Locked On Dolphins - Daily Podcast On The Miami Dolphins

Analyzing Offensive Film Grades From Miami Dolphins Season Opening 20-17 Win Over Jaguars

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 struggle at times on offense? What was the "why" behind their plan? We explore all of that on today's Locked On Dolphins.

Duration:: 24m
Broadcast on:: 10 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

https://touchdownmiami.substack.com/p/offensive-film-grades-from-miami-ceb

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. Upon further review, we've checked the Dolphins offensive game tape from week one against Jacksonville. I have a lot of observations and my player grades coming your way next. We're today on Lockdown 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 Lockdown Dolphins. It's your team every day here on the Lockdown Network. I'm your host Kyle Krabs, a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan, host of Lockdown Dolphins co-host of Lockdown NFL scouting, author of Touchdown Miami on Substack, the NFL draft lead over on the 30th team. I want to thank you guys for making it locked on your first stop and destination every day because it is your team every day. We don't just say it. We live it here on the Lockdown Network. A finished watching the coaches film, important disclaimer. I am not putting the coaches film on here because as a member of the Techno Media family, there's more hoops, loops, things that we have to jump through for broadcasting rights of NFL game tape, but please know over on Touchdown Miami on Substack, I have a 30-minute collection of clips from the game offensively, including some of the games, the plays that we're going to be talking about here. One thing that I'm doing this year that is a little different is I am grading. We did in the preseason. We did a dry run. I liked it. We're going to do it for the regular season. I graded all the players on all the plays. You would watch on NFLPro with your NFL.com subscription and you could get the film room and you could put the filters on or you could just watch the plays as they go through and you watch each player and watch them execute their assignment. I'm borrowing from Pro Football Focus. They grade their plays on a -2 to +2 scale versus expectation. Then Pro Football Focus does a bunch of other stuff with the raw data that they get. I'm just getting the raw data because I just want to know on a per-play basis, how often and how highly above or below expectation are you performing? What I could tell you is this, the Dolphins had a number of impressive offensive performances in spite of the limitations that we saw with the offensive game plan and the execution of. The number one take away that I had was you were one player assignment on at least two plays away from having two more 50+ yard touchdowns in this game. Devane Chin's first, third down perimeter screen and I know the perimeter screens drove everybody nuts. I don't talk about it in just a second. Devane Chin gets that ball. He's got a convoy out in front of him. The player who forces him to stop when he gets out into the open field is the backside safety in a two high shell who runs all the way across the formation. To get over top of him, H.N. puts a move on and makes a miss but he has to stop himself and slow himself down. He gets caught from behind by Ronald Dark. John Who Smith was the number three eligible on the backside away from the perimeter screen. He had inside leverage on that backside safety and he works through the middle of the field but he ain't hustling like I know John Who Smith is capable of hustling and guess what? If John Who Smith had hustled the way that I know that John Who Smith is capable of hustling and gets his body onto that backside safety before he gets all the way over top of H.N. outside the numbers to the opposite side of the field when H.N. breaks through the convoy, he's in a foot race against nobody, he's going to walk in for a touchdown. It would have been a 70-plus year of walk-in touchdown. Instead the Dolphins going to turn the ball overs on that ball over on downs on that possession near midfield all because John Who Smith didn't hustle as a backside blocker. Plays like that. There's instances of that all over the field. There's Turan Armstead, he's got a defensive in that crashes down hard across his face but the Dolphins are doing power pass where they pull the left guard and have him help block on the end of the line of scrimmage on the other side of the center. So Turan gets a guy crashing through his gap, he's got A.R.M. Brewer who has to pass off the nose tackle and then come catch that player in the B gap. So Turan's got a deliver him tool. And as Jacksonville does that, the linebacker from depth stacked behind the defensive end who crashes down in the B gap comes on a blitz. Alec Engel sees it late because he's expecting to help in the B gap and now all of a sudden Turan's in there delivering the defensive end to the center. So now Alex says, oh they came behind with a linebacker pressure. I got to get out here and pick up Devin Loy. Well he doesn't get out there because he's looking to help inside and process is late that the linebacker came. What play is this? This is the missed throw from Toa to Tyree Kill on the long shot where he fakes the over and then