Zim’s Grades For The Game: Week 13 Edition | Page 3 | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

Zim’s Grades For The Game: Week 13 Edition

H.P. Lovedrafts said:
McDaniel needs to give up play calling duties. He's great at designing plays, but lacks the sense to call the right play at the right time. It's disturbing.
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Doesn't seem like a kneejerk decision in the least. I hope you can sense the dripping sarcasm.
 
H.P. Lovedrafts said:
Seriously? You really think McDaniel has a consistently good feel for play calling, especially when the game is on the line?
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We sure likes how he calls the plays when he wins. However, that is entirely forgotten when we lose. If you listen to half of the posters on here, they would have fired Shula in the mid 70s.
 
DZimmer000 said:
Describe tonight’s game in 2 words. My 2 are “Absolute Trash”. Basically, every wart that we feared would rear its ugly head in a game…Reared its ugly head. The makeup of the cream puff schedule we’ve had came off tonight and those warts were exposed. What warts am I speaking of? Read the grades and find out. On to the grades:

QB — D : Wart #1: Tua’s inability to throw outside the numbers when teams are taking away the middle of the field in umbrella coverage. This is absolutely real in all of our losses including tonight. His insistence on throwing over the middle could have gotten Waddle killed at least twice tonight. The fumble on the 5 was irresponsible. Blame the snap on whoever…But Tua should have been aware enough to just cover it. Nowhere near Tua’s best night tonight and I have removed him from any MVP conversation after that performance.

RB — C - : Wart #2: No “Big Back” option to get tough yards. It hurt us tonight for sure. I’ll say that Mostert and Achane had decent games running behind a porous OL. To be honest, the RB’s were the best unit on the team tonight along with the WR’s. Although, Achane had a chance for the first down at the end and unsuccessfully tried to go out of bounds short of the marker. Not a good decision.

WR’s — C - : Wart #3: Not having a receiver that can take over the #1 role if Hill goes down. To be fair….No one can replace Hill. But the problem is no one can play like a #1 if he goes down. Obviously, the Titans took Waddle out of the game while Hill was out. Credit to them. To me….Hill is the MVP of the league. Period. Tonight proved it.

TE’s — F : Wart # 4: No TE that is even remotely a threat in the red zone. The fact that we throw fades to a 5’6” receiver proves this one. The TE run blocking tonight was atrocious. This wart bit us big tonight. Awful performance. Hopefully, Julian Hill has a better year next year….He was terrible tonight.

OL — F : Wart # 5 & 6: Eichenberg and Jackson. After singing their praises against the weak teams on our schedule, they were horrendous tonight. Actually, so was the entire OL. Connor Williams going down hurt in a BAD way tonight. If he’s out for the year….That’s BAD news. Period. Let’s hope we get Hunt back and Armstead returns for 5 or 6 plays this year before body parts start falling off of him.

DL — D + : Wart # 7: A total lack of any quality depth behind Wilkins and Sieler. Those 2 were absolutely gassed from the 4th quarter on. The lack of depth here bit us in the ass in a big way. The inability to get to the QB in the 4th quarter was one of the reasons we lost this game. Will Levis looked like Peyton Manning tonight. That’s just disappointing.

LB’s — D + : Wart # 8: The inability or our LB’s to cover any TE or RB was apparent again. Credit Chubb for getting pressure a few times….But he was really the only consistent backer all night. Long had a play or two…But that was it. Van Ginko was invisible as well.

DB’s — F : Wart # 9: The complete inability to get off the field on 3rd down. What the **** happened here tonight? We let 1 player beat us. And he definitely beat us. D. Hopkins had a great night. Yes…He got away with an OPI. No doubt. But he had a huge game and our insistence on not double teaming him cost us. The soft coverage from 3:40 on in the 4th quarter is inexcusable….But I’ll go further into that in the coaching section.

ST’s — F : Wart # 10: Our Special Teams units. Period. A line drive kickoff. A line drive punt. A blocked field goal. Are you kidding me with this unit?? Disgusting performance. Keep in mind…They get the F even though they recovered a muffed punt that put us ahead late in the game. That’s a special kind of bad. Pun intended.

