Some Miami Dolphins writers should be comedians. Or, at the very least, they should read Dolphins Truth more often. Our head coach could learn a thing or two from reading my analysis as well.
Bloggers are filling the Internet today with such earth-shattering revelations as “The Dolphins need better linebackers” (Sun Sentinel). “They have to do better.” (Phinsiders). Really? You’re discovering that in Week 12?!
Adam Gase, who calls plays as if he bet money on the opponent, said that the Dolphins didn’t execute, and that’s why they lost. Uhh, no, Adam.
The Dolphins DID execute some things, and then YOU abandoned those things. Gase watched Jay Ajayi race to 50 yards after only 7 carries, and then inexcusably stopped calling his number.
We faced crucial third downs while the game was still on the line, and he had Ajayi on the bench.
He called eight bubble screens into crowded coverage, but not a single screen to Ajayi.
No, Adam Gase, execution wasn’t the problem; you were. How dare you blame your offense. They can’t execute a play that isn’t called.
The Dolphins executed its running game to perfection, and Ajayi was carving up the Ravens so-called run defense. They executed. The line did its job, and Ajayi broke tackles left and right. They executed. But then when we needed a yard or two in important situations, Gase sat Ajayi. He benched his best player, and then has the gall to blame the players and say THEY didn’t execute?
It’s like Gase blaming the loss on all the flea-flickers that didn’t work. Or all the fake punts he tried that didn’t work. We didn’t try any of those things, so how can he blame them? It’s a fantasy-land scenario to say they didn’t execute well enough on offense when they truly were. Jay Ajayi started off averaging 7.5 yards per carry in the first quarter, and dropped down to 5.1 for the game.
That, my readers, IS execution. What was Gase looking at? Why did he stop giving the ball to his best player?
As bad as the defense played, I pin this loss on Gase. Specifically, his play calling continues to be atrocious. He doesn’t learn. Remember early on during the winning streak? Each week Gase would talk about how some player suggested a play to him. Or how the offensive line told him to keep running the ball. Or how Ajayi was campaigning for more carries. I pointed it out at the time, but many of my readers dismissed it: this is a head coach who doesn’t see the whole picture. This alleged offensive genius needs things pointed out to him. When Ajayi is on fire, the play caller needs to keep calling his number. He shouldn’t need the entire team to say “Jay is doing well. Please give him the ball.” Gase shouldn’t need such obvious suggestions, but he does.
Do you ever notice that most Dolphin plays–even successful ones–look so difficult? There’s nothing fluid or easy. A receiver never waltzes into the endzone untouched. When we pick up a short third-down conversion, there’s always a measurement needed. Nothing is a gimme. If you had to say what one single play do the Dolphins run best, you find that there really isn’t one. THAT is a huge problem with Gase’s offense. They have a lot of halfway-decent plays, but they have no sure-fire reliable plays. No bread and butter.
Even with crappy offenses of the past, we had Davonne Bess catching easy slants for first downs. We had Lousaka Polite unstoppable on third-and-twos. We had Jay Fieldler coasting for first downs on QB sneaks.
That all comes from a lack of practice. I keep hearing about how Gase is changing the culture at practice. Very heartwarming. Who cares? Now how about changing what plays you practice instead of the stupid culture?
Did you notice how EASILY Joe Flacco kept completing that same old slant pass? That wasn’t luck. That comes from practicing that same play over and over and over. They must spend hours and hours and hours running that same play in practice, and you see the results. At Dolphin practices, all you ever hear about is which guy sat out.
Then again, even if we had a play that worked regularly, Adam Gase would stop calling it. Just ask Jay Ajayi and his meager 12 carries.
Another area where this shows is the Dolphins consistent slow starts. They come out of the gate as if they just ran a marathon. They have a week to prepare for the first down of the game, and they always go three and out. Or they drive and fail to score. Something bad always happens.
This is what I kept pointing out during our winning streak: we were getting very lucky wins, and the slow starts would catch up to us.
In Baltimore, we were quickly behind 24-0. Against the 49ers it was 7-0 right out of the gate. The Rams had us 14-0. The Chargers led 10-0. The Jets and Bills were 10-3 leads. And the Steelers jumped on us 8-0. In those combined games, if you consider the early score, we were down 83-6. Just imagine if we executed earlier in those games. None of them would have been nail biters. The Ravens were the first team to prove to us that you really DO have to play two halves of an NFL game; you cannot keep getting away with only showing up in the second half.
