Drive Time - Interior Defensive Line Training Camp Preview, Dolphins by the Analytics

training camp roster preview series. And there are so many guys on this side of the ball. I can't wait to break down and dive into their games. We'll get started up front with the big boys and the group led by Christian Wilkins and Divon gott Shaw on the interior defensive line. Plus, it's been out for a month and I still have not discussed the Dolphins portion of the War and Sharp Football preview publication. We'll rectify that.

We'll get you caught up on the latest around Dolphin camp, and I'll tell you about the worst ending to a first day of a new job, imaginable. All of that and more on this Thursday, August the sixth edition of the Drive Time Podcasts, and we start here with the first news that came in late on Wednesday evening. Devon Godshaw, Dolphins defensive lineman, has been added to the reserve slash COVID nineteen list. We'll get into more about Devon's game

later in this podcast. Other news from Wednesday, the Dolphins had their second player, another wide receiver, opt out for the season, with receiver Albert Wilson. Head coach Brian Flores had this to say about Albert Wilson's decision quote, I support Albert's decision. I know he made it with his family in mind. I want what is best for Albert, as I do for all of our players. End quote. And so this was gonna be the last year on Albert Wilson's contract, a three year deal he signed back

in to join the Miami Dolphins. And I'm never gonna forget that Chicago Bears game. And I do recall him against Detroit Lions the following week, the play where he got hurt, where it looked like he was gonna do it again, right, he was gonna rip off another long touchdown on a short pass that he turned into a massive play another long touchdown, but he got clipped on the back of the shoe and it just disrupted his

steps just enough to tweak and injure that hip. He was coming on strong late in the year last season at the end of twenty nineteen, but now the Dolphins will look elsewhere for production at wide receiver as both Wilson and Hearns are out of the picture for season. And let's just be real about what this is. This is a chance for other guys to step up their games. Shachim has been working his ass off all off season.

Isaiah Ford really shined down the stretch last year and earned admiration from Brian Flores and the coaches for his work, and Fitzpatrick echoed those sentiments by saying he's one of the most studious players he'd ever been around, a guy that understands each element of the offense the way a

quarterback would. Those are the more established and known guys, but there are other guys chomping at the bit on this roster as well, like Gary Jennings, who was a fourth round draft pick just two years ago coming out of West Virginia. They had him and David Sills, and I remember that conversation among all draft pundits about which of those two guys would go first in the draft, and Jennings wound up going a couple rounds earlier than Sills,

and here he is in Miami. He did get hurt on the one kickoff return last year, Jakeem's kickoff return for a touchdown, but he's back this season looking to make an impact on the Dolphins roster. It's a chance for Mac Hollins, who also got here in season last year. Daniel Jeremiah of NFL Network couldn't rave enough about his work as a gunner when he came out of North Carolina. He got some offensive snaps last year down the stretch

with the Dolphins as well. Then you've got the two undrafted free agents and Kirk Merritt and Matt Cole, both unique players. Merit in the sense that he's everything you look for from that height, weight, speed, athletic combination you want. He started off his career at Oregon, wound up in East Mississippi Community College, the site of Last Chance You

on Netflix, and finished his career in Arkansas State. He's one guy that I'm really looking forward to seeing when the pads come on and then Matt Cole was this year's Prospect X the Sports Illustrated Under the Radar prospect, a big time contributor at Mckenjurie State on offense but also in kicking game, which we know how much that means to coach Flora's And that's the old adage, right,

the old cliche. If you want to find your way onto the roster, maybe beyond the top of the depth chart, you better become best friends with a special teams coach

and work your ass off in that area. All always remember the Hard Knocks episode back and I think it was two thousand nine with the Jets when they told a certain player, I forget who it was, but they told him, if you want to make this football team, you better get to know everything there is no about special teams coordinator Mike west Off, formerly of the Miami Dolphins, and really buddy up to him and work on his

unit because that's your route to the football team. So that's the first way you carve out a role as one of those U d f A guys. But let's also be completely transparent here about this. There are opportunities and nobody's going to walk out there and fall into a job. In fact, to quote quote coach Flora's from last week, we aren't going to just hand out jobs, and so there's competition to be had here, and honestly, probably a pretty safe bet de pencil Davante Parker into

the lineup. He played himself into that contract extension last year, saw what Preston Williams did early last season. But they all have to earn it, right. This is an opportunity for the rest of the room, and I'm excited to see how all these guys respond. Another group I'm excited to see when the pads go on here at practice are the guys up front. And we continue our training camp roster preview series with another look at a Dolphins position group, this time up on the defensive line. Upfront.

