Normally you'd start to wonder if the big plays masked an otherwise poor showing from the offense. But I don't think so, mostly because the big plays often pretty directly leveraged off things the Raiders were doing on defense in order to try and stop certain other aspects of Miami's offense. When you see that trickeration Albert Wilson pass to Jakeem Grant for a 52 yard touchdowns, that pretty much happened because of the way they were keying on Miami's run threats. I may be mistaken but I believe that 74 yard "catch" by Albert Wilson came as a result of the way the Raiders were aligning their defense with the threat of Frank Gore in the backfield. Either way, Tahir Whitehead keyed on Gore so hard he took himself right out of the play and allowed Wilson the cutback lane inside of him. That DeVante Parker big catch came against a disguised single high look with the strong safety cheating downward at the snap, either in run support or in the small passing game, depending on his key reads. On that 18 yard Jakeem Grant "catch", LB Tahir Whitehead has tunnel vision on Kenyan Drake and had zero awareness of Jakeem Grant's jet sweep motion, until it was far too late. This allowed Ja'Wuan James the chance to try and cut him, which delayed Tahir just long enough that he couldn't be where he was supposed to be in order to stop that play. There's nothing wrong with making big plays because a defense felt so stressed by some of your threats that they decided to key them hard. It's what good offenses do. If other defenses don't key those guys so hard, that's how you get some of the success that Miami had before against the Jets, with Drake, Gore, and Tannehill's zone read plays. -----CK
What's so freaking impressive about that is they perceived our #1 threat as the run game...which is likely true on any given series. How often does a team get their best option shut down and still have spectacular plays like we saw? Gruden deserves a lot of credit but Gase deserves even more.
3-0 and 2 games up on everyone in the AFC EAST JUST LOOK how glorious. I will not pick out flaws or negativity until this wagon bucks us off RIDE whatever it is that's working!!!!!!
RT has now played 16 games under Gase: The Dolphins are 11-5 ( 10-1 over last 11 games) He is 315 of 463, 3682 yards and 26 TD's and 13 INT's 68 comp % ( 3rd best since 2016) 7.95 YPA (4th best in the NFL since 2016) 98 passer rating (7th best since 2016)
That's the thing- we have a ton of flaws...yet we're perfect. Which makes more sense for us to focus on this week? I'll let the coaches and players worry about the flaw part while I focus on the perfection. =)
if you pick out the good you have to pick out the bad and vise versa but i dont care i will ride and stay mum as long as it continues lol
The flaws are the flaws though. Good teams expose them. While I love the start - I'll reserve judgement until this weekend up in Foxboro.
This is key...because the Pat's are brilliant at taking away what you do best. They make you beat them with your second best weapon.
I’ll do a longer version of this later, but you are looking at Gase’s strategy and seem to be missing the underlying fabric of it. What Gase is doing is creating a pattern so that the defense gets taught to expect certain things, and only after the set up is created he then breaks the pattern. What he is trying to do is create 5 or 6 big play opportunities for the offense every game that have a high chance of success. We have seen that happen every game so far this year. The going for it aggressively, throwing it deep early and often approach creates more opportunities, but at the cost of greatly reducing the success chance for each opportunity. When you look at the big play opportunities the Dolphins have had this year they’re converting them at about a 70% success rate, which is astronomically high. Now if the vanilla was working better I’d be happier, but the offense is finally starting to work the way it was designed to work. Part of that has been trading away our one trick ponies (Ajayi and Landry) for more versatile quarter horses.
In that case, even a win against the Pats this week does not mean any flaws are not going to be fatal to Miami. The Pats are lacking weapons right now on offense and the defense is average. In other words, the Pats won't be a true test against a good team. Not as they are right now. The second game, in Miami, will be a real test I think, but looking at the schedule I see flawed teams and no one that scares me until we get to Green Bay (and only because of their QB). Unless you're the Rams or maybe Chiefs, there are flaws and your team needs work. It is more a question then of addressing those flaws and finding ways to win games. So far, so good. I mean, the Vikes got smacked down, the Jags scored 6 points in a loss?
What do those numbers look like if you take out the first 5 games before everything clicked in 2016? The record would be 10-1 but I know the TD to INT rate would look even better along with everything else.
In his last 11 games: 10-1 215 for 307- 70% completion rate 2410 yards 8.1 Y/A 20 TD's 7 INT's 105.4 passer rating.
Thanks Dan! Those are some really strong numbers. Even if you include the first 5 games they are pretty darn good. I knew that if those 1st 5 came out there would be a marked improvement. The guy is accurate and more than competent. He is not going to throw for tons of yards in a game but that seems to be more a product of the system rather than an inability to do so. And I knew the INT numbers were inflated by the 1st 5 under Gase when nothing was working right. I didn't realize that was HALF of his INT total since Gase! It's amazing what competent coaching can do.
Of course they're going to be a different team towards the end of the year when they've broken in Gordon/Michel and Edelman is back in game-shape. But we don't win in Foxboro. That's why this week is somewhat of a litmus test (especially mentally) - albeit I am on record saying in another thread that a great start means nothing if we don't win down the stretch and/or get bounced out of the playoffs in miserable fashion.
No problem. I was pleasantly surprised by his INT's and Y/A stats! If he can continue excelling in just those two areas he will be a top 10 (or higher) QB this season.