Thoughts on game 4 - Jets at Phins

Beer: Lagunitas IPA

Player of the Day: none

Goats of the Day: once again, the entire coaching staff


This is getting old. The Dolphins traveled all the way to London to stink up the joint in embarrassing fashion, and despite the fact that the final score wasn’t as ugly the Phins somehow managed to play even worse than they did in the previous week’s trouncing at the hands of the Bills. The only reasons this score was even somewhat “close” were Jets’ QB Ryan Fitzpatrick’s horrific performance and the 165 yards in penalties that the Jets racked up. Otherwise, this game was a complete blowout.

If you want stats, here’s a few that stand out:

--The Dolphins’ offense was 0 for 12 on 3rd down, and 0 for 4 on 4th down.
--The Dolphins offense had gained under 100 yards early in the 4tyh quarter, and finished with just 226 on the day.
--Dolphin running backs combined for 8 carries the entire game.
--Ryan Tannehill completed just 43% of his passes, at a paltry 4.5 yards per attempt.
--The defense, again, recorded zero sacks.
--The defense allowed 207 rushing yards.

OK, enough stats. I’d like to instead focus on the coaching, or lack thereof.

Offense:
Last week I talked about how it is common knowledge that Bills’ head coach Rex Ryan loves to blitz, yet the Dolphins were completely unprepared for the Bills’ blitzes. This week, it is common knowledge that Jets’ head coach Todd Bowles loves to blitz even more than Rex Ryan. The Jets seemingly blitzed on almost every down yesterday, and that included an almost unbelievable 22 cornerback blitzes. And once again, the Dolphins were completely unprepared and were unable to stop them. At one point, the Jets blitzed CB Buster Skrine 4 consecutive times off the corner, in the exact same way – and Skrine got to the QB all 4 times.

Now, I don’t know if Mike Pouncey and Ryan Tannehill (the two players responsible for reading blitzes pre-snap) are just completely clueless and have no idea what a blitz looks like, or if the offensive coaching staff has completely disabled their ability to make changes at the line. Regardless, it is simply unbelievable to watch the blitz work every single time against this offense. You know the Jets are blitzing every down, and you know the OL isn’t picking them up…why the hell do you always use formations with 4 and 5 receivers, leaving the OL completely unmatched on every down? I know that the Dolphins’ RBs and TEs can’t block at all, but can you at least let them try? It’s asinine to keep letting your QB get pounded, and limit him to 2-yard passes all game.

The players on the OL were brutally bad yesterday. It was a new level of ineptitude for an OL that was already awful. All 5 linemen were simply terrible, but rookie RG Jamil Douglas deserves to be singled out for a particularly putrid performance. I don’t think he sustained one block the entire game.

It sure doesn’t help that Bill Lazor refuses to call running plays. I think somewhere along the line a running back pissed in this guy’s cornflakes, kicked his dog, or slept with his wife – maybe all three. And he now holds a grudge against anyone that plays that position. How else to explain the fact that starting RB Lamar Miller got just 7 carries on the day – including just 2 in the second half! There was one drive in the 4th quarter where the Dolphins passed on 13 of 14 plays. The one run was a read option run by WR Jarvis Landry. That drive included…wait for it…9 goal to go downs – and the Dolphins passed on all 9 downs, eventually ending the drive with an INT.

It also doesn’t help that when the Dolphins throw on 3rd down, as they do every time, the pass is ALWAYS well short of the first down marker, and the receiver NEVER gets the first down. 0-12 on third down tells the story – the Phins don’t run, and they can’t pass.

And make no mistake – Ryan Tannehell was godawful yesterday…probably his worst game ever. He was off-target all day and never got in sync. But, like last week, I have a hard time blaming Tannehill because he was hit on nearly every play. There was literally zero chance that he could have been successful yesterday. That said, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Tannehill is not a franchise QB.

So, to sum it up, Bill Lazor put together a gameplan that was doomed to fail from the start, and he did nothing within the game to adapt or adjust…just kept doing the same thing over and over – and failing each time.

Defense:
I won’t spend too much time on D, because Kevin Coyle’s incompetence has been well-documented. But I will point out one thing I noticed yesterday. The Dolphins D-linemen usually line up very far apart from each other, which creates huge gaps for the opposing offense to exploit. With other defenses, you see the linemen stunt or otherwise move around to both fill the gaps and confuse the offense. You also see LBs coming up to fill those gaps. Well, with the Dolphins the D-linemen simply plow straight ahead – no stunts, no movement – and the LBs are nowhere to be found. What this results in are running lanes the size of Texas right up the middle. And, we see games like Chris Ivory had yesterday, where he gained 166 yards on the ground.

So, like Lazor with the offense, Coyle put together a gameplan that was doomed to fail from the start, and he did nothing within the game to adapt or adjust…just kept doing the same thing over and over – and failing each time.

While all this is going on, the head coach is……..well, I don’t actually know what the head coach is doing. What I do know is that, according to his own words, Joe Philbin has no idea how to make things better. I also know that Philbin isn’t planning on changing anything, again according to his own words. He thinks that things will just magically get better if the team continues to do everything that has led to this current 3-game losing streak.

This Dolphins’ team has quickly become one of – if not the – worst teams in the entire NFL. That falls on the coaches, who cannot put their players in position to be successful, and on the GM that failed to address key areas of need in the offseason. It’s one big clusterfuck, and even without a crystal ball I can tell you that this Dolphins’ team is not going to be competitive in any game this season unless wholesale changes are made. And owner Stephen Ross hates change, so I expect him to do nothing of any substance to fix the problems this season. It is what it is...we all just have to hope and pray that Ross does the right thing at some point, and fires this entire staff.

The blueprint is set: call a blitz, and the Dolphins have no ability to stop it. It's that simple. Like I said, the Dolphins NEVER use extra blockers, so an extra blitzer or 3 will ALWAYS get to the QB untouched. It's like shooting fish in a barrel - can't miss.