3rd and 8 why run?

[Sons Of Shula]

no way. giving up a chance for a first down (and thus winning the game) is not worth the 40 second difference. every dolphin fan knew rodgers was gonna run the length of the field, 40 extra seconds or not. tannehill was on fire in the 2nd half. should have gone for it. we absolutely ****ed up a chance to win a huge statement game.

On fire? He had just threw an incompletion which resulted in a mere 5 seconds removed from the game clock. Do that again and you're giving the ball back with almost 3 minutes on the clock and coaching wise not putting your defense in the best possible situation that you could have. A bad decision would have been to run it when GB had a TO remaining. Since that was obviously not the case the coaches made a good decision that if/when we failed the conversion you're putting back into the defenses hands who had played a decent game vs Rodgers up until that point with :46 less seconds to manage. It's easy to play Cpt Hindsight but it was the right call at the moment.

 

[roy_miami]

On fire? He had just threw an incompletion which resulted in a mere 5 seconds removed from the game clock. Do that again and you're giving the ball back with almost 3 minutes on the clock and coaching wise not putting your defense in the best possible situation that you could have. A bad decision would have been to run it when GB had a TO remaining. Since that was obviously not the case the coaches made a good decision that if/when we failed the conversion you're putting back into the defenses hands who had played a decent game vs Rodgers up until that point with :46 less seconds to manage. It's easy to play Cpt Hindsight but it was the right call at the moment.

Yeah seriously. If you really want to play coulda, woulda, shoulda, just kick the field goal. Two runs and a pass was good aggressive football in that situation, it would have been ideal had we called a rollout or something and Tannehill takes off if its not open but again, coulda, woulda, shoulda.

 

[Atila]

Even if I would agree with you two^ above, it was still a poorly managed drive. After the first down play, they should have ran it again - then faced with a 3rd and 6/7 you decide if you want to throw or pass. I think we were a little predictable in our aggression. I personally felt they should have thrown it on 3rd down as I don't think the 30-35 second difference was worth the oppurtunity to end the game, but that's me. The one thing everyone agrees on is it was poorly managed, well everyone other than you two.

 

[roy_miami]

Even if I would agree with you two^ above, it was still a poorly managed drive. After the first down play, they should have ran it again - then faced with a 3rd and 6/7 you decide if you want to throw or pass. I think we were a little predictable in our aggression. I personally felt they should have thrown it on 3rd down as I don't think the 30-35 second difference was worth the oppurtunity to end the game, but that's me. The one thing everyone agrees on is it was poorly managed, well everyone other than you two.

Let me ask you this, were you OK with the play call at the end of the Buffalo game last season that resulted in the sack/strip/turnover costing us that win? I don't second guess playcalls in those situations, I just look for the players to make plays. When Wilson and the Seahawks made those incredible plays to ice the game last week in a similar situation I don't know if each individual play call was perfect strategy, all I know is Wilson wanted it and made great plays.

 

[Atila]

Yeah, I remember last season, that one burned us.

Here is why I didn't like the idea of throwing on 2nd down:

It was almost a given that Green Bay was going to blitz us up the middle. If we ran, then the blitz is perfect. And if we were running a play to throw for a 1st down, the pressure was on. So they should have either run straight into the blitz and played the time management game ORRR if you are going to call a pass, you call something that would allow you to counter a blitz (short routes, hot reads, etc).

Hindsight is 20/20, sure, but it's just more situational awareness that I feel is not being addressed. After the disaster that 2nd down was, they should have been throwing on 3rd down. Making a mistake and calling the wrong play on 2nd down - hey, it happens, you wont call every play correctly. But calling a run on 3rd down after what had happened? That was poorly done.

edit: again to address what you said in your earlier post, it's not about the "two run one pass" it's how they called it... should have been "run pass pass" or "run run run" or "run run pass" - run pass run literally gave us ZERO chance to succeed.

 

[Semedi]

Because Philbin is a coward who was playing to not lose. It also showed he has zero faith in his team and the players.

 

[Fin Thirteen]

I hate to see us play not to lose.

Nobody's talking about the poor punt and poorer coverage that set the Packers up with the kind of field position to hit the endzone before end of game. Fields is punting very poorly thus year and the coverage continues to be spotty.

The timeouts during GBs possession were certainly unconventional. If you try it and fail, you cant expect not to be criticized for it. But the seeds of doom were sown on our last possession, I thought.

Watching it again, the Pack brought some serious heat onto our o-line for our final drive. Albert was physically struggling and James/Pouncey didn't look in sync. Given that we were likely to need to run the clock down, it would have been an idea to put Pouncey into center and bring Smith in for his run blocking. Either way, the line struggled the entire drive. GB really turned the dial up and we struggled to cope with Peppers, Jones, Matthews et al.

The facemask penalty was a lucky out for us - clear flag but without it they would have sacked us and it'd have been 3rd and 22 on our 19-yard line. Following the penalty, the final set of downs was as much characterised by our o-line getting dominated as anything else.

We probably should have checked out of the run on first down, if we really wanted to do anything other than waste time. Tannehill might have fared better keeping it for a sneak, but it's kind of academic. The pass play on second down was actually a really nice call with a bunch of receivers wheeling/slanting into the box where the LBs had vacated. The problem was the protection was awful again, just tired linemen up against some special players trying their azzes off to save their game. Tannehill got the ball and two guys at the same time, he did well to get rid of it. You could argue that a run play would have been better, but at least we went for a first down rather than play not to lose.

We did play not to lose on the next play, no question. Miller's 1-yd run was pointless. At that stage, we were clearly handing back too much time to GB even with the run. We needed a new set of downs. But I wonder if the previous play and the heat GB were bringing was what caused us to clam up and run it for a yard. Either way, it was depressing and defeatist.

Had we at least punted the ball properly, we might not be talking about this at all, but our elite punter seems to have forgotten how to kick the ball this year. The coverage was verging on lackadaisical. Will DAvis breezed right by when he had the clear chance to arrow in and nail Hyde, who was never going to call a fair catch. Tripp then missed a tackle that gave Hyde the crucial extra yards. That final play of the drive and the resulting poor punt/coverage is what lost the game. I don't blame Finnegan for making a split second tackling decision to stop his man. The timeouts were weird but unlikely to have made much difference either way. The clincher was how we ended our possession - very badly as it happens.