Silver lining: A couple of things on the brighter side. At least this loss wasn’t a heartbreaker. I knew this game was over after that coward Gase wouldn’t go for it on 4th down early. There was no nail-biting drama. It was a long painful death, which is easier to prepare for than having a win snatched away in the last minute. The other good thing about all this is that I can continue my daily rants and analysis of what the Dolphins (and their coach) do wrong. I was worried that if the Dolphins beat Baltimore, I would have to shift my focus and actually praise Adam Gase. Now, instead of praising him, I want to smack some sense into him.
The only thing out of Gase’s mouth that I liked hearing was that he sorta-kinda blamed DeVante Parker for Tannehill’s first interception. It was the second time that a lack of effort from Parker cost us an INT in the endzone. Combine that with the two out-of-bounds catches he bothched last week, and we should soon be looking at a benchwarmer. I hope.
“We didn’t execute.” Tell that to the lineman who opened up gigantic holes for Ajayi.
Yes,we should hand the ball to Ajayi EVERY play. Please get over that! Yes,he was on the bench b/c we were down and could not come back against a run defense like theirs. You don’t come back from 2-3 TDs down by running the ball. Get over it-we’re tired of hearing,”Hand the ball to Ajayi” week after week. He is not the answer to coming back from ANY deficit as big as 2 TDs. Joseph not adjusting his defense after the 1st,2nd and 3rd TDs using the same plays,one after another,We need a new back 7 on defense,period. I’ve been watching football since the ’50s and have never seen so many open receivers play after play. They can cover nobody,speciallyt TEs,which every team is aware of.
Karma, you’re just repeating football stuff that you read in books. That all gets thrown out the window on game day.
I can also tell you “You cannot win a game by throwing the same 5-yard slant route all game long.” But guess what happened?
Stop-it. “Read in books” LOL . I’ve been watching football longer than anyone here,period. And I’ve never read a “football book”. Don’t need to. I know the game inside and out. And handing the ball to Ajayi every play isn’t the answer to anything except the fantasy you have with him.
Gaining 7 yards every time he touched the ball was not a fantasy, my friend. It was a fact.
You won’t do that if you run every play. You keep saying he had 5 yards a carry but that’s only because he had a small sample size. You do know that at one point he had 7 rushes for 47 yards. That means his last 5 runs only netted 14 yards. That’s less than 4 yards a carry and if they kept running it would of fell even more.
“When Ajayi is on fire, the play caller needs to keep calling his number”. Please stop that crap! They stopped him and they are a top run defense for a reason. Hand the ball to him every play. Look,he had 2 great weeks and has not done much since,even against teams with losing records. Like our entire win streak-against losing teams.Get over it! Give Ajayi and hand*** and be done with it. he’s NOT the answer.
When exactly did they stop him? He AVERAGED over 5 yards every time they gave him the ball, and he broke a tackle on 11 of his 12 runs. This is Dolphins TRUTH, not made up nonsense.
If they really stopped Ajayi, then I wouldn’t be harping on it. The fact is that they didn’t stop him all game long. Adam Gase stopped him
You DON’T hand the ball to your boy down by 14 against their run defense. You should rename this site I’m An Ajayi Fan Boy. He is good,not great and not a game-changer. And you don’t hand him the ball down by 14.
Much better to hand the ball to Ajayi than let Tannepuke throw……….. 3 INT’S!!
I agree about The “Bust. Gase was reminded yet again just how bad he is. He was pathetic yesterday.
Fact that they ran a screen to ajayi in the third quarter and it lost yards. Honestly your obsession with running it every play is insane. I’ve already said this but it’s worth repeating in his first 7 rushes he had 47 yards. In his last 5 he had 14 if that doesn’t prove to you the run game just stopped working than idk what to say.
If he had 14 yards on his last 5 rushes, then that is an average of 2.8. When I need to gain a measly 2 yards for a first down, I’ll take my chances on a kid who averages 2.8 any day. Much better chances than a long buttonhook route with five receivers running around and and no extra blockers.
One call on the first drive of the game definatly was not the reason the Dolphins lost. I mean yea your right it was a bad call, but it was one call and the team lost by 30.
Zach you are right. But an early score would have been the counter-punch we needed to possibly take the Ravens’ confidence away early. Whether we missed that field goal or even if we made it, that was a moral victory and momentum burst for the Ravens. And it showed that Gase is all talk when he pretends to have confidence in his offense.
I have to agree with Admin on a lot of his critiques about this game against the Ravens.
Throwing the ball on 2nd and five and less when you have Ajayi and other running backs is not being very analytical when it comes to your play calling. After your team finally scores a touchdown, why try and go for two points on a very tough defense like the Ravens as if you were only down by one point with thirty seconds left in the game? Why do keep calling those dumbass bubble screen plays when your team hasn’t achieved jacksh*t on nary a one of them? Why keep playing Tannehill when all he’s doing in the game is stinking it up to a higher and higher level?
