Drive Time: Dolphins Fall in Finale 32-20 to the Jets

This statement from Stephen Ross. He covered how they're gonna to bring back both Chris Greer and Mike McDaniel. I want to just go ahead and read the last part of the statement here. I thought I was very well written and very concise iness messaging. As we look towards twenty twenty five, our football operation will continue to be led by Chris Greer and Mike McDaniel with my full support. Their positive working relationship is an asset to the Dolphins,

and I believe in the value of stability. However, continuity and leadership is not to be confused with an acceptance that status quo is good enough. We will take a hard look at where we have fallen short and make the necessary changes to deliver our ultimate goal of building

and sustaining a winning team that competes for championships. And of course, the big question after that is what are those things that'll be the the entire crux of what Mike McDaniel, Chris Greer and the Miami Dolphins staff from personnel, scouting,

college pro coaches, all of that. That's going to be their task over the coming months trying to figure out what went wrong this year outside of not having your quarterback for six games, and which issues have persisted for multiple years, and how to get those things right and get this team who has been on the fringe right in that hump, to get over that hump.

he wanted out of here. And I thought a few things about that, like was was a thousand yard season or was missing the playoffs? Was that on your mind when you were skipping walkthroughs and practices. I think back to twenty twenty two when that man taught the Miami Dolphins how to practice. Training camp was as the kids say a movie, right, every day was fireworks and bombs and touchdowns and Tyreek Hill running fifty routes in practice

every single day, teaching the Dolphins how to practice. The standard they played with was based upon what they saw from Tyreek Hill, and he went out there and proved himself outside up playing with Patrick Mahomes. Right, you know

everyone says you're a Mahomes merchant. Well, seventeen hundred yards back to back years without Mahomes, he gets that Number one player award, he gets the pay raise and basically hits the ceiling fort receivers can make in twenty twenty four and I think he dropped it in a cruise control.

turnovers as a result of that. I just think this is a person that has lacked accountability his entire life. And after a honeymoon period here, that was fantastic, probably the best we ever had, right the crazy X it seems we've reached that point. And I will close with this, ask yourself this, why on earth with the Chiefs say bye bye to a twenty seven year old talent of the talent of Tyreek Hill. The Kansas City Chiefs that team, right, why would they want to lop off a talent of

his caliber? Something to think about? Okay, because of some criticism on the podcast reviews, I wanted to kind of change how I do this a little bit. So if you guys have notes on how to change things and I agree with you, then we're going to do that. So this is going to be a format for next year. But I'm want to kick it off right now, just briefly, and do a couple of storylines that I thought we

learned about in this game. Second straight game from a backup quarterback could be a good performance because you learn about how things will look in the future going forward with this team when they don't have the starting quarterback who you're probably going to have a miss games in the future too. Right, just based upon the history, didn't look good. It reverted back to the old stuff. I thought there was way too much of the same plays

over and over again. I thought we had a lot of the same routes that would kind of turn into dead routes going nowhere fast and guys in the same place, and lack of multiplicity in your run scheme I think has caused issues and you have the most negative runs of anybody in the NFL. I thought that came to a head in this game against the New York Jets team that historically you have ran the ball against very well. So that is my first storyline that was kind of

agree with a massive red X if you will. How we drew it up was a big question line question for this game. Would the be a lot of that zone read and you know, taking advantage of your run game clicking and then getting the single high looks and throwing routes into single coverage against Tyreek kill and Jalen Waddle didn't get that and after the first h and exposive run for twenty yards, throw, throw, throw, and Huntley Stale on the ball to Hoboken, New Jersey, big red

X on that one. Would Weaver bounce back from the Week fourteen performance? I thought he did until late in the game, and I think the scoreboard that they showed the Broncos score probably impacted that a little bit. I think the offense's futility probably led to that a little bit. And I just thought that was you saw a lot of what made Weaver great this year today with the games up front, Seeler and Campbell running games, ogbas, setting picks for guys, the coverage being married to the rush

up front. I think bringing those that group back in that nucleus back and with Jalen Phillips and with Bradley Chubb and hopefully even more fire in the in the you know, firepower in that position room with a year two Chop Robinson, I think that Weave can get nasty next year. So that was a big green check mark for me was how we would bounce back from Week

fourteen despite the fourth coreter performance. When you're star receiver, you know, checked out of the game, I don't think it's kind of like at that point other scores across the national football like the Broncos rolled, so we were all the way out anyway. Something else I want to cover is why did we lose?