Mary and Hobby coaches these guys, and I had a hard time trying to find a way to differentiate who goes where is terms of what the defensive allocation is for these guys on the roster. You have defensive tackles, defensive ends. But Brian Flores talks about his position list defense all the time, and so many of these guys playing multiple spots along that defensive line. That's kind of hard to put them in a box or to pigeonhole

these guys. We're gonna try anyway here and go with the interior defensive lineman again in order of jersey number, starting with the Von gott Shaw upfront. Three accrued seasons here in Miami, a seventeen draft pick entering his fourth with the Dolphins, number fifty six out of L s U. He's gonna be twenty five years old on opening day.

And whether you talk about position or schematics, whatever the case may be, Tavon got Chaw is both versatile and adaptable, one of the more powerfully imposing and two year defensive lineman and all of the NFL. God Shaw has a penchant for stacking up bodies against the run and making plays at or around the line of scrimmage. He's categorized as a defensive tackle on Pro Football Focus. He had

thirty three run stops last year. Those are tackles within two yards of the line of scrimmage, and that led the NFL among that group of players. And again, to call him just a defensive tackle really would be shortsighted. For god Shaw, he moved all over the formation playing inside it knows all the way out to the five

technique outside off the tackle. He lined up pretty much everywhere across the defensive line you can for a defensive tackle and among the variety of fronts that Flores calls, whether god Shaw's playing in aggressive one gap penetrating upfield style or a read and react two gaps stack approach to the defense. His snap counts have increased each year as a pro. He's played in forty seven of a possible forty eight career games, and his seven hundred and

eighteen snaps last year were a career high. He also hit career highs and tackles with seventy five, sacks with two, quarterback hits with five, quarterback hurries with eleven, and total pressures with eighteen. He was the Dolphins Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee for the nineteen season, and Brian Flores spoke about that distinction and what it is that makes Devon the person a special guy. Quote. I think he does a lot in the community. He's shown leadership

throughout time. By the time that I've been here, this is a guy who is very genuine and caring about giving back he's a good human being and I think he's deserving of Walter Payton nomination and quote. There Up next on our list Jason Strowbridge, the rookie number fifty eight out of North Carolina, a fifth round draft pick of the Miami Dolphins back in April. Gonna be twenty four years old on opening Day, and like a few of his new teammates, Strowbridges football career returns to the

place where it all began. He was a standout prep at Deerfield Beach High School here in South Florida. The Dolphins fifth round pick is coming back home after a successful college career at u n C. Two hundred and

seventy three pounds. He has impressive pop and burst. He tested in the nine percent tile in the forty yard dash with a four point eight nine time percentile in the twenty yard shuttle at four point three seven seconds and better than the eighty second percentile, and the ten yard split, three cone and broad jumps, so all of his testing metrics spell explosive player for strode Bridge. Here's what coach Flores had to say about strode Bridge. He is an outside inside player. He lines up outside in

some situations inside and others. Good strength, good quickness. There's a lot to like about him. He played multiple positions, and his very versatile and tough and quote and that

versatility beared out in Strode bridges alignment splits. According to Pro Football Focus and their draft guide, he logged two hundred and eighty three snaps in the B gap that's between the garden tackle, two hundred and seventy two snaps over the offensive tackle, and one hundred and eleven snaps outside the tackle, with twenty three snaps in the A gap, which is a course between the center and guard on

the inside. So he really does play every position there in college at least, and that's the expectation as you hear coach Flora's talk about here with the inside outside player. He also had twenty two run stops and twenty eight quarterback pressures last year at u n c Up. Next is Derval Cirez Neto, one accrued season, second heading into Miami, number sixty nine on the Jersey International player out of Brazil, going to be twenty eight years old on opening day,

