Watching the game live tells the story of the flow of the game. But the ability to go back and watch the tape can tell you the "why" of how a game plays out. Why did Miami's season debut seem so slow on defense? How much did the "new" defensive scheme contribute to the issues? And how did things change down the stretch?
READ: Defensive Game Grades
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It's the lockdown podcast network, your team every day. This episode is brought to you by FX's American sports story, Aaron Hernandez. From executive producer Ryan Murphy comes the first installment of FX's American sports story. The limited series charts the rise and fall of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez and explores the disparate strands of his identity, his family, his career, his suicide, and their legacy in sports and American culture. FX's American sports story, Aaron Hernandez, premier September 17th on FX, stream on Hulu. We're putting our final touches on the Dolphins win against Jacksonville in week one. I've reviewed the defensive game tape and have ample notes in player grades that we're going to cover here today. Unlocked on dolphins. You are locked on dolphins. Your daily Miami Dolphins podcast part of the locked on podcast network, your team every day. All right, Miami, welcome to another episode of locked on dolphins. It is your team every day here on the lockdown network. I'm your host cow crabs, a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan host of locked on dolphins cohost of locked on NFL scouting, author of touchdown Miami and the NFL draft lead over at the 30 third team. You can find all of our shows here on the lockdown network on YouTube or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, tip of the cap to our every dayers because it is your team every day. We don't just say it. We live it here on the locked on network putting the final touches on Jacksonville. And it's obviously even tougher than normal because it's a short week. The Dolphins play on Thursday night. So we've finished looking at the offensive and defensive game tapes. If you're interested in seeing the full entirety of the player grades, if you're watching on YouTube, I've got good news for you. We're going to put the defensive grades up here from sub stack on touchdown Miami. And if you are listening, we will read through the grades and make sure that you are in the loop. But I'll also put a link in the show description to sub stack, which has the individual game grades. And then as the season goes on, there's going to be aggregate game games for the entirety of the season. And then there's also going to be some coaches film all 22 that is available on sub stack for you to watch and consume and compliment us breaking down some of the things that stood out to me throughout the course of the game. Defensively, for the Dolphins, obviously this game shifted in the second half. We're going to talk top performers first. I want to make sure that we spotlight the game plan, the menu of the game plan, what changed in the second half, who are looking for more from next week or in two days. So lots to get to. Let's start with individual player performances that stood out to me the most in a good way with my grading of the game tape. So I'm grading in effectively a parallel way to how a pro football focus does the initial portion of their grading. I'm not converting it to a 100 point scale. I'm looking at for every play, if you meet expectations, you're a net zero. If you are above expectations, depending on how spectacular or how good the play and the execution of it is above expectation, you can get a half point, you can get a point and a half, you can get up to two points. And that equally goes the other way. If you mark Sanchez, but fumble, that's minus two points. You fumbled, but you fumbled yourself and you ran into the rear end of one of your offensive alignment on the screen on the process, all time bad play, right? So the objective is in every game, who plays how many snaps? What is their total aggregation of above or below expectations? And what is the per snap average of that, which is what we're looking at here. Our top five performers, for me and my estimation of the game film, are names that you're going to recognize, Jalen Phillips played 34 snaps, was the highest per snap above expectations contributions for the Dolphins defense. Jovan Holland played 53 snaps with the obvious punch outs, the breakup on third down, had a couple of other really big pursuit plays throughout the course of the second half of the game. Kaleigh's Campbell, 35 snaps, I thought it was kind of the inverse of him, he's splashed more early. He had four or five really good plays in the first half. One of the few guys that I think played his best football in the first half. Emmanuel Agba, big story for him coming back to this defense. Not a player that I expected to see back throughout much of the off season. Obviously, the Shaq Barrett retirement changed some things and I thought he did some nice things. Now, I think there's a pretty significant drop off after Phillips, Holland and Campbell and the contributions of everybody else