smash mouth football is whats lacking | Page 3 | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

smash mouth football is whats lacking

Uh you have to have a powerful running game and a good passing game to go with it. That's called a balanced offense. You can't be all finesse or just have a running game and no passing game.
 
The last winning season we had was smash mouth football, how quickly one forget the "WildCat".
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I am not sure this falls into the true smash mouth style of play. It's more trying to remove the QB to gain a man advantage at the LOS. To me, it's more of a gimmick offense, and it's shelf life in the NFL sort of proved that. A true smash mouth style will never be a footnote like the Wild Cat is.
 
dlockz said:
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.
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I beg to differ. We were a smash mouth team for many many years. Ronnie and Ricky were bulldozers, but we have always lacked good olines, and we usually ran on the first 2 downs and then threw on 3rd with absolutely no change ups. So many 3 and outs..... THEN when Sparano got sick of it he tried the wildcat. You don't remember this, dlockz?
 
This offseason needs to be about the offensive line and the running game. If those two things are fixed this is a 12 win team with Tannehill throwing 30+ td's.
 
We actually had a smash mouth running team back in 1982 when we lost to Redskins in Super Bowl. It was a strike shortened season (9 games) so many may forget this one.
Between Andre Franklin and Tony Nathan and David Woodley we rushed for 150 yards a game and were 3rd in the league.

In the 3 playoff wins leading to the Super Bowl we smashed our opponents for 566 rushing yards and 5 rushing TD's on an amazing 142 rushing attempts. That is an average of 47 rushing attempt per playoff win. We just kept pounding the rock and getting 4 yards each time and wore out the opponents. We had a top notch D that year ranking #1 against yards and #2 scoring.
This allowed us to be conservative and play smash mouth football.

In the Super Bowl against the Top Scoring defense of the Redskins they shut down our running game. Held us to 96 yards on only 29 attempts with no rushing TD's. They forced Woodley to throw and he could only complete 4 passes all game. The Redskins used our formula and rushed for 52 times and controlled the game. But they also had timely passing that kept them balanced.

Love the smash mouth football but just remember that at some time or another in the playoff you will match up with a team that can take away your strength. When that happens you have to have the other phase of game to fall back on. If you don't it is curtains. Just look at the Broncos reliance on the short passing game as another example.
 
No we can't do that. We need to be finesse and not get fired up at all cause that's Philbins vision. SMH
 
Fins1971 said:
We actually had a smash mouth running team back in 1982 when we lost to Redskins in Super Bowl. It was a strike shortened season (9 games) so many may forget this one.
Between Andre Franklin and Tony Nathan and David Woodley we rushed for 150 yards a game and were 3rd in the league.

In the 3 playoff wins leading to the Super Bowl we smashed our opponents for 566 rushing yards and 5 rushing TD's on an amazing 142 rushing attempts. That is an average of 47 rushing attempt per playoff win. We just kept pounding the rock and getting 4 yards each time and wore out the opponents. We had a top notch D that year ranking #1 against yards and #2 scoring.
This allowed us to be conservative and play smash mouth football.

In the Super Bowl against the Top Scoring defense of the Redskins they shut down our running game. Held us to 96 yards on only 29 attempts with no rushing TD's. They forced Woodley to throw and he could only complete 4 passes all game. The Redskins used our formula and rushed for 52 times and controlled the game. But they also had timely passing that kept them balanced.

Love the smash mouth football but just remember that at some time or another in the playoff you will match up with a team that can take away your strength. When that happens you have to have the other phase of game to fall back on. If you don't it is curtains. Just look at the Broncos reliance on the short passing game as another example.
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Your right! What I remember about that game is John Riggins running it down our throat!
 
Dolphins512 said:
Your right! What I remember about that game is John Riggins running it down our throat!
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They had 52 rushes and we only had 47 total offensive plays. Luckily Woodley hit the long pass and we returned a kickoff for TD or it would have been a blowout.
They shut us down.
 
twix2500 said:
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".
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smash mouth doesnt freakin mean a running first team. why are people on here assuming a good running team is smash mouth? i meant as far as the physicality toward other teams. like seattles defense. just ball hawkin hit you hard in your face run you over typ of team. on both sides of the ball. lots of good answers on here otherwise! Thanks guys!
 
That 82 team had a nasty D. Usually a nasty D goes along with a running team that is why everyone is equating it to rushing well.

Look at the current nasty D's

seattle, 49ers, carolina. They all are rushing teams.
 
seems about as bad as the American public voting republican for 8 years, then switching to democrats when nothing changes. then after 8 more years, they switch back to republican. Nothing changes if we are an all or nothing team. We need Balance. we need coach that fits the gameplan and style of play to the type that beats the other team.
 
dlockz said:
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.
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dlockz you just described a smash mouth running team. If you want to argue were we good enough at it then i understand. Our best offensive weapon was Ricky and Ronnie, and u can call it gimmick but it was a creative way of using our best offensive weapons.
 
twix2500 said:
dlockz you just described a smash mouth running team. If you want to argue were we good enough at it then i understand. Our best offensive weapon was Ricky and Ronnie, and u can call it gimmick but it was a creative way of using our best offensive weapons.
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Pulling five plays out of the double wing playbook was creative. We could have actually done something with it if Sporano and Lee would have ever bothered to have learned a few more of the plays from that offense. They were lazy and the rest of the league caught up to the five plays we were running. Sad. Installing the full offense would have caused the rest of the league problems for a couple of years.
 
We had an undersized defense that was exposed against a bigger and more physical Redskins o-line. That's why they ran it right down our throat in that Superbowl.
 
Awsi Dooger said:
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.
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The main reason we ran the ball was Tony Nathan and Woody Bennett. We had a very effective offensive line with hold over from the 70's team.
Shula was definitely effected by the San Diego / Miami 41-38 thriller 1982. Dan Fouts could score quickly. Don saw a chance to take Marino in 1983 and he did it.
Shula was on the competition committee and he could see the way the game was changing.
1984 was the tear the Fins starting throwing it more, taking advantage of Marino's talent. It was also the year that Betters and Baumhower got injured, as well as some of the hold over oline players.
By the end of the season, and against the 49'ers, some key players were walking wounded. We could score, but we couldn't stop anyone.
Credit to Bill Walsh putting an effective game plan together. The TE and screen play destroyed us in the super bowl.
Shula could not replace some of key players through the draft, and then he had a falling out with Bill Arnsparger. From 1986-1990, those were the lost years.
In the 1990's, the team made it to AFC Championship and the playoffs, but we could not get past Bruce Smith and Jim kelly.
It still amazes me that Marv Levy owned owned Shula when it mattered in the 1990's. Shula owned Levy when he was the coach of KC on the 70's.
 
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