Patriots are a bad team, but the Phins season hung in the balance
Miami Dolphins Mike McDaniel ran a sloppy ship in the 15-10 win over an even more undisciplined New England Patriots, but a win is a win, and the Phins season hung in the balance. While McDaniel’s team made plenty of mistakes, his decision to run the football to beat down the Pats might have given his career and the Dolphins 2024 a pulse. The Dolphins tallied 193 yards on 41 carries which was the driving force in the win.
The cry is rising that this is the formula to drive the Dolphins back into the playoff hunt. I agree wholeheartedly that this is the formula for success in the current NFL offensive cycle, but I’m not sure how much this style will carry into future weeks. It is a shame that Chris Grier didn’t use this style as a healthy portion of his philosophy and stock the team with the talent to run it.
So, what can we pull from the rushing attack vs the Patriots for hope down the line?
But, maybe he will and it’s the right philosophy to build an offense around. Far more so than high-flying chuck-the-ball all-day finesse football. You can bet with the best pay-per-head that the new NFL offensive cycle has moved from ‘fun-ball’ to pass-balanced. The inside run game is key to a consistent offense these days.
Let’s hope McDaniel sees this!
The next question is can we repeat the results?
Does Miami have the horses? Yes & No!
Here’s a little mish-mash chart I made from PFF stats. We ran a heavy dose of Inside Zone with the best success from the Oline production behind Terron and Jones. The last column of red numbers on the right after LNG is the Yards Before Contact (YBC) numbers. This is the amount of space created by the offensive line.
YCO is yards after contact from the runner, you can see that the Miami Dolphins runners ran violently and generated most of the rushing on the day.
Left guard Robert Jones has taken some heat the last few weeks, but he is the best driveblocker on the team. Paired with Terron and our hard running backs we could be productive inside going forward.
But there is a problem.
Unfortunately, Liam Eichenberg and Austin Jackson can’t drive block they are move blockers and don’t pair well with Jones. Center Aaron Brewer isn’t big either and he can be hit or miss in drive blocking.
The Patriots are ranked 9th in the NFL in run defense, but digging a little deeper you see this is misleading. New England faced 5th-ranked 49ers, but 19th-ranked Seahawks, 24th-ranked Bengals, and 32nd-ranked Jets. In these games, they had safeties Peppers and Dugger who are the heart of their defense. They were absent against the Dolphins.
So, I think there is a mixed basket here. I think we can and must add some inside running behind Terron and Jones and it will help us be more competitive. But I’m not sure we can get these big results unless it’s like the Jaguars or Patriots game where the offense isn’t good and we keep the defense on the field and wear them down. I sure hope I’m wrong because I loved the look and feel! Go Phins!!!
