Dolphins ground game on historical pace | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

Dolphins ground game on historical pace

Daytona Fin

Daytona Fin

Queeks Draw
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This isn’t supposed to be happening. Clearly. You take away a team’s Pro Bowl center, subtract its 1,000-yard rusher and toss in five offensive linemen who are just now removing their “Hello, my name is … ” tags and what you are left with, logically, should be a mess.
What the Dolphins’ running game has been, one-fourth of the way through the season, is historically good.


The Dolphins are averaging 5.0 yards per carry.

The last time they went through an entire season averaging that — in fact, the only time — the three men carrying the football were named Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Mercury Morris, in 1971.

Unquestionably, the sample size on this year’s Dolphins is minuscule and so may be the odds of maintaining this breakneck pace.


On the other hand, the Dolphins have accomplished this without center Mike Pouncey all season and with running back Knowshon Moreno for only one game (plus one carry in Game 2).
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“It’s crazy,” said Samson Satele, the free-agent center who answered Miami’s distress call Aug. 2 to join tackles Branden Albert and Ju’Wuan James plus guards Shelley Smith, Daryn Colledge and Dallas Thomas. “You think of it: a bunch of five guys who started up front. That’s five guys who came out of nowhere. We never had Branden. We never had Ju’Wuan. We never had Shelley, never had Daryn and never had me. It’s just crazy how fast we solidified together.”

Crazy that the Dolphins are averaging virtually as many yards when they call running plays as passing plays. Miami is averaging 5.17 yards per pass play, which factors in sacks.
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“Lamar’s taken this opportunity to say that he wants to get out there and compete,” Colledge said.

If the Dolphins can do this without Moreno, who ran for 134 yards in his only full game, what might the offense look like when he returns?

“I think we’ll be a dominant group,” Miller said.

Alarm bells rang when Moreno went down against Buffalo. That put things squarely on Miller, who had been disappointing since being taken in the fourth round in 2012, unable to break tackles or display his speed. Suddenly, things click.

“Just more determination,” Miller said. “It has given me a lot of confidence. I’ve just been trying to be more physical and break tackles and just try to get positive yards and be more decisive.”

Informed of Fins 5.0, Moreno said, “For real? We definitely have to keep working on the little things and keep on getting better each week. But so far, so good.”

Even when Ricky Williams rushed for 1,853 yards in 2002, the Dolphins averaged 4.7 yards. The past two years, they’ve been at 4.1.

And yet these Dolphins are at 5.0 without a monster run to skew the numbers. Miami’s longest run is only 24 yards, by Miller against the Chiefs, meaning they’ve done it with a steady diet of 10- to 20-yarders. The last time Smith played on a team that had such production?

“It might have been awhile,” he said.

Smith credited coordinator Bill Lazor for spreading the offense and forcing defenses to cover the field both vertically and horizontally.

“This is what you were hoping for and what you want,” Colledge said. “I thought Ryan (Tannehill) did a great job getting the ball out to the receivers when they load the box and when they’d unload the box to cover the receivers, we hand the ball off. When you’re offensive linemen and you’re running against 5-6-man boxes all day, you’ve got a lot of opportunities.”
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http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news...ame-on-historic/nhZQ4/#5bd7f738.257708.735507
 
Only a quarter into the season that number won't hold.
 
nick1 said:
Only a quarter into the season that number won't hold.
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Probably not but it still doesn't take away from the fact that we are doing it with 5 new starters on the oline.

Realistically, this line will still get better as it builds chemistry and gets Its pro bowl center back.
 
I'm surprised and glad our ground game is doing good. Now if Ryan can start playing against our remaining opponents like he did against the Raiders, we'll be hard to beat.
 
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Wait till we have our number1 rb back. Lock our o-line coach up long term
 
Completely discredits all those bashing Lazor and the offensive scheme... The article proves the scheme in some sense works
 
These stats usually even out over the course of the year. We didn't rush well against Buffalo. We face them again as well as 5 other teams that stop the run well. Jets twice, Baltimore, Detroit and Denver. In those games our rushing stats will come back to earth

It's a good start though.
 
Tanny has to keep running when it's there....grabbing 30-40 yards a game helps this stat.

Love how Miller seems to want it...happy for him.
 
I hate to use the term "simple" here but essentially that's what it is. It's simply a matter of displacing the amount of defenders in the box by spreading the offensive personnel outside the hashmarks.

Now where it gets complicated is in what Lazor learned from Kelly in manipulating the gap control assignments, by either adding or subtracting them, and creating a confusion within the defense's key reads.

I don't see this as a "trend". I believe it's a factor of Lazor's offense system. Just a little surprised at how quick the offensive line has found a cohesion as a unit.
 
This is what's (pleasantly) shocking the hell outta me:

This isn’t supposed to be happening. Clearly. You take away a team’s Pro Bowl center, subtract its 1,000-yard rusher and toss in five offensive linemen who are just now removing their “Hello, my name is … ” tags and what you are left with, logically, should be a mess.
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:up:
 
nick1 said:
Only a quarter into the season that number won't hold.
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It could. Tannehill might start taking off more. When the passing game improves the box should be loaded less. And Moreno and Pouncey could make the rushing attack even better. Plus if we're able to wear teams out in the Miami heat we could see many repeat performances of the New England game where they just got tired of tackling in the second half.
 
Our passing game opens up the run game, too teams know we love to throw it. Tanny would gladly rip off 4-5-6 in a row. It's still thought of as 'the fastball' and the run game is 'the change'.
 
The defense knows they gotta 'cover the fastball'. The run game takes advantage. RT on the move really messes with their heads, too. RT as a dual-threat dart-thrower makes it easy to be susceptible to the run game.
 
I'm pretty sure we had atleast 5yrd average with Ricky. Didn't he rush for 1800 yrds one season?
 
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