the defense down late. My individual stands before the tape, which we'll get to tomorrow on the show, I thought Malik Washington to Ron Armstead, Devon eight Chan, Zach Seeler, Kalais Campbell, Emmanuel Ogba, Storm Duck despite some catches by Devon Thingams, I thought we saw something from storm Duck today and Jordan Brooks from my standouts, my Missus, Jordan Boyer, Jalen Ramsey, Liam Miikeenberg Snoop and Jalen Waddle and Tyreek

Hill I thought didn't have their best games. But enough talk about you know future in twenty twenty five, uts go ahead and cover a football game here and start off with the stats from this game. As the Dolphins again fall thirty two to twenty to the New York Jets, Aaron Rodgers four touchdown passes leads the way for them, and we'll see if he continues on after this year, or not. But it started off looking pretty good defensively. Offensively,

he struggled with some short fields. Dolphins had twenty one first down to the Jets twenty two. Miami was three for twelve on third downs compared to the New York's five for twelve. Dolphins went a perfect three for three on fourth down, the Jets one for two on that fourth down. Yards were pretty even, three seventy five for the Jets, three thirty four for the Dolphins, two fifty seven to one ninety nine in the jets favor. In the passing department, Miami got a buck thirty five on

the ground. The explosive run came back in this game, compared to one hundred and eighteen yards for the New York Jets. Let's see four turnovers to one. I mean, that's the difference in the game right there. We had we were sacked four times, we got to Rogers three times. We only had four pounties for thirty two yards. We had the football for thirty two minutes in this game. So yeah, it was. It started off slow offensive right three and out. To kick things off, we saw Patrick

Pollett right tackle. I was pretty pleaseaful what I saw from him for the most part. I think there's some assignment issues that you see pop up some time, and that can be tied into the running game with the edge position and you know, various tackles and guards next to them, and the rotation at right guard and different receivers on crack blocks. There's a lot that goes into that.

But I think and by and large, I think Patrick Paul this year has really allowed you to put a vote of confidence in him in the future going forward. And look, this game started off the same way a lot of these games have begun. When we don't have QB one to three and out a three play drive where you know, Jonas Smith, I thought I had a chance to make a catch and didn't tap the feet down.

We throw the two now screens the second downplay, lose his yards, and it just seems like when you get behind the chains, they kind of sniff out those screens and really flow to them downhill and get you even further behind the chains for a third downplay.

tackles and the coverage lapses have happened. But in that position, I really felt like he played the man really well and got a bad pass, knocks up into the air, and Tyrrel Totson comes in with his team leading third interception of the year, but Miami couldn't cash it. On the other side, a drive that starts in the red zone, but you have a second down play where the three routes literally just run into defenders and wall themselves off without like you know, they.

metals the throw on third down. And on that third down, a third and two from the five yard line, he's got waddle on a on a pretty wide open out route and just throws it way over his head and we have to kick a field goal there twenty six yards for Jason Sanders to take a three to nothing lead, and then we get the defense back on the field for a four play stop, and I thought there was a good sense of energy. You know, you haven't seen the Broncos score yet, You've got three points on the board.

Ramsey has back to back plays with a big hit. They had a big a good show of discipline on an end to round like double pass they tried to run. He makes a couple of big hits there, and then they drop a pass on third down. It kind of felt like, maybe this is the team that you expect might check out from this game, who's ready to go to the vacation, But it obviously wouldn't go that way. Mimi got the ball back and took a four play

drive and punted after one explosive play. I wrote down explosive play alert han As a twenty plus yard run with great combination blocks off the edge from Julian Hill and alec Ingold and Tron Armstead gets out there in space. Just great execution all around, and you know, for Julian's sake, I think there's been a lot of that this year, mixed in with some of the ups and downs that you'd expect from a young player. But I think there's

a lot to work with there. With Julian Hill on that edge role as kind of your space clear outside, I think you could just stand to get a little bit more creative and mixing things up in terms of not going to that wells frequently. Because after that you go after a twenty yard run three consecutive throws, Huntley throws two more from the Hoboken, one more to Philadelphia,

and you're off the field. But this drive just it just kind of got bogged down the details once again with a misthrow, they overload a pressure and get a strip sack, and on the third downplay, Greg golds Sin said the protection slide was wrong and the option route from Tyreek was wrong, So I tend to take his word for that, even if he doesn't know exactly what the you know, the calls are, But just it seemed like some of the same issues that when you don't

have two out there we're starting to pop up earlier in this game. Offensively, the defense comes back out and gets another four play punt drive where Jordan Brooks goes flying through for a run. Stuff we get an Emmanual

Ogball win. They had Chopping on that first down play and they get the Jets get a first down, but they go to Ogbah on the next play and he comes in and makes the stuff, And I like how they have that rotation ability to go, you know, fresh off the edge with Chop and then next year with guys like Quinton Bell and Ty Spowser off injury reserve and obviously you know, hopefully beach Hub and JP as well.