bends out to the corner. Early in the game where Toa overthrows when everybody says ah, that would have been a nice one to have. That would have been a 50 plus yard touchdown. But Toa now has Devin Lloyd bearing on him and he has to throw and transition into turning away from the hit and protecting himself which I would much rather have a missed throw than a hurt quarterback. But those two plays, you're a split second process from your full back in protection and you're a lick of effort better on the backside against the backside safety from having an additional two 50 plus yard place and scoring place in this game. Margins, it's close. Who are the top performers? Jeff Wilson only had a handful of carries, but what he did with his carries? Yards after contact, getting downhill, injecting some life into the running game, had five carries for 26 yards, a very consistent net positive performer. Now it was singles and doubles. It wasn't triples and home runs to put the baseball analogy on it. But that package with Jeff Wilson worked and it worked well and it worked well with consistency which is something none of the other elements of the running game other than the full back dive brought to the table. Your best every down player that I had graded was Jalen Wanna on a per play basis. Refs where he is up at the line of scrimmage, recognizes the route that he's running versus getting press leverage. He's trying to hand signal to Toa behind his back to it doesn't get it. They carry out a rollout that goes the other way. They go to the huddle. They come out and they catch the same coverage. They run the exact same route. He gets a critical third and eight conversion on an out route. And this is Jalen Waddle superpower. You can go look on my timeline on X. I have a film clip from last year against the Jets doing this exact same thing. He's got sauce, garnering coverage and he's got press outside leverage for the corner. Waddle's running an out against outside leverage with press out of a heart assignment as you can catch because the guy's leverage where you want to go, you're gonna have to go through his body to get out of the brain. And just like he did against sauce garner, he did the Ronald Darby and he did it to Ronald Darby twice on two consecutive plays inside STEM, inside release burst, get up the field, use your speed, which is his superpower, run all the way over the top of it. Wide open, Aaron, I'm a new one. He did it again and again and again and again and again and again. Waddle blocked. He was when the dolphins went in 22 personnel and went heavy with two tight ends and a full back and said, all right, we're going to run some power and run downhill. Waddle's out there blocking. But it's the receiving game stuff for him, the tough catching coverage on the tipped ball, the explosive 60 plus yard play that he's running over top of the first read and two of pumps it and opens it up. A lot of good stuff from Jalen, why I thought it was a very consistent performer and a consistent performer at a high level in this game. Same could be said for Devon Achan, played less snaps, about 15 less snaps than Jalen Waddle did. And I thought maybe the only one Achan would want back was he had a run where Trayvon Walker kind of logs the run with a polar and ends up on an inside gap and Achan bounces it outside where if he would have bounced it back inside, the line that was blocking down actually got pretty good push, created some good movement. There could have been an opportunity if he stutters and kicks inside instead of outside, he could have had a nice chunk run. We're going to talk about the offensive game plan a little bit more of the high performers. The good news is there were only a handful of individual player performances that did not log net across the entirety of the game, at least two expectation performances. We're going to look at some more of those guys. We're going to look at the game plan that's next here on the sepsilon lockdown dolphins. Going back at dolphins win over Jacksonville from Sunday, stick with us. Guys, when you leave the house, it's phone, Walla Keys, how's my hair look? If you're experiencing hair loss, you may not be so confident when you step outside 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 treating hair loss simple with doctor trusted treatment options and clinically proven ingredients like finasteride and minoxidil that can regrow hair in as little as three to six month. They offer personalized chewables, or will spray and serum treatment options so you can find what works best for you. The process is simple. It is 100% online. 