smash mouth football is whats lacking

[NY8123]

Balance people, always has and always will be balance, you need it both from an offense to defense point of view and a rushing to passing point of view. Your offense needs to have both the ability to run and pass, it cannot be one dimensional, so many teams have proven this point, yea the occasional team who is truly one dimensional wins it all but they struggle to do so on a regular basis. Let's not pretend like Seattle's offense is a lame duck and the D won it all for them like the 2000 Ravens team. Seattle has a damn fine offense.

The defense needs to be good at making a team one dimensional, you either have a run D that shuts it down or you need a stellar passing defense. Seattle does this very well and in fact,t so do the San Fran 49's, Denver lived by the pass and when it was taken from them like a thief in the night, there was no answer for it. I didn't foresee Denver ****ting the bed as bad as they did and in fact I thought they would win but it proves the point of balance.

Seattle was the more balanced team top to bottom, I hope Philbin sees this because Green Bay wasn't built that way while he was there, you can make the case Green Bay is trying to move in that direction and it is the right direction. I hope Joe-bob takes the same notes and applies them in Miami or we will always be a ****y team under Joe.

 

[Awsi Dooger]

The 1984 Miami Dolphins had a +3.1 net ypa. The 1984 San Francisco 49ers were +1.8. Wouldn't that have indicated a bet on the Dolphins with your current system? I might be looking at the wrong numbers, however. I just went and pulled it from pro football reference.

Absolutely. Under current criteria I would have bet Miami and lost. The Bud Goode numbers are slightly different than Pro Football Reference but not enough to shift that type of gap.

As I've indicated many times, I didn't know about yards per attempt until a Dick Vermiel article in Inside Sports magazine in summer 1987. I didn't isolate the YPPA Differential playoff system until the late '90s. Prior to that I either bet the Super Bowl subjectively or used various systems that I was experimenting with.

The 1984 season Super Bowl wager wasn't a system. When one team emerges from a low scoring game and another from a high scoring game I virtually always prefer the team that won the low scoring game. San Francisco vs. Chicago was an incredibly impressive physical battle in the NFC Championship Game. Combine that with Miami abandoning the running game late in the season and I thought it was an easy call. Keep in mind it was essentially a home game for the 49ers and the spread opened very low at -1.5.

That +3.1 for 1984 Dolphins is very good. I remember only a handful of teams with a superior number. I know the '89 49ers were terrific. Then the next year they dropped off considerably.

YPPA Differential is hardly infallible. It's the best thing I've found that requires absolutely zero subjectivity or happy adjustment in the playoffs. I don't care about injuries or matchups or conventional wisdom or anything else. It has produced a consistent profit. I particularly like that it produces a high volume of plays. I had 9 playoff wagers this season among the 11 games. Only Colts/ Chiefs and 49ers/ Panthers did not produce a play. That's what you need as a sports bettor -- volume and an edge. Neither one is any good without the other.

 

[hemidemon]

Does anyone remember the last time we were a freakin hard nose in ur face fuk you up football team? Was it in the 70s, the 80s? I was born in 81 and have not had the opportunity to see the kind smash mouth football that needs to be played to win. I mean, marino was so fun to watch but I dont recall the d being so good. good enough but not like we seen last night in the sb. Madison and surtain were the closest thing and we still couldnt win. Philbin seems to be more of a finesse philosophy. I dont like it. We play way to soft. Like the panthers game before the half how far back we put our dbs. That kind of play is weak and we will be weak as long as our coach lets it happen. I just dojt see us changing until we get a new coach. So when was the last time we had a hard ass enough defense to win championships and when we did have one why didnt we win... after 81 I mean

If you really want to see a Dolphins smash mouth football team go to youtube and check out the 1973 AFC Championship game, Miami vs Oakland. The entire game is there. Tough running and tough hard hitting defense. That's how far back you have to go.

 

[TheWalrus]

Absolutely. Under current criteria I would have bet Miami and lost. The Bud Goode numbers are slightly different than Pro Football Reference but not enough to shift that type of gap.

As I've indicated many times, I didn't know about yards per attempt until a Dick Vermiel article in Inside Sports magazine in summer 1987. I didn't isolate the YPPA Differential playoff system until the late '90s. Prior to that I either bet the Super Bowl subjectively or used various systems that I was experimenting with.

The 1984 season Super Bowl wager wasn't a system. When one team emerges from a low scoring game and another from a high scoring game I virtually always prefer the team that won the low scoring game. San Francisco vs. Chicago was an incredibly impressive physical battle in the NFC Championship Game. Combine that with Miami abandoning the running game late in the season and I thought it was an easy call. Keep in mind it was essentially a home game for the 49ers and the spread opened very low at -1.5.

That +3.1 for 1984 Dolphins is very good. I remember only a handful of teams with a superior number. I know the '89 49ers were terrific. Then the next year they dropped off considerably.