defensively. Emmanuel Agba and Zach Seal are round out the top five, they played 40 and 46 snaps respectfully. But those were the guys who stood out to me the most in a good way throughout the course of this football game. Guys who made the most consistent splash plays without the negatives. Jalen Phillips, what he was able to do in this game as quickly as he was able to come back from an Achilles injury was nothing short of spectacular. The motor, the first step explosiveness was still there. I thought you most noticed where Jalen wasn't fully whole in the way that he was last year when he was healthy when he was trying to turn the corner. But because he still had the first step and because he has the length and because he's refined his hands, he still claimed the corner on a number of occasions throughout the course of this football. And him being the closer that he is and collecting that sack to kill that drive for Jacksonville is just too good of a story. You couldn't have possibly dreamed anything better up. For Javon Holland, moved him all around. I thought that was the thing that stood out the most to me for Javon Holland beyond the punch out, which was a game shifting, game saving play beyond the past breakup in the second half on a third down to get the dolphins defense off the field. The dolphins kind of flashed some big nickel. They only had a handful of reps with three, three safeties on the field, but Javon was the one who was low. Javon was the one who was working on the second level. The dolphins did all kinds and when I say all kinds, I mean all freaking kinds of variations in coverage and menu, the tweet that I wanted to share came courtesy of Coach Vass at Coach Vass on Twitter, who's a brilliant, brilliant mind in the game of football. And I was DMing with him a little bit over the course of the weekend, or I guess yesterday, as he had sent out this comment and we just started chatting, watching the dolphins defense all 22. Coach Vass has a patron. He's a coach, a consultant, brilliant, consults with college and pro coaches, does some coaching clinics. He's had me on his YouTube a couple of times to break down Miami Dolphins defensive performances with coaches film going back to like that Ravens game in 2021 on Thursday night football. I can't recommend this stuff enough, but this was his commentary on the dolphins defense and know that Javon Highlands is a big piece of this. Watching the dolphins defense all 22 and they're going to be fun to watch this year schematically, multiple one to two high structure disguises, different variations of three buzz, all out zero blitzes, zone quarters and half combos by formation, three cloud, multiple two deep corner sims, a variation of spike one rat, three and two deep fire zones, different variations of cover three zone and match, and even some bear and tilt six one front looks. More looks in one game than most teams will run in a complete season and all in game one. I'd say that's more different types of schemes than both the floors and fangeal stuff combined. Very impressive stuff. Jivon has a hand in a lot of that and you know who didn't have a hand a lot of that? Jalen Ramsey, who played outside corner for 35 out of the 41 snaps that he played in this football game. And I think Jalen Ramsey maybe gets a little bit of a tough B because the Brian Thomas Jr. touchdown, not the past interference, but the touchdown was actually a Tampa two coverage for Miami defensively. And Jordan Poller was the deep half player that Thomas gets behind. And probably some communication issues for Miami would be my guess with with they have David Long running the pole, which is the Tampa two dropper where Thomas comes through that and comes out the backside and gets behind. But Jacksonville had ran a hook a deep hook on the goal line. And Ramsey sinks and carries it because he's the flat defender in Tampa two and there's no threat flat threat. So he he sinks and carries that. And the hook curl linebacker had pushed and kind of taken away the throwing window and Jordan Poyer still squeezes down on that because he didn't realize that the deep cross was coming from the backside. But technically, Jordan Poyer was the deep half player. But everybody sees it on Ramsey. Oh, Brian Thomas cooked Jalen Ramsey. Well, he's playing flat responsibility in Tampa to from a backside through offended. What are we talking about? But I see the hero there. The point being the menu that Miami has and we talked about the versatility of the players. And specifically on the back and what that allows you to do defensively. Javan Holland was a big, big, big piece of that puzzle. Clay's came on the sack early. He had a run stuff for tackle for loss early. Had a really nice contribution on the dolphins fourth down stop, locking up a tight end at the point of attack and pinching down into a gap to force tank bigs beat to get squeezed at the line of scrimmage. And I think was that was it the third down play is the third downplay. So nice run stuff for clay's camel in that regard. Obviously, man, Yolabba had the win on the twist stunt with Zach Sealer, who I thought started slow. A lot of thoughts on some more of the big names for