Drive Time: The Turnaround

four and beyond. From the Baptist Health Studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex. This is the Draft Time Podcast. I love my Wednesday show because it's usually my time to be a little bit more freeform jazz and monologue a little bit opposed to more regimented shows. Which don't get me wrong, I mean I built the program out that way on purpose and love the formulaic nature of the recap show or the preview show. But this is typically my favorite spot to do and today's topic is

a big part of that. Since it's the middle of the season, week nine of eighteen weeks. I want to do something that step back a little bit and do more of a big picture process, but also tie it into the team today and going forward into Los Angeles, into the homestand and eventually lambeau Field and beyond for

Thanksgiving and in December. How I think these last eight games have informed us further about the program and how, in my opinion, the record is straight up a bald faced liar with regards to where this thing is going. And I want to talk about process today, and there are several caveats and disclaimers. I have to start with, the number one being that I think this team is one win on Monday away from going on a bit

of a heater. If they beat the Rams, I believe they will go to Thanksgiving at five and six, and I think they have a chance to win that game, and then you play the low League Jets. I think there's a real opportunity here to go to Houston at seven and six. I do. If it doesn't happen, we have to make peace of that and accept the fact that the hole we dug was too big. But I do think that's a real, real possibility. Now, why do

I believe that. Give me just one second, because I want to set this all up further to recap my view on the first eight games. I thought we came out of the gates a little bit stagnant in the offensive structure of things, even with Tua. I didn't feel there was a real synchronicity in how the offense performed, and they struggled in those first two games as a

result of that. Why did that happen? Well, I think there are extenuating circumstances, and I won't place a percentage point on those because in this league, I promise you guys, it's not like social media. Inside an NFL building, nobody looks at scapegoats. I know that that's what Twitter is all about, finding your scapegoat for every single game, every single season, because that gives you a tangible thing that you can go into an offseason to know that I

hack to replace this. The bad is out. The next thing that we get will be good, and that's how we're going to be a good football team. That's just not how it works. There are so many elements that you just cannot forecast about an NFL team every single year, and to scapegoat one single person or element is typically

bad process. You need to look at all processes. A good example of that is two years ago we had the deepest and best edge group in the National Football League, and today it's probably the worst because of injuries, and the long term outlook has been impacted by those injuries. But back to the offense, I think you can look at two as Ota absences. It's part of that. I think you know a guy that has typically in the

past not played well off of bye weeks. It seems like he's more of a rhythm type of you know, guy that gets hotter or as he goes. I think you can look at the way the summer program operates, you know, I think that you have to have some changes to that next year. I think you can point to most heavily. I didn't. I said I wasn't gonna assign percentage points, but I would tend to say that installing a bunch of new stuff that didn't really work

and wasn't successful. To be honest with you, it was too much glitz and glamour and too much cutesy stuff and out thinking. And here's the overplay to the overplay. It was almost kind of like shoot Coach Clan from water Boy. He fakes the fake, no, he pretends to fake. And again, don't get me wrong, there is some cutesy stuff that works, and it's fun when it does work, like some of the play action little flips you know, no look screens. I love those that behind the back

flip to Jalen right for a big run. Love it. But I feel as though we lost the thread a little bit with that stuff and probably committed to it for too long before a hard pivot around week seven maybe, although the full back dive on first and ten would say it was still some of that, but I digress, and that hard pivot was more of the bread and butter, more downhill line up and just play football, which look at the game on Sunday and short yardage. What was

successful our traditional running game? What was not successful? Raheem Moster sliding over to an offset I position and taking a straight dive into the B gap where you couldn't cross face on a safety who came in as the seed gap defender. Like that was cutesy and it didn't work, And when they went back to their regular offense it

did work. And also a bigger emphasis on something I've been preaching for the last two years at camp or in games or otherwise, the concept of spreading the football around, getting the football to the perimeter, to the checkdowns, further incorporating the backs and tight ends in the passing game. Like look back to last year. You could see it

all over the tape. Backs in the flat naked naked and football means they're not cover you sickos, And we're trying to push it into these contested windows down the field. And I'm always like, hey, why didn't you just throw the ball to Raheem right there? He was open for an eight yard game. And that reminds me of this whole argument about the distance of pass passes correlating with

how much you are impressed by the quarterback. And gosh ah, there's just such a you never want to like demean people. I don't seek to do that in my apologies if this next line does that, But holy hell man, that's like a twelve year old playing Madden approach to football. The evaluation the game is far more esoteric than that.

A ninety percent completion rate throw like it's probably even higher than that on the swing route into a space with five or six yards of runway before the first defender can even find that running back in space is much better in terms of, you know, efficiency than to throw twenty yards down the field with a defender all over the receiver. Because hey, that's our vertical passing game, our deep passing game. It just is. And I can't believe it's even a sentence I have to say, but

I digress, Like I'm impressed by quarterback. They can put it out there. I'll tell you in a second why it's impressive that he does that stuff. But on the other side of the struggles, I made this reference probably too much in the show. It reminds me of Andy dufran Shawshank He crawled through five hundred feet of you know what and found the sunshine on the other side or whatever. That's that's the other right line, but you

get it. And I feel like we have come out the other side seeing the light here a little bit. And I want to start with this sound from Taron Johnson after the game on Sunday, he was asked about the Dolphins run game and how much success we had in that area.

