Miami Dolphins’ offensive struggles are hurting the defense

[LikeUntoGod]

blogs.palmbeachpost.com/thedailydolphin/2011/10/21/espns-herm-edwards-miami-dolphins-offensive-struggles-are-hurting-the-defense-too/


How did essentially the same defense fall off so precipitously in one season? The answer, former Jets and Chiefs coach Herm Edwards said, is simple:


It’s the offense, stupid.


“The way they’re playing offensively puts a big burden on your defense,” said Edwards, now an ESPN analyst.

“You’re on the field a lot, and that wears you down.”


“Defensively, you’re playing well if the offense is controlling the ball and scoring points.”

Which the Dolphins aren’t doing, of course.

 

[Tunaphish429]

blogs.palmbeachpost.com/thedailydolphin/2011/10/21/espns-herm-edwards-miami-dolphins-offensive-struggles-are-hurting-the-defense-too/


How did essentially the same defense fall off so precipitously in one season? The answer, former Jets and Chiefs coach Herm Edwards said, is simple:


It’s the offense, stupid.


“The way they’re playing offensively puts a big burden on your defense,” said Edwards, now an ESPN analyst.

“You’re on the field a lot, and that wears you down.”


“Defensively, you’re playing well if the offense is controlling the ball and scoring points.”

Which the Dolphins aren’t doing, of course.

The defense has been so bad..Its the pass rush...All the points are not the defenses fault tho..

7 in the Jets game was scored by the Defense.
7 you can attribute to Henne and offense in the texans game..
Browns game, Chargers game and Pats game was an example of the D not doing their job..

 

[Wildbill3]

yeah ok I can see blaming the O for the jets game but seriously they weren't gonna score anything now or for the rest of the season with Moore as our QB. what was the D's excuse the first 4 games?

 

[Lilseb93]

There's no pass rush. You could put a team's 3rd string D-line in and they would put more pressure on the QB than the Dolphins starting line.

 

[Gsmack_42]

blogs.palmbeachpost.com/thedailydolphin/2011/10/21/espns-herm-edwards-miami-dolphins-offensive-struggles-are-hurting-the-defense-too/


How did essentially the same defense fall off so precipitously in one season? The answer, former Jets and Chiefs coach Herm Edwards said, is simple:


It’s the offense, stupid.


“The way they’re playing offensively puts a big burden on your defense,” said Edwards, now an ESPN analyst.

“You’re on the field a lot, and that wears you down.”


“Defensively, you’re playing well if the offense is controlling the ball and scoring points.”

Which the Dolphins aren’t doing, of course.

Well maybe Herm should go watch all the drives after the Phins O would score from the 2009 indy game tell now. Most all the drives even if only leading to a FG, take over 5 minutes all the way up to 8 minutes or more. And i might be overboard a little but it seems like 75% of the time the D give's up a TD within 2 minutes. This is with up to a half of a quarter of rest, it doesn't matter if the get rest they never use it.

 

[3rdandinches]

Someone on Sirius Radio pointed out C.Wake dropped into coverage 18 times against the Jets. I don't get it, do coaches and players become stupid when they come to Miami? Our best pass rusher on our team is in coverage and our pass rush is struggling...great coaching!

 

[LikeUntoGod]

Someone on Sirius Radio pointed out C.Wake dropped into coverage 18 times against the Jets. I don't get it, do coaches and players become stupid when they come to Miami? Our best pass rusher on our team is in coverage and our pass rush is struggling...great coaching!

OMG, 18 times? I saw him a number of times back in coverage but that many is surprising. But then we are a backwards teams, we do more what we are not good at and we do less of what we are good at .

(I have to admit that I deleted the Jets game)

 

[Kdawg954]

Yea the Jets game looked like is was going to be a coming out party for the defense, but when you play lights out for almost the entire first half and you are down 7-6 in the game . . . it has gotta get frustrating.

But make no mistakes about it, this defense has been bad this year. Trouble stopping the run, the secondary has been attrocious, no pass rush and our 2 stud ILB's have been disappointing. No finger pointing for the defense, they have been terrible.

