The core philosophy of the Trifecta is to pound the ball. They did not have the horses in the o-line to get that done. You can sit here all day long and say "let's establish the run, let's be more physical, let's have a vertical passing game, let's pressure the passer more..." and on and on...but if you don't have the horses to do so, forgettaboutit.
In a playoff game like that, home vs. a rookie QB, there's nothing wrong with plenty of 2 yard runs followed by a punt. That was my frustration on Sunday. The Dolphins basically played scared and ignored Football 101.
Allowing the other side to out rush you 33 attempts to 21 is essentially a forfeit. I wish the significance of rushing attempts were better understood. Plus, many of our rushing attempts were dainty, the timed handoffs sweeps to Ronnie or Ricky. You think Baltimore was concerned about those? I guarantee the coaches were laughing at them, i.e. Miami is afraid to test us straight ahead, or even use their standard Wildcat package, so now they are resorting to wide finesse gimmickry.
The Wildcat was all but ignored and when it was stuffed a couple of times we never used any of the wrinkles out of it. Either play basic football and hope to win via key big play or two, or go out with your trickeration arsenal left on the floor. Instead, we relied on a weird hybrid. I loved Pennington's season but asking him to drop back and test the Ravens deep without a running back drop was the height of masochism. I remember begging for conservative calls to get into the half at 3-3, before the Reed debacle.
There were many great aspects to the offense this year but I anticipated more of a thug mentality when the opportunity was there. The quick handoffs to Polite on short yardage was the best new wrinkle I've seen in a Dolphin running game in more than 20 years. For years we've been dependent on either slow developing plays to the tailback in that situation, or a wimpy pass out of shotgun. We needed to feature much more of that play, trap designs even on early downs. I remember one on Sunday that was effective. Then you can run tons of adaptations out of it.
One thing that impressed me all season: We stayed away from empty backfields. That would have been suicidal with weak armed Pennington. Teams would have salivated to rotate upward and attack Pennington with no back to protect him. But with our standard action of Ronnie an excellent blocker motioning back to the formation, it caused defenses to be cautious, unsure of what the final formation would be.
Next year will feature more drive blocking. Even if our record is worse, once we get to the point 30+ rushes is the norm and anything less is unnaceptable and unthinkable, playoff victories will be attainable.