the dolphins defensively and where they played early and what changed. We'll get into some of that next here on this episode lock on dolphins. So make sure that you stick with us. Men, when you're leaving the house, you get the same routine as I do probably it's phone, wallet keys, house, my hair. If you're experiencing hair loss, you may not be so confident in how you step out the door. It's time to get that confidence back and restore your hair with hymns. Hymns provides access to a range of hair loss treatments that work all from the comfort of your couch. Hymns makes reading hair loss simple with doctor trusted treatment options and clinically proven ingredients like Finasteride and Meroxidil that can regrow hair in as little as three to six months. I've been on a hair treatment play for about two years. I looked back at some of my pictures from four or five years ago and my crown was gone, right? 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But it's names like Jordan Poyer, who was solid, but did drive on that throw for Brian Thomas for a touchdown. And also had a face mask penalty on the sideline. Unfortunately, you know, he's wearing the extra support for his thumb got stuck in the dude's helmet. It's one of those things, but it's still a 15 year penalty. I got a great you for it. It's a 15 year family. His contributions may be not where I think he's capable of being. Jalen Ramsey played at times and Jalen Ramsey said so himself on social media after the game when he got his love from Emmanuel Ocho for the fourth down play, which we're going to talk about here in just a minute because we're going to talk favorite moments. Played like a guy who hadn't practiced in two through weeks. And I think he's going to be fine long term. There's going to be games for Jalen Ramsey is the best player on the field. And the dolphins had this performance defensively in the second half with a better performance from Jalen Ramsey, a better performance from Zach Sealer, who I thought started very slow. Zach Sealer got a lot of extra attention and then Kaleas Campbell made some of the plays in one on one and the posing team said, well, wait, or Jacksonville said, wait a minute. Kaleas still got it. We can't just throw throw the kitchen sink. It's Zach Sealer. So Zach, I thought got better as the game went on. I thought Jalen Ramsey got better as the game went on. The linebackers really buckled down in the last 20 minutes and I thought that made the difference. Their big miscommunication was the 26 yard run from Tank Bigsby. When you had them backed up after the second coffin corner punt from Jake Bailey, the dolphins were in their base three, four front, I bad his hand in the dirt. And everybody kind of fanned out where you had somebody covered up over each guard. And then you had both linebackers in David Long and Jordan Brooks stacked behind them, stacked behind those defensive tackles over top of the guards. And the tackles fanned out. And it looked like the linebackers were going to run a twist where David Long was going to cross Mitch Morse's face first. And then Jordan Brooks was going to come across and take the second gap. And they were going to run a linebacker twist for gap responsibility. David Long goes first, but then sees the space and he swims back and comes back to the side that he was going to anyway. And Jordan Brooks is letting David Long go. He's like, all right, he's going across his face. So I'm going to jump into this gap. So both linebackers jumped in the same egg gap. And what ends up happening at Tank Bigsby is running straight down hill. And he says, okay, I need to make a 10 degree cut to my right. And now there's a gap with nobody in it and nobody on the second level. He explodes through that gap because those linebackers both jumped through that same gap. And there were a number of occasions in the first half, very easily correctable issues, just like on the offensive side of the ball, where the linebackers didn't have the feel that they need to yet with how they play off of each other. And hopefully, reps like the ones that they gathered dramatically reduces the incidences of that happening. Because if that's the case and they have a trust of, okay, David's going, so I'm going to scrape over the top if I'm Jordan Brooks, and they're going to run outside with what look like pin pole, and they get a guard outside and Quentin Bell's stretching out the point of attack. And Kater Ko who's outside leverage on him, but there's a tight end that's flowing with it that he's got to stay about outside of. And if I'm Jordan Brooks and I trust that David's getting into that gap, I'll just exchange responsibilities with him scrape over the top. And I can fly over the top of all these defensive linemen and get back into that running backs, hit pocket to make a tackle of the line of scrimmage instead of me stopping to look to play the boot. But David already jumped in the gap. So now there's nobody on the second level and tank big speed goes and picks up almost 10 yards on another chunk run. Examples like that very oddly specific because it's something that happened, right? Those kinds of things were the negative plays that kind