 

[LikeUntoGod]

Yea the Jets game looked like is was going to be a coming out party for the defense, but when you play lights out for almost the entire first half and you are down 7-6 in the game . . . it has gotta get frustrating.

That is really it, lack of scoring TDs in the redzone. Stay with me here.

We scored 2 FGs instead of scoring 3 touchdowns in the first half, scoring only 6 points instead of the possible 21 points. Plus we handed the Jets 7 points.

So our offense, within the Jets redzone (really, inside the 10) was not able to get 15 of the possible 21 points. This has happened all season for us.

Our defensive players have been in football for a while. They see what happens.

It is the lack of scoring points that hurts our defense. They are not that good to win games on their own. The Jets only scored 17 points against our defense. We are 30th in the NFL, we only score 15 points a game.

But our offense only scored 6 against the Jets. Our offense scored 7 points for the Jets, with our QB throwing from their 3 yard line and a Jet defender(Revis) running the pass back 101 yards for a touchdown.

So our offense gave us -1 points in this game.

So how again is our problem our defense? Our problem is simply scoring touchdowns instead of always settling for field goals. I'd do anything I could to start scoring touchdowns. I'd consider being within the 10 yard line a 4 down area. I'd run 4 times to score a touchdown, anything not to settle for a field goal.

I'd run the Wildcat with Thomas and Bush. I would run Thomas 80% of the time when we are within the 10 yard line until we improve at QB and WR.

 

[Hayden Fox]

Mix in a takeaway defense. I do not want to hear about who or what is hurting this D

 

[2413fanphins]

I would venture a guess that the ravens, and steelers as well as a handful of other teams would have been more than happy and quite confident they could get the job done with a score of 7-6. thats what great defenses do.
our defense is horrible no matter how you cut it.

our offense being inept has nothing to do with the fact that cam wake can't get past a single RT in the game.
nothing to do with the fact that our LBers can't cover like most other backers in the league.
nothing to do with the fact that our secondary plays undisciplined and couldn't catch a cold, let alone an interception.

 

[Kdawg954]

Mix in a takeaway defense. I do not want to hear about who or what is hurting this D

Pretty much . . . inept offense or not . . . this defense doesn't takeaway the ball, they don't rush the passer, they still can't defend the TE and now they aren't very solid against the run either. Plus we have a real good punter which helps with field position . . . you can't shift accountability to the offense for the defense's shortcommings.

 

[DuderinoN703]

The Dolphins had the ball for 37 mins 51 secs against Cleveland. It was the defense that blew the game on Cleveland's game winning drive.

/thread

 

[NorFlaFin]

The team doesn't respect Sparano; dead man walking trying to motivate professional athletes?

 

[LikeUntoGod]

I would venture a guess that the ravens, and steelers as well as a handful of other teams would have been more than happy and quite confident they could get the job done with a score of 7-6.

Well, not very often will any defense win when the team only scores 7 points. The Ravens have the best defense giving up 14.2 points per game so they would not be 4-1 only scoring 7 points. If fact, they score 29.6 points a game twice as much as our 15 per game.

Hey, we did it under Wanny, we won games with scores of 9-7. But were committed to running the ball then and used good ball control.

The greatest example of this was last week. Our defense had made the Jets go 3 plays and out a couple of times and then our offense turned the ball over allowing their defense to score when their offense could not. Much like last season when Chad Henne was throwing interceptions for touchdowns, in some little tiny way it makes our defense worse due partly to the increased stress and the simple fact our defensive players do not think their team has a chance because our offense cannot score.

A defense might play hard for 60 minutes if they thought that given a chance, our offense could go down and score the needed touchdown to pull it out.

But we can't score touchdowns so all the players are also seeing the scores go from 3-7 to 6-14 to 9-24. We have a OK defense who can play well at times. They can stop the run. But they are not a dominant defense in no sense of the word. Our defense has been hurt all season and are becoming walking wounded.

We are 30th in the league in scoring and 31st in redzone scoring. I'm not talking about us being let's say, 16th in scoring, I'm talking about us being almost last, 30th.