(In this series, Touchdown Wire’s Mark Schofield takes a look at one important metric per NFL team to uncover a crucial problem to solve for the 2020 season. In this installment, it’s time to look at how the Dolphins struggled to protect passers in 2019, why that matters and how they are trying to rectify the issue).
The Miami Dolphins entered this past offseason with a number of holes to address on their roster, and a ton of resources at their disposal with which to patch those holes. The Dolphins entered free agency with a league-high $98 million available under the salary cap, and they put that money to good use, adding players like Kyle Van Noy, Byron Jones and Shaq Lawson in free agency.
Then come draft time, the Dolphins had a ton of draft picks available when the first night of the draft was underway. Miami had three first-round selections to play with, and similar to their cap space, the 14 picks available to them when the draft kicked off were the most in the league. They ended up using 11 of those picks, starting things off with quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
Only time will tell if those acquisitions will pay off for Miami, but a number – or even a series of numbers – might be more critical to the Dolphins in 2020 than the resources they put to use over the past few months. We can start here, with this number: 66.
That is the number of hits that quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick took last year, according to charting data from Pro Football Reference/SportRadar. That number tied Daniel Jones for the league-high in 2019. Mike Renner, from Pro Football Focus, brought this number into terrifying clarity for Dolphins fans:
I didn't realize that Tua was hit or sacked on only 77 dropbacks his entire college career. And he was injured 3 times.
Ryan Fitzpatrick was hit or sacked on 132 dropbacks last season (2nd most in NFL)
No way I'm starting Tua until that OL is fixed
— Mike Renner (@PFF_Mike) May 5, 2020
There are other numbers which highlight the difficulties the Dolphins had in protecting their passers a season ago. Fitzpatrick was sacked 40 times last season, seventh-most in the league. His “pocket time,” according to PFR/SportsRadar was 2.3 seconds, which tied him for the lowest in the league with Drew Brees, Andy Dalton, Josh Allen, Mitchell Trubisky, Kyler Murray and Baker Mayfield. This statistic measures the time from snap to throw or pressure, so it does not completely measure pressure alone, but it is something to consider.
Turning to data from Pro Football Focus, we also know that Fitzpatrick was pressured on 230 of his dropbacks, which was sixth-most in the league among qualified passers. He was also pressured on 39.7% of his dropbacks, which was fourth-most in the league. The result of this pressure? Fitzpatrick had an Adjusted Completion Percentage of 59.9, which was 19th in the league among qualified passers.
Finally, there is the Pass Block Win Rate statistic from ESPN, which measures how long an offensive lineman – or an offensive line – can sustain their blocks for 2.5 seconds or longer. As a team, the Dolphins had a Pass Block Win Rate of just 28%, which was 31st in the league. Only the Detroit Lions, at 24%, were worse.
Now, we know that some of the resources available to the Dolphins this offseason were dedicated to fixing the offensive line. During free agency they added guard Ereck Flowers (coming off perhaps his best season in the league after a position switch inside) and center Ted Karras. Then in the draft they added tackle Austin Jackson with one of their first-round selections, guard Robert Hunt in the second round, and guard Solomon Kindley in the fourth round. They also added undrafted free agent tackles Nick Kaltmayer from Kansas State and Jonathan Hubbard from Northwestern State. Meaning there is a chance their 2020 starting offensive line is comprised of new faces at all five positions.
Now, simply changing out the players will not improve the Dolphins’ offensive line overnight. But there is also a scheme component to what Miami seems to be doing. Remember, they added Chan Gailey as their new offensive coordinator this offseason, and Gailey could be called the NFL’s “Godfather of the Spread.” He was the first to implement the spread offense in the league on a consistent basis, and you can expect the Dolphins to use more spread formations and quick route concepts – often working off of an RPO structure – in 2020.
That might be very familiar footing for Tagovailoa, who ran such a system the past few years under Steve Sarkisian at Alabama.
But there is an offensive line component to this as well. Kyle Crabbs, the Senior NFL Draft Analyst for The Draft Network also covers the Dolphins for both Dolphins Wire and the Locked on Dolphins podcast. Crabbs looked at the acquisitions the Dolphins made along the offensive line and has a theory, which has a ton of merit. The Dolphins are building a horizontal-based passing game that will mirror what Tagovailoa ran at Alabama. As Crabbs wrote at The Draft Network:
The Dolphins, with Tagovailoa as the trigger man, are going to physically challenge opponents by running power concepts into stretched boxes. Gailey has shown tendencies in the past of implementing a lot of 11 personnel and stretching the field horizontally. By doing so, Miami can gain advantageous numbers in the box and look to blow defenses off the ball. And, as an extension off of that, is likely to package its pass options onto those same power, lead and dive concepts and give Tagovailoa the opportunity to make defenders wrong — just as he did at Alabama in 2019.
Crabbs also expanded on the schematic ideas in Miami in a piece at Dolphins Wire, where he wrote this:
Some of Miami’s pieces, such as the offensive line and running game with Jordan Howard, look the part of an “Alabama” group. But we will need time to see if the chemistry is there for the unit to perform at a high level. The linemen brought in this offseason by the Dolphins certainly fit the bill and have a universal vision of powerful play at the point of attack.
It might take some time for this to get together, but the approach is smart and sound. The beauty of such an offensive approach comes in a variety of ways, but most notably this offensive system would continually put defenders into conflict (making the defense wrong almost no matter what they do) and it would lead to the Dolphins’ QB (whether Fitzpatrick or Tagovailoa) getting the ball out of their hands quickly after the snap.
And not due to pressure as the numbers from 2019 illustrate.
Hopefully for the Dolphins and their fans the plan comes together, and the woeful protection numbers from 2019 are a thing of the past. Otherwise, a number Miami fans might start to familiarize themselves with is 46.6, which was Tagovailoa’s PFF grade last year when pressured.
Miami fans do not want to go down that road, and neither does the team they root for.
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