of marred the dolphins early. And as it was time to buckle down, did they get fortunate in the fourth quarter with Kater Ko who matched up against Christian Kirk and Christian Kirk not catching that ball where Trevor Lawrence is fading away from pressure. I believe they brought you Von Holland on a pressure and he's fading away from it kind of throws falling off the pitcher's mound and the balls on the fringes of Christian Kirk's catch radius, but he still could have caught the ball on an out route, which they had a switch release to help get the leverage that they want to run the outside break from Kohu and not catch the ball. Yeah, they got fortunate there. They absolutely did. But that's part of the game. And the pressure call helped force an inaccurate throw that then tested the catch radius of the receipt. Favorite moments. I said this on the film review that is living on touchdown Miami with the grades and I've shared it on the YouTube. I will put the link in the show description if you're interested in going and finding it. That fourth down play had about five individual performances at different points throughout the play that made the play. Jalen Ramsey got all his flowers from Emmanuel Acho and rightfully so is a wonderful, amazing effort for Jalen Ramsey to be good eyes. Step up on the edge and run support. The ball gets folded back all the way across the grain, run through 20 other bodies and make the tackle for a tackle for loss. Outstanding play. But also deserving flowers is Emmanuel Aghva who won and clubbed through Cam Robinson uncovered to force ETN to bounce the ball in the first place. Jordan Brooks does the block shedding drill that you see the players do in practice where, here's a blocker. Let me use my hands, get room. Here's the next blocker. Let me use my hands, get room, keep my other guys clean around me to scrape and flow and then fly to the football. He took on two blockers on the edge, Jordan Brooks did by himself. A lot of Ramsey to step up on the edge free and allow Emmanuel Aghva to scrape and challenge and square up Travis ETN. At that point, so that's Brooks, that's Ramsey, that's Aghva. Jalen Phillips is the backside edge linebacker who comes crashing down the line of scrimmage on the backside of the play. ETN turns, sticks his foot in the ground and you got five Jaguars offensive blockers and the entire Dolphins defense is outside the hash on one third of the field. It's Jalen Phillips who sticks his foot in the ground, recognizes what is about to happen and spikes into the back field like a blur and forces ETN to give up seven yards of vertical real estate on the line of scrimmage versus the line of scrimmage to bubble back around him and force a mistackle from Jalen Phillips. If he doesn't do that and ETN can just peel back straight down, he easily gets a corner. He might score touchdown. Phillips forces the bubble. That allows Kendall Fuller to work all the way back over the top. He's the backside corner. He flows all the way outside the hashes. He gets on his horse and because ETN has to bubble it back, he then gets outside the leverage where he can stick his foot in the ground and say, "Hey, I'm not going to let you get the corner. You have to turn it back and try and get vertical, come through contact and pushes it back into Jalen Ramsey and Javon Hall." I just named half the starting defense on one play. Amazing exchange for the Dolphins. Now, would you have loved for them to cash it in and make that game not quite so stressful at the end? Absolutely, but they won the game so we can laugh about it now. We're going to get into who I'm looking for a little bit more from against Buffalo. That's next here on this episode of Lockdown Dolphins. Make sure that you stick with us. You've heard a stock plenty about Fandall, America's number one sports book, but right now we have something a little different for you now through September 22nd. All Fandall customers can get a free three-week trial of NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. Then with the YouTube TV base plan, you'll be able to watch every regular season Sunday afternoon out of market game. All you need is a Google account and a current form of payment. You can cancel at any time. Visit Fandall.com to download America's number one sports book. Who are we looking for more from next week? Cader Co, who's the first one? That nickel spot is a tough role to play. I'll openly acknowledge that. I even go back to Jason Matry in the preseason. While he did a lot of nice things, that's a lot of stress in that spot, in that position. It looked like there were some miscommunications. It looked like one of the explosive plays in the passing game. Cader doesn't carry the slot in the process and it puts your employer on the back end in the position where he's one-on-one, has to make a tackle to catch point. Some of the run fits stuff from death. Now, Cader moved around a bit and he played a lot. He played 47 snaps, what I had down for Cader Co. I thought the versatility element of it was helpful because it allows you to then move to Von Holland around. It allows you to move jail and Ramsey around, which we're hoping we see more from. Ramsey