Just design screens behind the line, scrimmage, RPO conversion pops, And it was looking that way in Miami got the football back and they take a nine play seventy six yard drive, but it only winds up in a field goal, as Malik Washington had a big day in this one, and he converts on a third and short with a

nice man beater. They run this awesome rub on the outside with Devon a Chan and I continue to be so impressed by eight Chan, not just catching the football as a receiver, but the way he avoided the contact there to run that natural rub like it's the guy that gets it on the perimeter. I love his his you know, skills as a receiver. He's very talented in that regard. And then again eight chan sixty one yard run.

That seventy six yard drive came from Devon eight Chan's sixty one yards and I was very surprised to see him get hawked from behind. But it was a beautiful counterplay, which is, you know, counter to Miami's normal run scheme.

run to daylight, hit the big run. But then things bogged down and you have to kick a field goal after a couple of a negative run on first down and two screens that go and like, for the love of God, the way I loathe the give up screens in the red zone after a first down failure drives me crazy, And especially when your second play of the drive or the second the first play after the big

run was going to that same running back. They just ran sixty one yards down the field who weighs one hundred and eighty pounds on a goal line run and then two give up screens. I just I really really, really really really hated that sequence. But Miami does take a six to nothing lead off of that, and then another Jets punt three plays and now where Rogers misses a second down throw and you saw a man coverage on the play. They bracket Devonte Adams, they blitz Rogers,

move him off the spot. He tries this vertical seam shot to Tyler Conklin, but Jordan Brooks is all over him playing that third position. The third receiver inside double move, stays in a phase, breaks it up. Jordan Brooks having himself a hell of a first year for the Miami Dolphins. But then the Dolphins get it back and they also go three and out a two minute drive there that we get we get the ball, or try to get the ball, I should say, on the perimeter with this

pin pull action. But this is where I'm talking about with the run game. You just saw it all night long. They would shoot those sea gaps and cut off that toss play at the pass, and the running back has nowhere to go because if you just split one of those gaps, they found a way to basically run them to the perimeter and you couldn't turn it up field like you were instantly bubbling. So a negative run to

start things off. That drive for nine yards puts Jillen right way behind the sticks and his stats on the game as well, and they have to punt it right back. Just giving away drive with those negative runs is something they have to talk about addressing the issues that was an issue this year in the Running Game. Negative plays in the Running Game that essentially cost you drives. And then the Jets finally got things rolling offense. Me the next drive, it's a five yard touchdown pass Rogers to

Conklin his five hundredth. They go to a tempo offense that kind of seems to get things flowing for them, get themselves into plus territory. We say aggressive play, press man coverage, and Alan Lazard gets outside leverage on a crossing route versus cater Co who They hit that for fifteen yards in a big play storm Duck gets a pass breakup and one on one coverage on DeVante Adams, but they do eventually hit that big play over the middle.

tackle and gets juked right there again. Poor tackle attempt creates that five hundred touchdown pass from Rogers to Conklin, and the Jets find the end zone at the end of the drive from Rogers to Conklin to make it a seven to six game. Miami gets it back two play drive picked off by Ashton Davis. We get that big offscript play to open the drive. Wattle comes back

to the football, he finds me on the sideline. Then we try to force one in double coverage and this is after a weird way in Jets' territory and they throw it down to Jayalen Waddle on a corner route. And he's open and it's just the ball's late. It's also back inside gets picked off. You can't throw late and you can't throw inside there. That's what happens. The Jets take the football back, they turn it over on downs.

See Ler and Ogbass split a sack on a nine play forty five yard drive where the Jets got into plus territory by doing this little cool drag screen that I thought was a cool design. You set up a screen for your running back and then DeVante Adams runs the little drag rout in behind that he had like a two layer screen. We miss a tackle on the back end, it goes for a big play. Then Storm has coverage on third down play where I thought he really showed you a good understanding of how his role

reacts to how the front and the rush plays. I thought that was a good cue for that because on the fourth down we saw Ogball run this pick where Seeler or he sets the pick for Seiler and he comes crashing through for the sack there with Ogbas, So really cool how that worked together. Miami gets it back in good territory once again, just down by one, but it's a four play drive that goes for a fumble and it was really just like a bunch of mistakes.

