Diagrams of 3 Creative Miami Plays

[Rhody Phins Fan]

Football Outsiders occasionally dissects plays from Sunday's games and this week they diagrammed three non-wildcat plays that were very creative and very effective. It's a good read. Scroll halfway down for it.

There's more to the Dolphins running game than the Wildcat. There had better be, because they are executing about 80 plays from scrimmage per game.
Even if Tony Sparano scrapped the Wildcat forever, he'd still have a playbook full of cleverly-designed runs that use unusual formations, motion, and misdirection to force defenders to hesitate. These other plays share many principles with the Wildcat; many include an inside-outside option with several possible ball carriers. These plays require defenders to make the kinds of reads they had to make in high school, reads that most are no longer accustomed to making after years at major college programs and in the pros.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/walkthrough/2009/walkthrough-uncool-cats

 

[Never say die]

That indeed is very telling. It says to me the staff rightfully believes our offensive strengths are in the running game and that the Run play sets act as a springboard or as a means of setting up for big play pass potential. (all in all, not a surprise though). Now if we could hit 'em over the top when the defenders play run first

 

[Rhody Phins Fan]

I am very impressed with the creativity that they've shown. They do know how to draw up an effective play. If only they would combine that creativity with a little more aggressiveness.

 

[JT-forpresident]

what surprises me the most through all those new schemes we come up with, is the execution is often very good !

Some teams struggle to run some basic stuff between the tackles but us, we're able to come up with all kinds of stuff and execute it well.

1- we have the talent... our oline is a mean pounding machine (pass pro is another story but they're fairly good at it) and our running backs are excellent


2- coaching... i think they're doing a good job of explaining where they want to go with this and that, you rarely see someone lost on the offensive side of the ball, and even though our formations are very tricky and exotic, what the players are asked to do is very, very basic, and they won't try to do more or react another way than they did in practice, they'll stick to their assignment and that is a key to success for a good rushing attack...


either way, i was very surprised this week with our rush offence... let's hope they can do the same on sunday.. !

 

[oasis]

This was a cool read, thanks. I've been avoiding FH this week but glad I came on for this little nugget.

If we can keep up this kind of rushing performance throughout the year, that would really be something. Indy's rush D was almost dead last last season, so it's hard to say whether the success can continue.

 

[Pinkboy]

Why can't they be this creative on defense ?

The Dolphins have all these young talented D-linemen, and all these pass rushing OLB's, yet they don't know how to use them.. And yet Rex Ryan is outfoxing our coaching staff on the defensive side of the ball with all kinds of movement pre snap and whacky stunts up front.. He's got the Jets defense playing lights out football, playing with energy because it's so exciting to actually attack an offense with so much creativity.

It's so much "fun" to play that way if you're a defensive player. No wonder they play with so much high energy and excitement.

Meanwhile we elect to play simple man-to-man making it so easy for offensive linemen to play against.. And we do nothing to thwart QB"s and O-Lines pre snap. Our blitz packages also suck... Because they always know exactly where it's coming from long before the snap.

No wonder our defensive front looks so bored and half asleep on the field.

We do nothing creative up front at all. It is as vanilla and basic as you can get. Opposing offenses probably just need to spend 20 minutes watching film of our defense, and say, "okay we're ready for them".

It's a total joke. We don't even need a D-coordinator with our stupid scheme on defense.

I see college teams all weekend that are FAR more creative and imaginative on defense than the Miami Dolphins are.

Heck, the St Thomas Aquinas High School football team is FAR more creative on defense than the Miami Dolphins are. Let's hire their D-Coordinator.

 

[JFoxx]

The wildcat worked very well against Indy because they weren't making the right adjustments to stop it. 1) penetration into the backfield; and 2) bringing one of the safeties up to stuff the run. That's pretty much how Baltimore shut us down and what other teams will do in the future. Indy for some reason never figured it out.
Now you can beat a team when they do that by throwing deep over the safety when he comes up, but we have yet to do that, so I don't see why teams just don't move the safety up to begin with.

 

[RockyMtnPhinfan]

Funny, ever time i see Ronnie takin a snap, i am thinking WILDCAT WILDCAT.......i guess that is not entirely the case. Nice article