is another player that I have a gold star next to. Okay, you're back in the swing of things this week. What does it look like now? You didn't practice. You did the walkthrough on Friday. You played. Now you get the week of prep. Even though it's a short week, what does that look like for you against Buffalo? A couple of guys in the secondaries where my eyes are at most, because I think there's a lot of needle in the bone there for players that you should have high expectations for. I'd love to see a little bit more of Benito Jones only played eight snaps in this game. I thought he had some sneaky moments of occupying the third down stuff that we talked about earlier before the fourth down play. Benito Jones eats a double team and keeps Mitch Morse off of David Long, who shoots the gap, gets downhill and makes the big hit on tank bigs below the thighs. That's more of a snap and usage role. I think Marcus May is the same thing for all of the menu that is disclosed by Coach Vass. I wanted to hide disguises, three buzz, zero coverage, zone quarters and half combinations, three cloud, two deep corner sims, spike one rent, three and two deep fire zones, different variations of cover three with match and zone, barren tilt, six one fronts. You only have three snaps of big nickel. Feels like a good opportunity against a team that runs a bunch of two tight end stuff with Dawson Knox and Dalton King Kate. Now, it would have been a bigger piece of the puzzle for me and it seems to not be for the Dolphins, at least not early. How does the personnel chain shift that? And then Chop Robinson's the last one. I'll pull up my grades if you're watching on YouTube just one last time. Chop Robinson wasn't bad. He had the off sides penalty, which really loomed as the big red mark for him in his 16 snaps. I thought he had a really nice power rush on one of his first reps. I thought he got a little stuck at the point of attack on one run rep that kind of, there was a plus half a point, a minus half a point. And then he finished with the off sides penalty to finish with just a slightly negative per snap contributions above or below expectations. And yeah, your expectation is you're going to line up on site, right, because the vast recorded players do on every play. So Chop Robinson, Kate or Kohu, Jalen Ramsey, looking for bigger impacts on Thursday against the bills. If the Dolphins get that, and Zach Sealer returns to form without the slow start, and if Jalen Phillips looks even more like the player that he showed that he's capable of being amidst his recovery window, that was everybody's biggest concerns. Yeah, Jalen Phillips is going to be back. But how long is it going to take him to look like Jalen Phillips? Well, apparently zero snaps, because he looked like it in his first 34. That's going to do it for us here on this episode of locked on dolphins. Our next show we're going to get into to a talk of a low spoke to the media, the assistant coaches spoke to the media might make Daniel spoke to the media yesterday, the ongoing Tyree kill situation, which I haven't really touched on just because I was hopeful to get and collect as much information before we talk about it on this platform, because there's a lot of information that needs to come out. And I aspire to offer some insight of value and not just talk to you guys for the sake of talking to you about the Tyree kill situation. So all that's kind of next for us here on the shows, we continue to get ready. We obviously have crossover Thursday, with Joe Moreno from locked on bills, my cohost on lockdown and Phil scouting. And then we've got the game on Thursday, which will be here before we know it. So lots of great stuff to look forward to here on locked on dolphins. You can find us on YouTube over every listening for your podcast. Again, you can find the sub stack in the show description, where you can read the grades for yourself if you want to go back and re listen. And then there are some clips throughout on that article as well for you guys to compliment the commentary that we gave here on the show. Hope you guys enjoyed making a good one. And I will talk to you all again soon. Go fence. A prime members, you can listen to this locked on podcast and free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Today's episode is brought to you by game time. Game time is a new feature called game time picks that makes getting tickets for your favorite live events even easier. Game time picks filters out the fluff to show you only incredible deals on great seats. So you don't have to waste time searching through thousands of tickets. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with game time. Download the game time app, create an account, use the code locked on for $20 off your first purchase. Download game time today. Last minute tickets lowest price guaranteed. Thanks for watching.
Watching the game live tells the story of the flow of the game. But the ability to go back and watch the tape can tell you the "why" of how a game plays out. Why did Miami's season debut seem so slow on defense? How much did the "new" defensive scheme contribute to the issues? And how did things change down the stretch?