You know, Tyreek has a twenty yard play that coming back for the football. We have a blown assignment off the edge where they shoot that gap again on a Jeff Wilson two yard loss, and then Jalen Wattle drops a pass and then Huntley, I don't know what he was trying to do, but he Toront Armstead gets beat and then he gets sacked and he tries to throw the ball he's going down, The ball comes out, they take it over. They goes down the field for a

touchdown and two points. Rogers to Lazard again, then Breese Hall and they just they leaned on us. Which that's kind of like Calmon across the league, but I thought it was very apparent this year for the Dolphins, where like you have a bad play offensively or a bad series offensively, and it kind of comes back on the other side, and there's momentum for the for the offense and the defense kind of feels that they kind of

leaned into us some big runs there. They get two breaks against a man coverage with Crossers where they hit the touchdown just running away from guys, so they were locked in. They get the two point run from Breeze Hall and just like that, it's fifteen to six, and

then Huntley throws another pick. This time you know, Malik Washington's a sixty seven yard punt return or kick return rather with Raheem Moster, who I thought that play told you all about him blocking on kickoff team takes a Jets defender all the way off the field of the drive block and Malak just follows him down there. Then we throw the now screen in the leak and he slips a couple of tackles and.

punt return fair catch for Ashon Davis again. Oh you know, I never thought Snoop's tape was great, but there was something there within the constraints of a game plan that highlights his strengths. But my god, where did this guy come from? Like did he think we need eleven point

play on that throw on that particular play? Like, my god, man, you know, he was the kind of player that you could build a zone read read option game plan around and hit opposing teams with the running game and then do some in a single high coverage and get some defined throws off play action.

the first half. Let's go ahead and take our first break rate there, come back on the other side and talk about the second half of the game and the five takeaways. Drive Time Podcast, your host Travis Wingfield brought to you by Auto Nation.

gets cut blocked. And then we have that great t T stunt with Seiler and Campbell where it gets Kalayis Campbell his fifth sack of the year, which is a three hundred thousand dollars incentive per social media, So congrats on that and his celebration kind of told you that story as well, So congrats to Kalaias Campbell. But Miami takes the ball back in a three play drive, fumbles the football right away as a John new Smith lets one go, which you know, Johnny's had such a great year,

it's like, you know, mistakes happened sometimes. So they had thirteen takeaways the Jets did coming into this game had four on the day. They falled out with a twenty five yard field goal. Sealer gets his ten sack. He has had ten sacks in back to back years. How he is not a pro bowler, I don't know, but he's not. So the Jets go up eighteen to six and Miami has a touchdown on the next drive, a fifteen yard devon eight Chan Runleak Washington a diving catch

on third down. I'm so impressed by him. I cannot wait to watch him get a full offseason. The way he's going to approach this, I know he's gonna get even better. But the drive does bogged down by a negative run three yard loss, an illegal shift after the right first down run. Then our best call of the night on the Ingled misdirection screen sets up a third

manageable which got Ingled into space pretty quickly. They go back shouldered river creak Craft, who makes a tough catch on the ball low and away from his frame.

Abas for a three year our touchdown run. They hit critical third downs on a massive play, spliting an invert two, where again Greg Olsen broke it down, telling us that storm Duck didn't get the proper depth on his inverted two, which can happen if you run that coverage. You have to be careful with it. Then Rogers finds Ads for his third touchdown. They go right back and answer the seventy yard touchdown after the offense shows some life, and that was you know, the Broncos game was getting away.

It was kind of tough to stomach at that point. But Miami comes right back and scores again. Twelve plays seventy yards. They get Tea Stead again around the edge for a critical pressure, but he's able to throw this one away, and then Huntley gets into a scramble boat

and finds my league Washington. On fourth and seven, we get to a goal and goal goal to go position, and again they cross face in the running game on a third and one and blow up the five yard line, but we do get a River Crekcraft fourth down conversion. I thought Aaron Brewer, he's been a Pro Bowl player this year. I thought they were did a good job of kind of shooting upfield as the one technique to the play side, and he couldn't reach him and cut him off a few times, and it helped spark spring

some of those negative plays. So good game plan for the Jets there, and to just like continue this point and then we score a touchdown here to John new Smith. But like on the first down play when he tried to throw to Durham Smith, he had Julian Hill in the corner of the end zone all alone. And if you just read the playout in the coverage like a quarterback should like, you would see that. And that's why

I get so frustrat by watching these tapes. It's like, I don't know how you get to this level if you can't see that stuff. But there's only a fields guys in the world. Maybe it's just maybe it's not that easy. But they do find John new Smith for his eighth touchdown of the year. He is now the single season franchise record holder for receptions, yards and touchdowns his eighth on the year. Good on you, Johnny, you had a hell of a year for us when you

appreciate the heck out of you. The Jets get it back and they go seventy yards and put the game away to make it thirty two twenty with a touchdown of their own. So rough second half, rough game for the offense in general. The Dolphins fall thirty two to twenty to the New York Jets. Let's go ahead and take our last break rate there, come back on the other side and do five big picture takeaways as we

head into the offseason. That's next Draft Time podcast, your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by I Don'tation five Big Picture two takeaways from the Miami Dolphins loss to the New York Jets. And you know, we've already announced that everything is gonna be status quo in terms of leadership this year. And I'm not one to sit here on the podcast and call out jobs and make those decisions.