And this guy really is a fascinating study. He is on the International Pathway Program, the first player for the Dolphins on that particular pathway, and he took a fast ending route to get to the NFL. Six ft four pounds and he may well be in the running for the biggest human being capable of doing a standing backflip. And really he can do it with quite a bit of ease. There's a video of it up on Twitter.

The flexibility as well as the violent hands that he has our traits that really made him a judo champion back in his home country of Brazil. He's gotten some work with the Dolphins offensive line. He spent last year on the practice squad with the roster exemption as part of that international pathway program. But this guy is big,

explosive and really powerful and just thickly built too. Also up front, Zach Seeler came over last year and in he's an acquisition number nine two his second season with the Miami Dolphins out of Fair Estate. He's another one of these big, long, powerful guys that can really help control the point of attack and again play all across the defensive line and multiple spots and multiple formations and

multiple looks. He's got a really nice get off, a nice rip move, plays with plenty of power upfront can disengage those blocks with those long arms, and he got plenty of playing time in that Bengals game last season where he had a huge day. Statistically, he had three pressures in that game, one sack, two hurries, made seven total tackles five run stops in one game. Those, of course, are tackles within two yards of the line of scrimmage. He also knocked down two passes at the line of scrimmage.

So Zach Seeler making moves late in the year last year after coming over an in season waiver wire claim for the Miami Dolphins. Another waiver wire claim comes up next on our list here and Ray Smith, who was just added to the roster a couple of weeks ago out of Boston College, spent some time with the Lions and the Niners practice squad. Number twenty three years old on open Day. He played in forty career games over a four year career at college, totally one and thirty

eight tackles. As the Dolphins moved on picking him up quickly after his release last month by claiming the defensive tackle who has explosive testing metrics. At his twenty nineteen pro day, he scored in rare territory across multiple athletic metrics. His forty yard dash with four point nine three seconds, his ten yards split at one six eight, his twenty yards split, his vertical as broad jump, his shuttle and

three cone time. All of those stats, all of those measurements measured in the ninety percent tile or better of defensive tackles, and those scores earned Smith a nine point six four overall relative athletics scorecard, the cumulative measure that

we talked about on this podcast all the time. From Kent Platt, he is at math bomb on Twitter taking a look at all those athletic measurements of pro days and combined workouts and putting together in one score nine point six four out of ten overall for Ray Smith. Up next another guy who did very well in that regard, drafted in the first round last year, in Christian Wilkins, his first season though the Dolphins, entering number two here in Miami, number ninety four out of Clemson, twenty four

years old on opening Day. He was a thirteenth pick in last year's draft, and he led all of his rookie position mates with fifty six tackles out of six players taken in the first round. At defensive tackle, he ranked sixteenth and run stops among those tackles with twenty nine and seven, and total quarterback pressures with thirty and he only missed two tackles all seasons, so very reliable.

They're a tackler in the middle. Those thirty quarterback pressures that he had were the most for a rookie interior defensive lineman since and he really embodies the Dolphins desire to be this multiple team upfront on defense, with a rare first step quickness the requisite strength to hold his ground against the run. He is functional whether being asked to one gap or two gap. And not only does Wilkins play a variety of positions up front, he produces

from each spot as well. I went back on a podcast earlier this summer and charted each of those twenty nine run stops and found that they came from nine different positions playing across the defensive line. Most of them came from the three technique. Nine of the twenty nine run stops came from that three technique, which aligns the defensive lineman on the outside shoulder of either guard on

either side of the formation. Gentel manager Chris Career summarized the traits the Dolphins found most appealing about Wilkins in last April's draft. He said, Christians a very smart, versatile football player. He was highly productive. We love the size, the athletic ability, and the things he'll add to the locker room, not just on the field. Wilkins finished last

season playing his best football. Over the final ten games of his rookie season, Wilkins had twenty four run stops that was fourth among interior defensive lineman and twenty four quarterback pressures, nineteen among interior defensive lineman. Up next, another young player, a rookie undrafted out of Old Miss, number nine,