YPPA Differential is hardly infallible. It's the best thing I've found that requires absolutely zero subjectivity or happy adjustment in the playoffs. I don't care about injuries or matchups or conventional wisdom or anything else. It has produced a consistent profit. I particularly like that it produces a high volume of plays. I had 9 playoff wagers this season among the 11 games. Only Colts/ Chiefs and 49ers/ Panthers did not produce a play. That's what you need as a sports bettor -- volume and an edge. Neither one is any good without the other.

+2.8, according to pro football reference.

What's interesting about that Dolphins/49ers matchup is that the Dolphins actually forced a lower defensive ypa in addition to having a much higher offensive ypa. The defensive number shocked me, because I think the 49ers were #1 in overall defense while the Dolphins were only a middling defense in terms of yardage, somewhere in the teens. Looking back at it (I was 2 when that game was played), I think we see the effect of a far stronger NFC on the 49ers stats as well as Marino being on another planet in terms of ypa that year. People forget he only threw it 560 or so times. When Brees broke the record he threw it in the 650 range. Not to mention, the Dolphins set a record for touchdowns that year and led the league in scoring by a wide margin. In other words, they were ahead a lot which probably forced opponents to open it up to try and come back.

The final verdict I think was that Walsh and the 49ers were simply the first to figure out the code on Marino and that kind of offense. No one else really had to that point. I don't think Ditka and Buddy Ryan would have had the NFC Championship Game gone the other way. When you watch the game closely, which I've got back and done, they really sort of figured it out by accident that they could go to the dime defense on every play and still stop the run. It wasn't the plan they started with at all. Add to that the fact that every guy in their secondary went to the Pro Bowl and that was the ballgame.

I do think the yppa differential is a sign however that Dolphin team is one of the stronger losing teams in Super Bowl history. A subjective determination, of course. The '83 Redskins would certainly be on such a list. As would the '07 Patriots.

 

[Shouright]

Glory years qualified. We'd get the ball with 8 minutes remaining and the game was over. The opponent knew we would run and was hopeless to stop it. Those games ended tamely at 3:35 PM. You could almost set your watch. Magnificent football and memories.

Otherwise, the 1983 Dolphin team maintained a physical edge. We transitioned from Woodley to Marino but initially Shula didn't allow the offense to become full cream puff. In midseason I attended a home game against the Rams that was quite promising. We out muscled a very good team in the rain with proper amount of balance. Then either the following week or within a few weeks we actually won at San Francisco. It wasn't a vintage Montana team but they were good enough to make it to the NFC Championship Game.

Our defense was hard trying but not particularly talented. It peaked a year earlier before wearing down against the Redskins in the Super Bowl. In 1983 they weren't quite as good. Larry Gordon died while jogging that summer. We actually ran the ball more than we passed in the home playoff loss to Seattle. That's amazing given the remainder of the Marino era. Unfortunately we couldn't stop Curt Warner when it mattered. He was an incredibly talented rookie running back from Penn State, picked very high in the draft. Warner tore up his knee early the following season and never fully recovered so not many younger fans realize how tremendous he was pre injury. The Dolphins caught Warner at his best and he slithered through tiny openings in the 4th quarter as Seattle pulled out the game. Oakland was mega talented and probably would have handled us easily a week later. But that Dolphin team was legit.

After that, forget it. We became a pantyhose passing team in the road game at San Diego in 1984 and never surrendered the frail idiocy for 15 years.

I was at that one. An unusually cold December day in Miami, with lots of people in the stadium draped in blankets to stay warm as they watched. Couldn't believe the Dolphins lost a playoff game at home. At that tender age I thought they were invincible. :)

 

[Awsi Dooger]

As I mentioned last week, the Super Bowl hasn't been the high water mark of the YPPA Differential system. It works best earlier in the playoffs. I wouldn't doubt that holds true of years prior to when I discovered it. Once a team reaches the Super Bowl it has strengths that aren't always obvious via the numbers. This year Seattle held up but I'm not going to get carried away about it. Last season I had 49ers over Baltimore.

 

[Shouright]

As I mentioned last week, the Super Bowl hasn't been the high water mark of the YPPA Differential system. It works best earlier in the playoffs. I wouldn't doubt that holds true of years prior to when I discovered it. Once a team reaches the Super Bowl it has strengths that aren't always obvious via the numbers. This year Seattle held up but I'm not going to get carried away about it. Last season I had 49ers over Baltimore.

Plus, the "us against the world" mentality that often leads to underdog upsets is the strongest and the most realistic in games in which the "world" is actually really watching. :)

 

[ITS!MATEO]

I love how bipolar this board is

When we were smashing teams, running more than throwing under Sparano and co everybody wanted a fast paced west coast offense and were yelling for "more chunk yardage plays". Jump to 2014 and now we're implementing a more west coast, throw first offense and they want to go back to smash mouth... smfh

I honestly do not care which one we use as long as they win using it....

