Sports Buzz ...Dolphin players who have shown marked improvent

The main thing I'd be worried about is his 300 pounds of weight working against him stamina-wise. It'd be a tad easier for him to carry around 285 at a higher level for 60 minutes than 300+.

 

Jared Odrick to 43 DT? Anyone seeing this happen?

 

The problem is run defenders at left end are cheap and easy to come by. Jared Odrick is a 1st round pick. If that's all he is, then that's not very valuable. Yes Odrick will move inside on nickel downs but the question becomes, will his cheap and easy work at left end on base downs wear him out to where he's not as effective inside on pass downs?

You're training the man all through camp to play defensive end and get used to that position. That's time he could be spent sharpening his tools at his best position. When the Dolphins decided in 2010 that they were going to make Randy Starks a nose tackle, then they suddenly switched him back to the position he'd played in previous years, he struggled. Those first four games were by far the worst four-game stretch for Run defense ratings (-6.0) on PFF that he's had in a Dolphins uniform. I think he had to play his way back into the position from a technique and instinct standpoint, because he'd spent all of camp trying to make an unnatural conversion to nose tackle. From a PFF rating standpoint that was Starks' worst year as a Dolphin.

I guess what I see here with Odrick at left end is something similar. You're gearing him up for this move which isn't very natural and isn't something he played since he was a freshman at Penn State. He's trying his best to learn it and get the position down, rather than honing his skills at the position where he's perhaps the most intriguing. I think it's just too much and it's not going to be efficient, that's all.

 

You need to manage all of their snap counts to keep them fresh. If you were to have them all rotate at the DT positions trust me there's plenty of snaps to go around. These DLs don't have infinite stores of energy.

 

I know he is a rookie, but how about Derrick Shelby. I am happy to see him rise from the undrafted ranks. Hopefully he maintains that in preseason.

 

With the reports of Martin going against Wake so much, I thought Wake was still the starting LDE, with Odrick playing on the right side. Wake has always been mainly used on the defensive left side and is apparently more comfortable rushing from that side.

 

If that's a thing, then it's a little strange. In terms of those other guys being lighter, I'm not sure how significant. They're still guys known for largely playing somewhere between over-sized 4-3 DE and 3-4 DE.

I'd personally prefer a bit different style personnel package, but I don't think you can argue it's all that unorthodox or putting Odrick in a bad position.

If anything, his ability to contribute as a pass rusher in base defenses has been improved because he's not a 2-gap player anymore. He might not ever be a great edge rusher, but I think he'll certainly be in a better position being able to attack a gap immediately rather than attacking a tackle he's heads up on and needing to remain in control of him and disciplined rather than getting up field.

I don't think Starks is really applicable, either. The bigger issue in my mind was him playing 2-gap responsibilities pretty much for the first time in his career than switching between NT and DE.

 

I've been trying to figure this out while being too lazy to actually get to camp and figure it out myself. I remember reading something saying Wake was going to move around vs. mismatches, but that's pretty ambiguous. Wake is clearly still lining up at LDE despite being called a RDE though.

 

Also, Odrick may be playing in and they may be using more Nickel type packages than we think. These days, predicting run vs pass downs is more difficult. Teams pass more and more on first down and with some of our question marks in the secondary, they could find themselves using those type of packages more than usual. Also, Odrick isn't just a big body, he's very nimble for his size and has a hell of a burst. At least on run plays he should do real well at setting the edge. I think he's going to have a monster year.

 

It could be in the base he is at RDE, but moves to LDE in the nickel with Vernon entering the lineup at RDE. Since Wake has gone against Martin quite a lot, he has to be the LDE a good portion of the snaps.

I'd love to see Vernon earn a starting DE job as a rookie. Then Odrick could rotate inside and our overall line would be stronger.

 

You call a 300+ lbs 4-3 defensive end "orthodox" when there's only three other players that size in the league playing that position and you can't even think of a single guy other than those three that played that position at that high a weight? To each his own.

 

Well, you have to look at total benefit. It depends on the potential difference in effectiveness at DE if you do not play Odrick there, versus the impact he'd have being focused as a pass rush DT. I understand what you're saying about fewer snaps for him though.

I wish we cold get Soliai off the field when they passed on first and second downs but truth is, he'll be out ther a lot unless a team comes at us three or four wide.

I'm fine with a guy like Odrick being more specialized if his early numbers back it up. Where moving him totally inside hurts you is in the lack of run discipline his replacement at DE could show. Could hurt the run defense more than Odrick at DE hurts our pass rush.

 

No, it's about getting maximal impact and return overall, as a sum of all the players you have to put out there.

Here are two scenarios. Pick one.

