don't agree with the OP, what does this mean?

How can it not matter who the receivers are?

Tannehill sucks. If anyone disagrees, we can have the discussion here. :shifty:

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.

"RGF wrote:

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?

"Finster wrote:

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.

"dolphin25 wrote:

What would not vanilla be on offense exactly? What call did they not call that would make them unvanilla?

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.

"cbrad wrote:

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.

"Aqua4Ever04 wrote:

Bill Belichick would disagree with that. On the "Do Your Job" documentary, they put in packages for the post-season after their week four game last year. Teams absolutely save plays for certain games.

Now I'm sure if we needed a touchdown near the end of the game or a big play, whatever, that they would've dipped into that secret bucket of plays. BUt why use them if you don't have to? Jarvis' punt return allowed us to do that.

Yeah, but those "plays" are probably either illegal or counters to information they got illegally.

"cdnfinfan wrote:

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?

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...

"cdnfinfan wrote:

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?

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/multimedia/videos/Lazor-Analyzes-State-Of-The-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.