But I did write down my first takeaways. You have to revisit everything because I talked about this all week long, right the growth of Tyler Huntley. You know, he didn't make the big strides in the Colts game out for the bye week, but you can kind of understand that it's a tough offense. He'd been here for a month. Then he comes back to the Cleveland game and it looks good. I thought it was more of the game plan and the coaching that got him there, but it

looked good. And then I wanted to see him build upon that for this game, and it just didn't happen, like at all at all. And so that's to me a concern. The fact that the team fell apart just about every time you didn't have TUA is a major concern to me and one that I'll have for the

next nine months, quite frankly. And you gotta be more imaginative, man, those screens behind the line, once you get behind the chains, Like if you know, I was a big proponent all off season of like they do not value certain positions because they're mismatched no matter who you get and this offense relies upon certain elements that can reduce the need of that, and that's how the scheme has worked for

forty years. But you know what, like if you can't even trust a drop back on third and eight, then what are we doing here? It's a non starter. So you have to figure that out. The routes into the same area. It's on tape every single week. They had that play in the first quarter that made no sense.

And then like you talk about Tua's injury standing man like, there's a lot of questions and let's not burn all these here in the first segment because it's going to be a table seter for the rest of the thing. And that's number two. Is the backup quarterback spot ended up that way the way, The fact that it ended up that way is a perfect way for this year to end. Like if man right, if we had Tua, yeah,

you probably win three or four more games. You're probably staying in the five seed right now, you're playing Houston next week and you have a good chance to go in there and end your playoff drought. That's if, though, right, But I think it's fitting it ended this way with the backup quarterback and the team looking like it has the last three years from the backup quarterback is in the game. They have to figure that out this offseason.

Number three is the run game concerns. I don't think they're going anywhere because if you don't add like the Rams did with Sean McVay, and he went personnel heavy on this two with Steve Avila and Jonah Jackson. They went and drafted bigger, heavier guys in the interior and they adapted more of an inside zone with counter and man and gap power schemes like you have to have a curveball, and they did that against the Cowboys last year.

Jeff Wilson put the Cowboys away with that game winning drive by running the football with power, pulling guards and power downhill. But you allow teams to read you, and you got so predictable. So the Demiico Ryan's Clipper earlier this year, the Jets knew exactly what was coming this game, shooting upfield, creating negative runs. You got out coached in this game and a lot of the big games this year.

And you have to figure out the run game because it's almost like a chicken and the egg type of deal. Where is it the tight end play, the perimeter blocking play versus the calls and scheme. I think it's all of that stuff and they're running back too. It's all part of it and they have to get it figured out. Number four, A lot of the in house and valuations ticked me off this year, kind of getting off the rails from the game. But who wants to talk about

that game anyway? Like the idea to roll with with Braxon and Chosen, you know, as long as they did before Braxton got hurt and Chosen was eventually cut, but brought him back for a second year. You know, Devon a Chan being the bell cow back there. I thought he had you know, skills elsewhere and you could get more good players like Jilen Wright and Rahee Moster are involved in the game plan, you know, just across the board. There was personal decisions like that that just they got

to get better. And the number five is that Anthon Weaver is the man. I think that Antheon Weaver is gonna be a head coach. I hope it's not this year.

entire room. But there's a lot to work on defensively here, especially when he gets his pass rush guys back up front. That'll be fun to watch next season. All right, let's get the hell out of here. We'll have plenty against you get for you. Guys are on the podcast this week. We'll be covering the team three days a week from here until the busier times a year like the combine will go more than that, but three days a week in the offseason, we'll have you covered all things Miami

Dolphins comprehensively. In the meantime, you all please be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever get your podcasts from. Go ahead and leave us a rating, leave us a review. You can follow me on social at linkoln NFL. The team at Miami Dolphins. Check out the Fish Tank Podcast with Seth and Juice. Check out the YouTube channel for Dolphins, HQ, media availabilities, and so much more, and last but not least, Miami.