Coaching — F : Wart # 11: Mike McDaniel not getting plays in on time. This trumps Wart # 12: Mike McDaniels stupid challenges that almost NEVER win. The coaching tonight was worse than bad. Abandoning the running game in the red zone? Why? Throwing a fade to Hill? Why? The bad challenge. Why? Not running max protect on the final drive? Why? Not going after a rookie corner? Why? Not getting the plays in on time that cost us a TO? WHY??? Wart # 14: Fangio’s complete refusal to bring pressure. Why?? I’m dumbfounded. Why would you play soft zone EVERY SINGLE PLAY as the Titans walked down the field. I actually believe the Titans would have taken longer to score if we would have taken our defense completely off the field. Pathetic doesn’t really cover it.

Conclusion: The coaching tonight was incredibly bad. The players also didn’t help themselves…But I have to blame coaching for what could be one of the worst losses in Miami Dolphins history. How devastating is this loss? We’ll see. But make no mistake about it…Up 14 points with 3:00 minutes to play and to lose that game at home is really tragic. You might say I’m being hyperbolic here…But I don’t think I am. Let’s hope there is no let down…But I have a suspicion there might be a big one.
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Perfect.

This team and staff deserve ALL the **** they are getting today.

The issues you pointed out are not things that can be fixed in a week.

They got their pants run up a flag pole.
 
Avigatorx said:
Perfect.

This team and staff deserve ALL the **** they are getting today.

The issues you pointed out are not things that can be fixed in a week.

They got their pants run up a flag pole.
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Sure did. But they have the Jets so, let's focus on fixing what is needed to beat them.
 
Fin-Loco said:
We sure likes how he calls the plays when he wins. However, that is entirely forgotten when we lose. If you listen to half of the posters on here, they would have fired Shula in the mid 70s.
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I will slightly disagree here. I think there are plenty of complaints about the play-calling even when we win games. It’s pretty clear that McD refuses to commit to the run game and goes away from it when it’s working. He doesn’t tend to attack opponents’ weaknesses. This gets brought up plenty even in games where we end up winning by a big scoreline.
 
ForksPhin said:
I will slightly disagree here. I think there are plenty of complaints about the play-calling even when we win games. It’s pretty clear that McD refuses to commit to the run game and goes away from it when it’s working. He doesn’t tend to attack opponents’ weaknesses. This gets brought up plenty even in games where we end up winning by a big scoreline.
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He's a second year coach and will improve.
 
Fin-Loco said:
He's a second year coach and will improve.
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I’m not seeing it. He’s 31 games into his head coaching career now. A lot of coaches don’t even see 31 games.

I like McD. Realistically, I don’t want him gone. I want him to be the head coach for a decade. I just want him to be better at game management.
 
Fin-Loco said:
He's a second year coach and will improve.
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He might, but he might not. There are a lot of examples of coaches and players that actually get worse with experience because they are averse to change or the league gets a book on them and figures them out and they can't adjust or they overreact and try to change everything instead of just tweaking to improve.

We don't know what McDaniel will do.

I'll say this: I thought he was doing a better job this season. However, last night looked a lot like the way he called plays last year, a way he admitted left a lot of room for improvement.

One way someone doesn't improve with experience is if they return to a substandard position with which they are comfortable when the going gets rough, even though it's been proven that position is poor. That's what it looked like I saw last night when Tyreek was out of the game. MM panicked his way back to what he's comfortable with instead of having a solid Plan B.

I think McDaniel is inventive enough with offense and so likable that the Dolphins almost always will have good records with him as the coach -- players want to be on the Dolphins and play for him. That said, I'm not sure yet that he has the attributes to win a Super Bowl. He and Tua have some similarities in personality that make me think they are good but not great. We shall see, but last night should give everyone legitimate reasons to question his ability to learn from his mistakes, or, at least, to avoid reverting back to his comfort zones when they don't suit the team.

EDIT: Just to add to this, Dolphins fans if anyone should know a year older doesn't necessarily mean a year better. Dave Wannstedt's best year was his first. Tony Sparano's best season was his first. Adam Gase's best year was his first. And Joe Philbin basically had a middle of the pack first year and stayed there. Flores showed improvement in record but already was showing decline in his third season and was killing the franchise in the process.
 
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Disaster class.
Easily the worst coached game since Cam Cameron was here.

unexcusable. we'll know from the jump on sunday how this is going to play out imi
 
Don’t the players like Tua/Mostert tell Mike hey let’s try a run inside the 5 after failing X amount of passes?
 
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