The Miami Dolphins have an unenviable task ahead of them this weekend — figuring out how to contain Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and receivers D.K. Metcalf & Tyler Lockett. Lockett, the more experienced of the duo of receivers, enjoyed a monster day last week against the Dallas Cowboys:
9 receptions, 100 yards, 3 touchdowns
Yikes. The good news for Miami is that the team has more talent in the secondary than the Dallas Cowboys do — and if Miami is able to get cornerback Byron Jones back from injury this week, Miami can feasibly play matchups all over the field.
But the Dolphins have to be just as aware of where Lockett is as they are to who is covering him. Dolphins DB coach Gerald Alexander laid out all that Miami must account for to bottle up one of Week 3’s most productive NFL receiver.
“I think you have to have awareness of where is. A guy like that – they utilize his skillset and his vertical speed and really put him really everywhere. He can line up on the outside and do some things on the inside. He can really stretch a defense. So as a secondary, we have to be aware of where he is and if that’s coverage where we have the opportunity to get hands on him in the slot or obviously on the outside, and we have to make sure that we definitely have depth to the defense and zone coverage and even some single-high stuff,” said Alexander.
“He has the ability to do some stuff not just vertically. They get him things on crossing routes and catch-and-run situations, and those are the opportunities where we are playing zones and we’re dropping off and staying back for the intermediate stuff. We have to have vision to break on the quarterback and be able to swarm him and be able to leverage him and be able to get him down on the ground and not allow those check downs to become rewards for the offense where they go for 12-15 yards when they were really designed to get tackled at five or six.”
As you can tell, Miami is going to have a lot of boxes to check this weekend against Seattle. It will serve as Miami’s toughest test yet — but the silver lining is that Miami has gotten some extra time to prepare and that the team is coming off a momentum building performance in Week 3. Is that enough to slow Seattle’s passing attack enough to keep this close? We’ll find out on Sunday.