From Football Outsiders: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/extra-points/2011/fo-mailbag-dvoa-without-fourth-quarter - According to Football Outsiders rate stat DVOA, Miami has the biggest performance drop off in the fourth quarter out of the entire NFL. Their offensive DVOA is 7.1% in the first three quarters (14th in the league) and drops to -38.4% in the fourth quarter (last in the league.) Their defense also goes from 8th best to 23rd in the league. That is an absolutely massive drop off. Basically Miami is the opposite of Tim Tebow. I think a big part of this can be attributed to our terrible conditioning early in the season as well as some poor coaching at the end of games. Any thoughts?
IMHO, that's a big reason why Sparano had to go. That's on him as far as I am concerned. He was far too conservative and a horrible game manager IMHO.
this was part of why i am not impressed with our wr corp and i haven't been since 2003 . i Mean Bess is ok but he and Hartline just dont scare defenses. our team has a bad history of being conservative on offense so at some time in the future Miami needs to get more weapons on offense and more importantly needs to socre more then 24 points a game. yet i do know we have scored 30 points here and there but how much is that our offense and how much is on our defense?
I think, if anything, this is a poor reflection on Sparano. When the game is on the line our team gets significantly worse.
Its not just this year... go back to the Colts MNF game 2009 week 2. Worst 2 minute drill to win a game that i have ever seen.
I wish I could easily quantify how aggressive we are in the 4th quarter compared to the rest of the game. My suspicion is that we are less aggressive, especially with a lead. And if so I think that would be a big reason we are so bad in the 4th quarter. If you have a big enough lead, like we did for a few games during the winning streak, you can just sit on the ball. But if its close like it was with the Cowboys you can't just run it a few times and throw a safe pass, at least against good teams. This is another thing that shows the ridiculousness of Tebow mania. We are on the opposite end of the spectrum in 4th quarter offense. But look at the final offensive output for both teams: we score 19.7 points per game and the Broncos score 20.7, and they averaged 21 per game in the five games Orton started while they have averaged 20.2 with Tebow. So yeah, the 4th quarter is a bit more important than other individual quarters on their own. But I think its importance is a bit overblown. And then when you take into account that we give up almost 5 fewer points per game than the Broncos you see that Tebow and the Broncos have largely been lucky. When was the last time the Dolphins had opposing teams do things like run out of bounds with two minutes left and no timeouts or fumble while in a slightly favorable FG range in OT?
I thought we did well that game. We moved the ball, Teddy Ginn made some key 3rd/4th down catches. Just that ball was a little late allowing the DB to interfere (should have been a call)l
Good question smahtaz. As far as I'm concerned, and now that both are basically done in Miami (I seriously doubt there's any future for Henne in Miami), I think they were both inept. But, if what you're really asking is who's more to blame for the inability to "finish" a football game and secure the win, that's easy. IMO, that's on Sparano 100%.
