TDOTSEAHAWK wrote:But they had 8 men in the box frequently. Now the question becomes - without our commitment to the run and their commitment to stopping it - would we be as good in the air?
So if we just started airing out all game - and they started to play the pass - would we have been as successful? I really think our conditioning had a lot to do with it - as many games we average 2-3 yards a carry in the first quarter and then pound it out by the fourth. That didn't happen this game.
More importantly, as an offensive coordinator - when do you stop trying to pound the defense? When the game is tied in the third quarter? When you have a 7 point lead in the fourth and your defense needs a rest? At no point in that game did I believe we needed to start airing it out - except as time expired. Then I wish we had 7 more points. Hindsight bias at its best.
If we started to 3 and out in the fourth - giving Miami more chances people would be on here saying that we should have used more clock etc..
Simply put - it is easy to say today that we should have aired it out to put more points up (because we lost) but the fact of the matter is that - we will not blow out every team and our defense has to hold leads. Our offense put up an efficient performance on the road and we should have won that game. The defense blew it. Simple as that.
You abandon the run and the defense starts to "cheat" and play the pass. Then you hit them with the run until they respect it again and you go back to the pass and make them pay. You do this over and over and over until eventually they realise they can't focus on stopping one, and have to play a balanced defense (meaning we can attack them with a balanced playbook). Yes you can use the run to set-up play action, but the exact same works in reverse, if you use the pass to set up and run all over them you get Mike Holmgren's 2004-05 offense.
We're not deficient in the passing game or the running game, our offense should be based entirely on what the defense is giving us, rather than trying to impose your will on them. Earlier in the season the Dolphins had the best run-defense in the league, and it
wasn't even close, they were allowing around 70 yards a game and the next closest was allowing around 90.
And it's hardly as if they faced poor running teams either, the first opponent out of the gate was Arian Foster. Even now with 3 big games that failed them recently, they still sit in 7th.
Andrew Luck threw over 400 yards against the Dolphins D and they rank 26th in passing yards. That tells you all you really need to know about what our strategy should have been.
It'd be like Tom Brady coming out here and saying "well I'm really good at passing so it doesn't matter if I target Richard Sherman".
Well we know exactly what happened when he tried that - and he's one of the best quarterbacks of all time.
If you have the ability to do it, you always attack an enemies weakness, no matter how good your greatest strength is.