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I think the important thing to remember about the game plan, I do think, I view, and I said this on Joe Rose Show this morning on WQAM. I look at the screen game that Miami implemented and the Jaguars fans will clown on Twitter about the passing chart with all the throws at the line of scrimmage. Instead of clowning the opposing team, how about you take it as a compliment for the challenges that your defense presented to the Dolphins? I look at the trio of Trayvon Walker, Joshua Hines Allen, and Eric Armstead. What is one of the most impressive 1-3 defensive front challenges you have to solve this season? It's okay, how do we negotiate this player? Well, we can't do X and Y because player Z is on the other side. We can't do A and B because not only do you have X and Y, but you have player F who's in the middle. I can't just send extra attention to Hines Allen because we have Trayvon Walker on the other side. I can't go heavy and split the backs and go 7-man protection and put a full back out here and a full back out there because now you got Eric Armstead potentially in one-on-one situations against your into your offensive line. How do you slow it down? On top of that, it was a team that was renowned for its pressure tendencies with Ryan Nielsen in a new scheme, with new personnel, and nobody of work how to understand how they're going to use it. They gave themselves pressure answers. They gave themselves alleviations to a really talented component of Jacksonville's defense by forcing those players to have to stop and retrace and stop and work their way back to the perimeter. We're going to get upfield. Oh, it's third and long. Let's go. It's third and 13. Oh, dang. They ran another perimeter screen. I got to go all the way out here again. 20 yards upfield. At some point, it starts slowing you down, and that's exactly what it did, and the dolphins as a result of this game we're on, we talked about Jeff Wilson, Jalen Wilde, Devan Echin, my next two top highest-graded performers were Austin Jackson and Toronto Armstead. This was from an opportunity standpoint to leave those guys on some islands and handle their assignments. Yes, Austin Jackson gave up the sack to Trayvon Walker. It was an excellent bull rush, and it's not the only time Trayvon Walker has bowled an offensive tackle. He doesn't bow every week at this point. He's the number one overall pick for a reason. He's a freak athletically, super heavy hands, and very twitched up and powerful. But more often than not, because of how they handled the early portions of the game with the jab, the jab, the jab, the jab. You can't catch me, jab, the jab, the jab. Now all of a sudden, all right, we're going to throw a cross. But you're going to treat it like another perimeter screen, and you're not firing off the ball with the intent that you're capable of, and it allowed the offensive tackles a lot of success in the opportunities when they were left on islands. I loved it. You know? Was it a little frustrating at times? Yeah. But as far as solving the riddles of an opposing defense with no body of work to understand what they were going to do and having pressure answers, and then to come out and say, okay, we're in the second half a little bit, kind of have a feeling for what you're doing. Now we're going to throw some haymakers, where we're going to eat your punches like Rocky Balboa and play very defensive, and then we'll get out. And once we've processed who you are as a defense a little bit more, and it put them in positions to be successful. The next tier of scores, offensively, Tyree Kill, to a time of a low, Alec Ingold, Aaron Brewer. That's kind of the next batch of players that all scored very well. They didn't necessarily score upper echelon of scores within this game for golfins performances, and I can't wait till we're a month in the season. I have a bigger body of work, but I thought all of these players played good games. I thought Aaron Brewer, the athletic elements of his game, popped in a massive way. What he was able to do in screen game, getting out into space, but also picking up peelers on the backside to make sure if I got to throw a now to Devon H. and the defense attack of the play side is trying to scrape out there and chase it out, and he has to cut back inside, and I'm Brewer. I can get on top of those guys in a hurry. And then when the dolphins flipped the switch late in the game, when the dolphins said, "Okay, we're going to come out in 22 personnel and we're going to run power, and we're going to run action. We're going to run downhill. We're going to pull guards, and we're going to have tight ends, and we're going to double team you, and we're going to climb up the linebackers, and we're going to create push. We're going to get our most physical back running behind it with a full back." All that clicks into place. And I thought Brewer handled Devon Hamilton in one-on-one situations quite well. He threw Hamilton out the club towards the end of the game in a one-on-one situation. I thought Alec Ingold, from a blocking perspective, made a number of critical blocks. Julian Hill was not mentioned, but he was another net positive performer for what he did as a blocker. I think this is the team's starting tight end, and I don't think this was just circumstances. He ends up out-snapping Durham-Smith pretty significantly from a volume perspective. Now I thought Durham redeemed himself. He actually came out as a net positive player, despite the drops. Now I don't weigh passing reps and targets the value of that over blocks. I'm just looking at on this play, yes or no, did you perform two at or above or below expectation? The drops for Durham were frustrating. I actually thought the second one, when they were down kind of in scoring territory, two who made that throw a little harder than it needed. But nevertheless, a couple of drops for Durham-Smith very frustrating. But what he did down the stretch as a blocker, particularly in the core and in the box when they line up in