 

[dlockz]

I love how bipolar this board is

When we were smashing teams, running more than throwing under Sparano and co everybody wanted a fast paced west coast offense and were yelling for "more chunk yardage plays". Jump to 2014 and now we're implementing a more west coast, throw first offense and they want to go back to smash mouth... smfh

I honestly do not care which one we use as long as they win using it....

We never were a good run blocking team under Sparano. We used a gimmicky offense to create yards by having extra blockers to compensate for weakness on oline. Long was truly a good run blocking tackle and if we ran behind him we gained yards but as a unit we were never a smash mouth running team.

 

[Highzenga]

Parcells wanted to create that with his size charts and overemphasis on the lines. In 2008 I wouldn't say we were smash mouth but we ran the ball well. In 2002, Ricky was a beast and we had a decent defense. In all honesty, we haven't been a smash mouth team since the early 70's and that resulted in 2 titles. I know the current rules make it a passing league and obviously you need a solid QB at the very least to compete in this league today. But lets face it, physicality still rules. Look at some of the elite teams of the past 10 years. Seahawks, 49ers, Ravens, Steelers, Giants, even the Patriots in the years that they won championships. These are all extremely physical teams. The kind of teams that other teams don't look forward to playing. Besides Brady, those teams also do not have top 5 QB's. I think we have a decent enough QB and I would like to build a physical team around him in the mold of those teams. That is the kind of franchise that we originally were and I want to get back to the Dolphin way. I just don't think it will happen under Philbin.

 

[Bob512]

If you really want to see a Dolphins smash mouth football team go to youtube and check out the 1973 AFC Championship game, Miami vs Oakland. The entire game is there. Tough running and tough hard hitting defense. That's how far back you have to go.

You should also check out the stats from the 1973 Super Bowl. Bob Griese was 8 for 11 for 88 yards. Essentially, the Phins ran it down their throats. The following year, the Phins only threw the ball 7 times in their Super bowl victory over the Vikings.

Those were hard nosed teams in a different era. I haven't seen that type of physical play in a long time.

I heard Solomon Wilcox the other day, and he ranked this Seahawks secondary number 2 or 3 on his list behind the Ronnie Lott led secondary for the 49rs and a couple of the 70's Raiders teams.

 

[jtoomuch]

I was at that one. An unusually cold December day in Miami, with lots of people in the stadium draped in blankets to stay warm as they watched. Couldn't believe the Dolphins lost a playoff game at home. At that tender age I thought they were invincible. :)

I was also at that game, sitting high up in a corner of the OB. We were favored and I thought we would win. It was miserable.

 

[Finsfan4ever1]

You should also check out the stats from the 1973 Super Bowl. Bob Griese was 8 for 11 for 88 yards. Essentially, the Phins ran it down their throats. The following year, the Phins only threw the ball 7 times in their Super bowl victory over the Vikings.

Those were hard nosed teams in a different era. I haven't seen that type of physical play in a long time.

I heard Solomon Wilcox the other day, and he ranked this Seahawks secondary number 2 or 3 on his list behind the Ronnie Lott led secondary for the 49rs and a couple of the 70's Raiders teams.

The killer Bee's were pretty good for a few years, but you're right those No-Name defenses would knock the snot out of you. With the rules in place today it's going to be difficult to steadily win with defense. Balance, balance, and more balance will win consistently on both sides of the ball.

What made Seattle's defense special to me was superior depth, and they didn't beat themselves with silly mistakes.

That said, I think it's a little early to be comparing their secondary to the best of all time. Let's see the same level of play 3 or 4 years first.

 

[stephins87]

Reading this thread, it's truly depressing how long it's been since this team was relevant in January.

 

[twix2500]

Does anyone remember the last time we were a freakin hard nose in ur face fuk you up football team? Was it in the 70s, the 80s? I was born in 81 and have not had the opportunity to see the kind smash mouth football that needs to be played to win. I mean, marino was so fun to watch but I dont recall the d being so good. good enough but not like we seen last night in the sb. Madison and surtain were the closest thing and we still couldnt win. Philbin seems to be more of a finesse philosophy. I dont like it. We play way to soft. Like the panthers game before the half how far back we put our dbs. That kind of play is weak and we will be weak as long as our coach lets it happen. I just dojt see us changing until we get a new coach. So when was the last time we had a hard ass enough defense to win championships and when we did have one why didnt we win... after 81 I mean

What are you talking about, that is what Bill Parcells tried to put together when he was here. Dont you remember all the complaints that smash mouth football is prehistoric and does not work any longer. Everyone was screaming and yelling last year that its now a passing league and that we need to evolve with the times. That's why Philbin was hired and why Parcells men were weeded out. The last winning season we had was smash mouth football, how quickly one forget the "WildCat".