There are two brothers, Jared and Dean Defensive End, trying to make money.
There are two jobs they can do, shoe-shine or build furniture to sell.

Method A
It's an eight hour work day.
If Jared shines shoes for six hours, he makes $5 an hour because he's an average shoeshine boy. He makes $30 shoe shining. Then he makes furniture, which he is incredible at, but he's a bit tired and he makes $15 an hour worth of furniture. He makes $30 total worth of furniture in two hours plus the $30 he made shoe shining. That's a $60 day.

Meanwhile, Dean DE is an average carpenter so in those six hours he builds $10 an hour worth of furniture, equalling $60. The other two hours, he goes and does shoe shine, which he is also average at, but he's kinda tired and hustles less so makes $4 an hour shoe shining. He makes $8 in two hours shoe shining. He made $68 today.

Together, the brothers make $128 with Jared, the better furniture maker, spending most of his time shoe shining.

Method B
Jared, who is great at building furniture, focuses solely on doing this for the day. He gets in the zone and builds $22 an hour worth of a furniture. Unfortunately a big fat guy named Paul Soliai comes in and tells Jared he needs to use the studio for three of those hours. That's almost half the time lost! Still, in five hours of furniture making Jared, the craftsman, is fresh and focused and bangs out $110 worth of stuff.

Dean gets in a full eight hours at shoeshine. His first four hours he is fresh and makes $5 an hour. His second four hours he is a bit tired and makes $4 an hour. He brings in a total of $36

Between them the brothers make $146 that day.



The concept is that by letting the guy who is best at something maximize his returns at that thing, there is a greater overall benefit, even if there is a falloff at the other job where the average guy is working. Notice I even took some of Jared's hours away, like losing snaps.


The REAL assumption to make this work, though, is that Jared will produce significantly higher productivity on the field focusing on DT than if he plays at DE and practices at it, then also attempts to be an impact DT.

That may not be true, but it seems to be CKs hypothesis and I happen to strongly agree with it.

One IMPACT DT plus an average DE > an above-average but not great DE and average DT play.

 

Like go base nickel until a team proves it intends to run heavy o. Us?

 

The order of the day is generally going to be to match packages- Nickel vs. 3-WRs, base vs. 2-WRs. There's not a ton of mis-matches unless you really don't have to respect an aspect of a team.

Yeah, I agree- And I've seen pictures that looked like he was lined up there in base defensive packages too.

In 2010, Wake followed weakside in base packages and then was LDE in Nickel. Last year, Wake was overwhelmingly left-side, making him primarily the strong-side OLB. If Wake is really that much better on the left side to where you don't really care if there's a TE on that side, you'd think you'd just generally keep Wake on the left side. Run 4-3 Over packages to that side of the TE is over there, etc.

Or I could stop speculating and get my *** up early enough to go to camp.

 

i doubt odrick is a 300 lbs guy right now, there is an interview from the 27th of july where on the first sentence he was asked how it feels to finally go out here after OTA's yada,yada,yada and he says....little lighter than i was in OTA's little quicker


http://www.miamidolphins.com/media/...lability/25bf1da5-66d5-463a-a54c-179fd7b5ff22

 

Well no, I don't call it orthodox. I said it wasn't all that unorthodox. I mean to say that it's potentially a little bit different, but it's not all that bizarre.

If Jared Odrick was lining up at a 9-technique, I think you'd have a point. Odrick going from a 5-technique to a 6 or 7-technique isn't all that much of a stretch. Like I said, he's probably going to be playing in a gap that it's not all that bizarre for him to have been as a 3-4 DE.

Overall, Odrick at DE isn't really all that overly slow a front-7, either. A base defense with one true edge rusher isn't all that rare.

 

I just read Philbin's press conference on the depth chart, and he said this:

That sounds to me like Philbin is saying that Wake has mostly been a left defensive end in practice. That doesn't really say much in terms of what or why(could simply be they practiced a majority snaps vs. Nickel defense), but it's a clue at least.

 

Do you know of any that have a great pass rush though?

It's funny, I kind of feel like this is similar to the Vikings front four a few years ago... Soliai like Pat williams, Starks like Kevin Williams. Wake is our Jared Allen.

What completes a deadly front is a Ray Edwards type on the other side. 6' 5" like Odrick, but agile with some quicks.... Odrick is not that type. With Odrick we have a plugger over there at DE who is stout against the run and works hard... his quicks may get him takcles off the blocker when they run the ball past him, or he may pick up a hustle sack after Wake flushes the QB to the right. What he won't, and CAN'T do is stuff like this:

[video=youtube;HT4ZsFdXdxw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT4ZsFdXdxw[/video]

Edward 40 time: 4.81, Odrick 5.03.
Edwards 260lbs, Odrick 300lbs.