Nito Jones. He'll be twenty two years old on opening Day, and he was a mainstay in the middle of that Old Miss defense last season and throughout the course of his entire career really where he logged one thousand, seven hundred and sixty five snaps, made fifty two run stops, and had forty five quarterback pressures with ten stacks to boot from the interior. And he primarily played inside with four hundred and fourteen snaps last year in the A gap on five in the B gap. He also played

thirty seven out over the tackle. According to Pro Football Focus and NFL dot Com, I thought detailed Jones as great as strengths as a space eater in the middle of a defense. For you quote, He's country strong with good durability, carries, broad thick chest and good muscular build throughout. Arms, excellent football character with consistent play motor quick to recalibrate his opponent depending on blocking scheme. Arm over wins into the A gaps off the snap. Good use of hands

to work immediately to the edge. Lateral quickness to leverage and range down the line, quick to play off the block and make a tackle. Agile Russia with strength and athleticism to infiltrate pocket against single blocks. And we finish up here with yet another rookie, this one a draft pick in the second round for the Miami Dolphins, number fifty six overall, ray Kwon Davis out of Alabama, number

twenty three years old on Opening Day. This dude is massive and whenever I watch the Jaguars recently or previously with the Arizona Cardinals. Now he's with the Baltimore Ravens, Klais Campbe always just stood out to me as a guy that towered over other fellow huge human beings. And

that's what ray Kwon Davis looked like. From the appearance standpoint on the football field of Alabama, you just can't miss him and that length and power that shows up on tape that allows him to routinely claude gaps, stack and shed against the run, and disengage from blockers as a pass rusher. We saw Brian Flores on draft day after the Dolphins made that selection, kind of showing someone off the side of his screen how he locked out and disengages those blockers after that draft pick, and he

looked pretty excited about the pick. Is in his own right, and he registered eighty six pressures and his three year career there Alabama with seventy three run stops. He played one thousand, eight hundred forty nine career snaps, and he earned really consistent Pro Football Focus grades across three years there eighty four point nine, eighty one point nine, and eighty three point two from his freshman year through his

junior year there at Alabama. And Flora's talked a lot about the hidden production in Davis's game or just a player in general in the production how it doesn't have to show up in the stat sheet or the box score. And I love this quote here from coach Flora's I've always told players that you can play a great game

and have no stats. If you set the edge every time, if you're in your gap, if you make every tackle, if you force the ball whether wherever we want to force it, if you make your block, you can literally have nothing on the stat sheet but play a great game. I am on record saying that two players, dating back to as long as I have been coaching, I truly believe that. So when people say statistics, when I see Ray Kuan, I see a guy who is defeating blocks,

taking two blocks, and creating plays for his teammates. There are a lot of hidden stats and that I look at personally, I think he does a good job and maybe some of those hidden stats. End quote, and so plenty of new guys up front on that Dolphins defensive line, plenty of new guys on the defense in general. And that's where we're gonna pivot here into our conversation about the war and Sharp Analytics preview. He publishes this thing

every year. It's a manifesto of great information. I highly highly recommend it for any football fans out there because it can help educate you on the analytic side of the game. His entire mission statement is to maximize efficiency, and that's football field and otherwise, I just want to go over some of the more intriguing points he has on his Dolphins page, which is like five or six pages per every team. This thing, it's a it's a dictionary,

it's a huge the source of information. And first he talks about positional spending, which I always find so interesting because you can kind of find out what a team prioritizes on their roster in terms of where they allocate their salary cap money too. And we know the Dolphins had money to spend this offseason and they spent it in free agency, bringing a lot of talent into this roster. As he breaks down the way the Dolphins money is

being allocated across the positions this year. In total, on offense, the Dolphins have the twenty nine most money tied up in their offense As far as commitments on the salary cap.

