Sparano's final thoughts on 2008 season

My final thoughts are yes we had a great season, but we completely went away from what got us there in the first place in the raven game..taking unnecessary chances instead of just letting our playmakers get the ball in their hands.

in the first half of that game we should of been just checking down to ronnie brown and letting him work his majic. you see what he does when we throw him a few checkdowns, the man practically willed that td on his own..THAT should of been the game plan coming out of the gate..it would of kept us in rhythm...instead we took chances that were high risk high reward plays, in the most important game of the year...Not a good plan..Run the ball and check down, dink and dunk should of been the theme..

Instead were challenging their strengths and trying to go with deep perimeter passes, which is our weakness [completely lost our rhythm}....Iam sorry guys, i just watched the game again and it was evident we made uncharacteristic mistakes because we were trying to do things that were not in our character..

 

I would agree in theory, but not in practice, dj.

The Ravens kill plays that start behind the LOS because they thrive on attacking, and playing downhill. If you let them flow TOWARDS the LOS at the snap, you're in trouble. Most of our second half success came on plays we attempted to make beyond the LOS, so the Ravens had to backpedal/react. Their closing time attacking the run and passes in the flat are scary.

Second, you can;t run without blocking and we just had none. Look at how that reverse play collapsed when the entire interior line caved and the Ravens got to Chad before the handoff.

Plays where the ball is passed/handed off behind the LOS couldn;t and didn't work against this Ravens front last Sunday.

 

BK, hear me out brother, WE are the team that can go down the field at 3, 4 yards a clip, we are not the team that will eventually make a mistake during a long drive, we have been doing that all year and have had tremendous success..what iam sayin is instead of waiting til the fourth quarter to do it, we should of started the game in that mindset..theres no risk in quick dropbacks and getting the ball into ricky and ronnies hands and letting them make a few plays, thats as safe as you can get. Instead were runnin deep square ins with devone bess and throwin on the outside perimeter to ginn..not even mixing in the wildcat at all....2 freakin wildcat plays the whole game brother.

You take such a risk with deep set plays, if you dont complete them it messes up your rhythm..3 and out here 3 and out there...it was a mess...

I would of got ronnie involved early on some simple checkdowns..u saw what he can do with those. its hard to throw 4 int's by playing it safe..that is our game, play it safe and conservative, we mastered that philosophy..not on sunday though

 

Sparano is a Mets fan...who knew?

I like what he said about not letting 11 wins cloud your vision and to then stand pat, that is soo important, and a huge difference between Sparano and WannyBall.

IMO, Tony Sparano and the Staff took over the offense and made it productive, and then turned basically Nick Saban's defense and improved it an astonishing 13 positions, his staff and himself did a tremendous job this year with basically a mediocre Veteran Defense and a very Young Offense.

Special Teams coach John Bonamigo's unit went from Goats to Heroes over the course of the season as well, there was a 6 game stretch that they were simply terrible...but that was turned around and set a rookie Field Goal Accuracy record.

Jeff Ireland proved to be a top notch GM, the later part of Draft 08 was iffy, the early part was great, and best of all, Ireland and the Scouts proved to be unsurpassed at churning the bottom of the roster and finding guys who could contribute on GameDay hidden in the Scrap Heap, Polite, Walden, even Alleman..Haynos..Pennington.I cannot recall a better Front Office in Miami...ever...those guys are top notch, and really can't have enough said about the job they did and will do for our beloved Dolphins.

Having Ireland running things is like having a 7th round pick every week..a tremendous bonus for us.

 

I agree on short three-step drop type patterns. The only risk is that if you hardly throw deep at all, the incredibly toguh Ravens D begins to compress even tighter up to the LOS and you're REALLY looking at having no holes and no seams.

I just think this was a killer matchup for us. When you are facing a front that is MUCH better and stronger than your O-line, you need to make them pay in the air, but we don;t have the downfield QB arm and receivers to do that consistently as a gameplan. We can take occasional shots when the coverage is right, but our QB and receivers don;t have a dominant enough deep game to DICTATE what we want to do in the air to the coverage. Instead, we can only take what the coverage gives us.

At the end of the day, if we had tried to use the Davone bess dink and dunk stuff earlier, I agree that it would have gone better.

End of the day though, the Ravens ragdolled us physically. We need to get bigger and stronger up front. on O-line and D-line/OLB.

 

And if you credit the Front Office for landing Pennington, then really, the Front Office is our MVP this year.

That said, the benefit we get from signing street free agents and Practice Squad guys is noticeable this year because the talent depth was poor.

As our team gets better, those bottom of the roster turning moves will be less and less helpful, because they won't represent upgrades.

 

Of course, but we are (or were) at the Laying the Foundation stage of things, and Walden and Haynos and Polite turned out to be gems, and maybe keepers in he mid term, Walden and Cobbs really turned our Special Teams around, might as well through Brandon London on the list as well.

All four could stick around, no small feat for sifting the scrap heap.

 

Oh, don;t get me wrong, I was ELATED by what we accomplished churning the roster.

Walden was HUGE for us. That hit on Washington in the final Jets game may have prevented a TD, for example. London off the Giants Practice Squad. Polite.. how many drives did he keep alive on 3rd and 1 or 4th and 1? Culver should not be forgotten either!!! We signed him off the street and he started in Nickel ahead of a first round pick (Jason Allen).

I think Allen is off to the scrap heap at his salary.

(you know, I wonder at what might have been had Polite gotten the carry at the Ravens goalline on our first drive of that playoff game)

 

Culver is our best tackler outside of Y Bell, he was one of the few brightspots against the Ravens, don't know if he will stick, but he could.

Biggest disappointment of the 2008 right there, I was certain he had turned a corner in the last 8 games of 2007, but I think your right, there are only so many plays a guy has to make corrections and improvements, and JA just never did...

He's such a hitter though, he should put on 10 pounds and try playing WLB for someone, he just doesn't fit our scheme though.

Polite, Culver, Walden, London, Haynos, maybe Alleman...those guys could be long term players for us, but the thing about Polite, is he that niche's short yardage guy? Can he lug the rock if Ricky or Ronnie go down injured?

Don't know, but his signing was one of the better moves we made this year, Jeff Ireland has had almost no threads started about him, but he was the brains behind so much of our improvements, he' sharp as a tack..

I bet he has Scouts at the Southern California Penal Flag Football playoffs..

 

It was a disappointment that it came to an end, but we have nothing to complain about. This team surpassed anything we expected of them and returned a long lost sense of pride to all of us. At the beginning of the season if anyone had suggested we would finish 11-5 and win the division we would have thought they were dreaming or delusional.

 

here here brother..

 

Our defense played right there with them... Our offensive philosophy, playcalling, and utter lack of use in the correct way of ronnie and ricky killed us.iam tellin ya, we could of won this game if we utilized our weapons and offense correctly. i heard that our players were disgusted with their performance.

Anyhoo, i feel what your sayin and i guess i need to let it go..I just keep getting visions of Chad and ronnie playin pitch and catch in the first half..that man will getcha down the field safely and explosively at the same time.