If Olivier Vernon can develop sooner rather than later, this front four would be unbelievable in base... and against the pass, Oddie inside in place of Soliai.

 

I don't know what you consider "great". I think you can still be pretty productive, in those circumstances.

Consider the Ravens, Cowboys, or Cardinals this last season. I would consider them teams that basically had one "true" edge rusher in their base defense, and they were pretty high in terms of sacks produced at least. They all had the benefit of good interior linemen play in that regard, but I think we've got that.

I think you can do alright with a base defense oriented towards the run if your Nickel package is good. I personally think you should align the two as close together as you can, but I dont think you're in awful shape if you don't as long as you can adjust if teams start throwing on your base package.

 

I thought most of those had a base 3-4, with 4 fronts only in nickel package etc.

Look, the D-line is gonna be our strength, regardless, but having that last pass-rush DE is the thing keeping us from being an elite front four instead of a good one.

I expect teams WILL throw on our base package a good bit, since Soliai/Starks Dansby is a good talent trianlge in the middle. Wouldn't run on that. Attacing the flats with passes would make sense against us, especially to Sean Smith's side, given his weaker tackling than Marshall/Vontae.

Either way, you're right that our Dline's pass rush success will have a lot to do with how good our DBs are in nickel (I think that's what you meant by nickel package... or did you just mean the nickel-package Dline?).

Who does Tampa have at LT and RT? We're gonna see this theory tested soon enough.

 

Yes, most of those are 3-4 or similarly shifted 4-3(which I'm not sure Miami isn't, yet), but I think the relative quality and their style of play counts.

For example the Ravens have a shifted 4-3 front, but Jarrett Johnson isn't an edge rusher. He's a low % rusher for a psuedo 3-4 OLB, and he's rather inept as a pass rusher. To a lesser extent so are guys like Anthony Spencer, Clark Haggans, etc. are not particularly good pass rushers.

I mean, consider what is probably the Dolphins best pass rushing team of recent memory was a psuedo 3-4 with Donnie Spragan as an OLB.

 

sometimes the only difference is in the semantics. They'll have what they call a 4-3 with the end being an oversized converted OLB who is in a two point stance for God's sake, then you'll see a "3-4" where the OLB goes and puts his hand in the dirt. I can;t tell what's what any more. And this over-under shifting stuff is easy, near as I can tell it's just like rolling secondary coverage, except your rolling front seven guys onto or off of the LOS towards or away from the TE side, depending on where you need to match up to your opponents attack.

Don;t ask me to draw that **** though. lol. I'd be lost.

 

What made the Ravens fronts work, imo, was getting freakishly quick, strong guys like Ngata and planting them at END on some downs for God's sake with Kelly Gregg in the middle... then letting the OLB next to Nagata loose after the QB. How the hell do you handle that? So you have a RB blocking Suggs, a Tackle one on one on Ngata and the LG and Center trying to handle Greg. WAY too much. That was rushing out of a three front, bringing a rush LB.

I think I even saw Ngata at DE in a four front for them a few times. Just confused the hell our of the Oline, and they (of course) brought a linebacker through the wreckage between Ngata, Bannan and the others. No chance for the QB.

Now, if the OLB outside of Odrick was anywhere close to Suggs caliber, we'd have a whole different conversation here. The Ravens style really attacks the LOS and QB, but I think our LBs are not sudden enough to get there in time, nor powerful enough to blow up blockers. I expect to see Burnett, Dansby and Misi try to stay clean, stay back and play zone, or loose man coverage and take what comes to them.

Any pressure will have to come from a combination of the DE's pressure in front of great coverage, and relatively frequent secondary blitzers. Dansby might rarely come through the middle too, since our DTs are a load and Dansby has good timing... but the truth is he is way more valuable in coverage. This is a D-line and DBs-centric defensive scheme, imo. When they are working, we're in business.

We must have that second pass rush DE to make this scheme work.

 

I went to the practice today, and don't really have a lot to share because I couldn't see **** in regards to alignments and the like(Next time I'm going to watch from the parking garage if they're on the far field), I did see some interesting stuff on Koa Misi.

He seemed to be playing both weak and strongside positions(even before Burnett went out for a little bit), and they seem to put emphasis on what he was doing being disguised pre-snap. Several times he switched between off and on the line techniques immediately pre-snap.

Interestingly, he was also getting on the field in a 3-3 Nickel package, and split time between linebacker and defensive end drills- The only guy to do so, the other guys who have been DE/OLB in the past practiced exclusively with one or the other(Kaddu/Trusinik at OLB, Westerman/Wake/Vernon at DE)

 

Yup, He's been playing both Pate, he got a really nice pick six at the will, following Fasano all the way across the field and picking that off on the weak side hash mark.