At quarterback, it's eighteenth most in the NFL. On the offensive line, most running back is fourteenth most receiver eighteenth most and tight end thirty second most money at the tight end position in the NFL for all defense, all things considered, all positions, they have the sixth most money on the defense, eighteenth on the defensive line, seventeenth at linebacker, number one at corner back, at number eleven at the

safety position. So you see the clear allocation of resources there into the defensive secondary, utilizing a bunch of dime, quarter dollar and half dollar defensive packages where you have six, seven, eight defensive backs on the field on top of what now is the base defense in the NFL with nickel defense and five defensive backs, you're gonna see more six defensive backs packages as the Dolphins did last year. Then you see four, and that's commonplace in the NFL, the

four defensive backpackage, your quote unquote based defense. That is one of the most sub package defenses there is in the NFL based upon statistics and snap utilization across the NFL for all thirty two teams. And so Warren Sharp here continues to harp nice rhyme on the offseason the Dolphins had and context tells you, well, of course, because they had money to spend and a plan for how to allocate those dollars. But here's a really interesting tidbit.

Miami signed as many players this offseason with an average annual salary of seven point five million dollars as they did the previous seven years combined, and he notes that is remarkable a unique statistic there for this Dolphins team. And that's also kind of a product of this fact that Sharp notes the Dolphins played the least experienced defense

in the NFL in nineteen. The average age per snap for the Dolphins last year on defense was twenty five point one years old, and to be perfectly frank Frank, though that number will likely go up a little bit this year, that's gonna be still a very low number because this is a very young team built mostly of first and second year players, and that often started ten different rookies on defense last year for a total of fifty three games started by rookies, Both of those were

the most in football. They also started players with just one year of experience for thirty three games by five players under that criteria, and I think this next step makes that even more impressive. The Dolphins were five and two and one score games. A young team that finds a way to win that can serve as a crucial building block going forward for your organization. And to further illustrate the youth movement here in Miami, Sharp notes the

equivalence for players years of experience with the full season equivalent. Basically, Miami had three point three rookies play full season. So basically you take it down to a sixteen game sample size, the Dolphins had three point three rookies play sixteen full games, players with one or two years of experience two point one players there, and players with two years of experience three point two. So you have was that three six, eight,

eight and a half. You had eight and a half players on average play a full season of starting football that had either no experience, one year experience, or two years of experience last year for this young Miami Dolphins football team. And he writes here, having established the peer youth, let's look at the quality of starters. Doing the same exercise as above to determine of the eleven full season starters what their makeup was by draft round. Undrafted players

were two point five full season starters. Fifth to seventh round draft picks were for three players of full season equivalents and only eight point five out of eleven spots were actually players drafted exactly half the defense, five and a half spots where players drafted in the fifth to seventh rounds or under arafted, and the other half of

the defense was drafted in the first four rounds. On top of the fact that Sharp notes the injury data here, the Dolphins had the third most missed snaps by injured players on defense last season and had twenty eight total

players make starts on defense. He then writes that the talent imported this offseason is impressive, noting the draft positioning of the free agent signed Byron Jones and Shack laws In both former first round draft picks, Kyle van Noy and Emmanuel Ogball both second round draft picks once upon time premium talent. He writes, these are pedigree players with

four or five and six years of experience. He then mentions the draft spending premium picks top three rounds as he defines it as a premium pick rounds one through three on defensive players, giving the Miami Dolphins defense seven new premium pedigree talent players on defense and one off season. Nobody matched that or even came close. This offseason. And that's on top of Xavien Howard, Christian Wilkins, Ray Kawadon McMillan, Eric Rowe, and Jerome Baker, who were all top three

round picks. So now we've got twelve players selected with the premium pick on this defense as Sharp describes it. And let's go ahead and wrap this up the Warren Sharp Dolphins preview with some just random numbers from the previews section. Here some numbers on Ryan Fitzpatrick talking about success ray on first, second, and third down, and he describes success ray as a way to measure a place effectiveness as far as yardage game compared to the down