line, and he's climbing up and working on and getting on safeties and linebackers and riding those guys through and creating secondary lanes, it was good. It was good. But who are you looking for more from next time through? There's a couple of names we haven't mentioned. We'll talk about them next here on this episode of Lockdown Dolphins. Make sure that you stick with us. You've heard us talk plenty about Fandil America's number one sports book, but we have something a little different for you now through September 22. All Fandil customers can bet $5 and get a free three-week trial of NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV, down with a YouTube TV base plan. You're able to watch every regular season Sunday afternoon game out of market. All you need is a Google account and a current form of payment, and you can cancel at any time. So visit Fandil.com to download America's number one sports book. Guys, I'm looking for more from next week. I want to say this next week, I mean in two days, because Dolphins play at home against the Bills on Thursday night. Robert Jones was sufficient. You saw some flashes, you saw some flashes of power at the point of attack, you saw some flashes and pass protection. I thought Liam I could work comfortably outplayed Robert Jones. I think Robert has the capability with his build and his frame and his power to have that not be the case. Liam was by the slimmest of margins an above expectation performance. So adequate starting offensive guard. That's without waiting the positional value of playing the position. Robert Jones came up short of that. Some missed assignments, the holding penalties were brutal issues for him. I think if you take the holding penalties off the board, he's much closer from a grading perspective. For sure, I can tell you that math across 72 snaps and what he got deducted for the holding penalties, especially those wiping off big plays on the ground, didn't need to happen. The second one was exceptionally bad. He wins first placement, he uses heavy hands to turn the defender out of the gap. He's got him in a position where he could try and snatch him. He tries to snatch him, but he doesn't let go and he tries to push him down to the ground and then he keeps his footing and then he tries to run through the block and Rob doesn't let him go, but Raheem's already outside of it by five yards, it's like, brother, it's outside zone, just let him go. Let him go. The other player, and I don't think it's a coincidence that this player's usage faded down the stretch. But the other player who I thought just really struggled was Braxton Barrios, which shouldn't be a huge surprise given the Dolphins' efforts to upgrade the wide receiver room. Braxton played 25 snaps and eight of them came in the second half. They faded Braxton Barrios down the stretch and Braxton really struggled to create any level of separation. The targets when he's running the fade down the left sideline and to elaze it out there, was it a perfectly placed ball, no, did Braxton have any juice at all to accelerate running underneath of it, also no. So the 11 personnel package for Miami with what they had at their disposal and that player being Braxton Barrios, I don't think it's a coincidence that you got out of halftime and they made some adjustments. But he scored from a raw game grade like per game net pluses and minuses. He scored equal to Robert Jones and he played about 1/3 of the snaps. So that's a player for me that either you have to come up with some different answers for and I think they did in the second half and I think the match up against Buffalo will be a great opportunity to do that because Buffalo now it's come out and has been reported they're going to be down Taren Johnson, their standout nickel player in addition to Matt Milano, and just do a brand new safety room of starters this year versus last year. I try and run heavy on them. Now, there were things that I would have done in the game plan that didn't look like what Miami did against Jacksonville, but when you see why they chose to do what they do offensively, I get it. I totally get it. I get why they attacked it the way that they did and they're fortunate enough to have won a game through some tough learning lessons about the little things. Because I think they pushed the right buttons to find some run game against that front. It was nice to find they needed it down the stretch to be balanced offensively and kind of take control of the game across the final 15 minutes or so it felt like they really kind of had their finger on the pulse of the game. But then also for them to have those missed opportunities for explosive scores early in the game and to have that not cost you the football game is a nice relief. We have defensive side of the ball coming up a little later today. We also have some groundwork type stuff getting ready for the Buffalo Bills in week two. So there's a lot of stuff coming your way here on on dolphins make sure you follow on YouTube or wherever you list your fear podcast, make it a great rest of your day. I will be back again later today with another episode as we put the final touches on dolphins jags and turn the page and start the prep for Buffalo on Thursday night. I'm Kyle Krabs and I am out of here go fans. 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