I can’t help but agree with Admin that it was painstakingly obvious that Gase was way out of his league when it came to adjusting his play calling to a game of this magnitude.
And I’m certainly not saying to hand off on every single play. But there are definite times to run the ball. In the San Fran game, we had multiple opportunities in the 4th quarter to ice the game. We had a 17-point lead and the ball. Gase called multiple pass plays, which mostly went incomplete or out of bounds. Three times he took only a minute off the clock. Three times San Fran drove the ball. Only a last-ditch tackle (and a facemask) by Suh saved Gase’s ass.
Yes….and I think a few people here are mistaking the point you’re trying to make about game management and running the ball. If your defense is getting smashed in the mouth, then your offense need to go on long drives to keep the other team’s offense off the field as long as possible. That means you cannot panic and give up on running the ball.
Let’s be honest, Tannehill and the Dolphins defense was stinking up the joint, and Gase appeared to continue to rely on the same inept solutions to get his team out of the hole they were digging deeper and deeper for themselves.
Agree not going for it on the early fourth down on the first drive was gutless. Could of gave the team courage to show that can match the purple pansies. But Baltimore had no problem pulling that 4 down trigger against us on the next drive.
What about THill having one of the worst games ever? He missed all the easy ones and made stupid decisions all day
He’s just terrible. Amazing the Fins are satisfied with a below average QB.
I should have posted it here but Ive said it privately that the best chances for us to win was to relentlessly pound the ball with Ajayi no matter. He is a defense demoralizing type of back with has a slow sapping effect. While he most likely will be stopped short many times as the defense starts to key in, there will also be some unexpected gains hes known for that will keep the defense humble. We would still be down at the half down in score but that doesn’t matter the tone has been set and our chances are in the 2nd half. Nothing Ajayi can do about the record setting slant pass completions thrown by Flacco.
Now if the game plan and Ajayi perform as expected the pressure is taken off Tannehill, the defense is keying on Ajayi and still probably cant stop him entirely. Now slowly start slipping in the pass plays and boom. The trap has been laid and hopefully with some good intermediate catches down field, Baltimore at least on defense has been had. Now with a hopefully close game the defense is now in a difficult position and Miami has now multiple options to regain the momentum and morale.
This game to me looked like vintage philbin era football and a carbon copy of all of our disappointing losses. Back then we had Lamar Miller coming into his own and putting up decent numbers and he only gets the ball 12 times because we fail to stick with the run. We put the game on Tannehill’s back and here is where we get exposed and I will explain. #1 Yes Tannehill has made strides this year but yes yes yes I agree HE IS NOT ELITE OK! #2 Also lacking in the elite category are receivers- do we have a true #1 receiver NOPE! #3 We also lack an elite or even 2nd tier tight end. Who is going to be the game changer once we abandon the run? You got it folks probably nobody as of yet.
This year Ive learned that sticking with the run requires patience and the courage to even fall behind in the score early. It has a slow cumulative demoralizing effect on opposing defenses only realized late in games when you have a back like Ajayi. Players tire out , become frustrated with miss tackles, play calling influenced by ever more aggressive run stopping schemes of which slowly opens up the pass. Its all about defense manipulation and strategy but requires a long term approach and full commitment.
There is a saying a lot of NFL coaches are known for.
They say you pass to score but you run to win.
And if all the above I wrote meant nothing to you then I will conclude with one final point. Ajayi is undoubtedly our best player on offense if for no other reason you give the ball to your best player. Imagine if the Golden State Warriors benched Stephan Curry or the Cavaliers didn’t play Lebron?
And to further Phil’s point above about going for the 2-point conversion, I think it was clear that Gase was hoping for 3 touchdowns PLUS ALSO 3 2-point conversions (essentially, that would be 6 touchdowns). If all that went as planned, that would tie the score at 24-24. I guess I didn’t mind the decision to try for 2. What I hated (again) was the play selection. We needed two yards, and Landry ran a 1-yard route INTO heavy traffic. That play didn’t stand a chance. Tannehill needs to recognize that earlier, react, and go to plan B. On a two-point conversion attempt, it’s almost impossible to complete the pass and not score, but we did ! Horrendous play calling.
I think that the main point is that this team simply can’t completely abandon the run. I agree with this as the run gave them their win streak, made Tanny better, rested the D, etc…that became their identity. I also think that Tunsil wasn’t at his best due to injury and Pouncy out doesn’t help the whole situation either.