a distance. And so Fitzpatrick was below league average on Warren's success ray on first down with a success rate of forty seven percent compared to fifty two percent league wide, but he was better than league average on both second and third downs. And second down he was forty seven percent compared to the league average of forty five percent, and on third down thirty six percent compared to a

league average of thirty five percent. Davante Parker accounted for twenty percent of the Dolphins passing game share last year. The next highest was Mike Sick at fift percent, Preston Williams up next at eleven percent, Albert Wilson and Alan Hearns both tying at nine percent each, with Grant and Ford at six percent, and then a bunch of running

backs at five percent. In that in that offensive passing game share in total offensive share in general running game and passing game, Davante Parker was topps at fift Calen Blage up next at twelve percent, Patrick Lairt eleven, Mike Kasicki, Mark Walton, and Kenyan Drake all at nine percent, Preston Williams and Albert Wilson at seven percent, and Alan Hearns at six percent of the offense. And of course there were some more guys making up lower percentages than that

on the Dolphins roster last year. And the rest really of this preview is way too into the weeds for a podcast platform, but again I'll highly recommend checking it out. The War and Sharp NFL preview you can find it on Sharp Football Analysis dot com. And to put a bow on this podcast on this thing, let's go ahead and tell a little story about my first day here

at the Dolphins facility. So the office is one part of the property, and where the podcast gets recorded is on the complete other side of campus or the property, whatever you want to call it. So I walk along the backside of the bleachers that overlook the practice field to get to where I have to go. And the weather has been crazy so far here today it's really hot and nice and sunny. But for the most part this week it's been sunny one minute and then a

torrential downpour the next. And actually I like it because the weather the heat has not been too bad at all. But we've got umbrellas we can check out and take with us, so there should be no problem. Right. Well not so fast, my friend, very very wrong. There's a little section back there where the ground kind of comes to this valley, and this is where I'm completely complicit

in this entire saga. I had just published a story, so I was tweeting it out while making my walk back to the studio to record the podcast and not watching where I'm going. But to my defense, in my peripheral all I saw was the proverbial green grass on the way to the end zone, and the only real thing I have to worry about at this point. On my way to the end zone is connecting on that high five before we crossed the goal line, so to speak,

except that damn turf monster. Only I wish that I had tripped and fell and it was the turf monster, because that would have been way better by comparison to

what actually did happen. What I did, like a total moron, was find myself in the middle of a puddle that nearly fully immersed both of my shoes, and by the time that I had realized this was actually happening, I had way too much forward momentum and had to actually forge the damn thing, like the old Oregon trail game when you crossed the Green River and your ferry crashes and you drown all your horses and spill all your

grain into the river. So the way my mind process is the next move here and really short order, is to get across the water as fast as I possibly can and somehow defy gravity by minimizing all contact with the ground, which means bringing up the high knees and using only my tippy toes to propel myself off the

ground for each step. So I'm sure the security staff got a great look at the ding dong out there the new guy walking around doing high knees in the middle of a downpour, falling in a puddle, shoes completely soaked, socks so wet you could ring them out. And that's how the end of my first day here at Dolphin's headquarters headquarters concluded with me driving home barefooted. Welcome to Florida. I guess the glass half full of me though, says hey,

well that's a story. We'll tell it my retirement years down the way. So a good story for the future, but not a lot of fun in the moment. All right, let's go ahead and get out of here. Just a heads up, we are going to publish tomorrow's programming, both the Defensive Edge preview as well as the podcast on Saturday, So no podcast tomorrow on Friday, but we will have a special release on Saturday for you guys. We are in five shows per week territory now, so buckle up

in his football season. That is going to be my time today. You all, please be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcast, Leave us a rating, leave us a review, Follow me on Twitter at Wingfield NFL, follow the Dolphins at Miami Dolphins on all the social media's check out the fish Tank and the audible podcast, and of course Miami Dolphins dot com. We have the interior defensive line preview up live on the site right now until next time. Fins up.