And that's why I talked about all damn summer, wasn't it when I was talking about breaking records with points and how this offense is going to be so efficient we've seen the two weeks because defenses literally cannot defend the entire field with the continuity you've developed on the offensive line, with the explosive nature of your running game, with the better depth at pass receiving options, with Odell being part of the mix, now John hu Smith being

a massive part of the equation, and then Devon a Chan's implementation of the passing game. That's basically three more guys that you didn't have last year. And why I was so bullish on all this now we get Malik Washington going river, Kraikraft gonna come back here real soon. I still think it's a point of contention in the

off season next year. But I digress. You have these part portions, partians that make you indefensible across the entire field, and teams have to pick what they feel is less dangerous. And that's why I think Tyron Johnson just told you right there. And when I hear that, I think about how we have been able to get the run game going and hit it for chunks and stay ahead of the six the sticks and constantly be in these second and two positions. But then I think, well, one way

they adjust off of that while keeping their shell. For instance, you know Raheem Mostert's catch and run for a first down on third and eleven on that opening field goal drive when they had three defenders who were five and then twelve and then fifteen yards beyond the sticks on third and eleven. So you've shown teams that you can

hurt them where it hurts the most. Right the vertical passing game, you have excelled in that area and you've had a forty six hundred yard passer a nearly a two thousand yard receiver and you went to work in the passing game number one in the NFL last year. That is prior to number one for any defense, because the quickest way to lose games is to give up long touchdowns. So we play light in the fit and

they're still getting their runs off. But if that's all they have off of that, we are eventually one negative play that puts them behind the sticks. We can be more a little more aggressive and then get them off the field because eventually they're going to make that mistake because they do not have that passing game efficiency in their back pocket that we saw the last two weeks. So you can either force a field goal, hopefully a punt, or even best case scenario, force them into a takeaway,

which we saw that too. But the part that was missing when Tua wasn't out there and the reason I think you I have seen this offense become the most efficient scoring operation in the NFL in terms of points per possession of the last two games and number of

drives that end in points the last two games. It's because we've evolved to the next element of our offense I believe, which is that thing I've been talking about at training camp the last couple of years and finding backs and tight ends and threatening areas of the field vacated in the short areas to stay on the field as an offense, to keep moving the chains and essentially take the profit all the way down the field into the end zone. It's how the Chiefs entire operation works.

Ever since teams decided I'm not gonna let Mahomes throw for five thousand yards and forty eight touchdowns because well, we can't beat them doing that. Maybe we can force them to be a little bit less explosive, and because the Chiefs don't really have the same number of guns we do, you've seen them be less explosive and you've seen them have to win games in crazy fashion late twenty seventeen because they just don't have the guns on

the outside. But it's a better option than letting them, you know, throw deep to Xavier Worthy and gets single coverage five times a game, because Mahomes probably to hit two of those. So it really is a pick your poison proposition, and I think it's here to stay. And again, it's such a bummer that we are two and six, because I think if they were four and four, despite all the missing parts on defense, I feel like this is a team that could win the division and make

a deep run. If they were just four and four. It's going to be difficult to overcome two and six. But even then, I feel like there's still like this slight glimmer of hope that if it was just even one more win at three and five, I would feel so much better about getting into the playoffs. Now. To tell you why, I have this belief despite the attrition on defense and a group that I don't think is going to really be able to bounce back with the

current position in terms of edge and pass rushers. But I've made no bones about what I personally believe is the best way to be a sustained winner in this league. It's offense. You know. I've done research segments on this show opening the sustainability of great offense first, great defense,

even going back to the twenty twenty season. I looked at top ten defenses compared to the top ten offenses back in twenty twenty one, and how many consecutive years those groups stayed in that level in that category, And without having the exact metrics in front of me, it was pretty clear that the offense was by far the easier side of the football to maintain. And I mean, look look at all the teams that make their deep runs. Three of the teams in the final four last year,

we're outside the top ten and defense, like happens every year. Ultimately, that's not the case. I'm trying to argue. What I'm trying to argue is I think the Dolphins offense is not going to be back to what we got used to in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. I think it's got high potential to be even better, to be even more dangerous with how it can create more

areas of conflict for this defense. And like I went through it the last couple of weeks, like the last six weeks, being like what the hell happened to this offense? That's why I was so beside myself with like where the do we go from here? Because this isn't the team that I know, But it has been the last two weeks. Offensively, I know I ran this sound on

the show yesterday. Let's go ahead and go back to McDaniel on the concept of the short passing game and taking what's there to capitalize on overplay by the defense.

against zone defenses, you usually can't. Against really good zone defenses, you can't manage the game in the way of just finding checkdowns, because if you go to the checkdown too early in the play, they play deep and we'll sprint forward and you'll get you'll get a two yard game. So you have to play the position to get the appropriately to get the ball to the eligibles at the time of the play, and that is an art form that many many quarterbacks find very difficult, particularly against the

Buffalo Bills. So I thought yesterday was a great example of aggressively taking what the defense gives you, and you know, he was able to do some have some success that we haven't had in the past based upon his commitment to his craft and being aggressive to all eligibles, based upon overplay and.

so dialed in he will get it to you. So coach knew his quarterback was on a heater and playing some of his best ball of his career and was seeing it that well, well, that's how you score three touchdown drives of seventy eighty one and ninety seven in the toughest environment. We plan our entire schedule every single year.

All those drives when you were behind on the scoreboard, and all those hillbillies from Western New York who pulled out a second mortgage on their shanty just to be in attendance could scream through their blue cheese breath for tooth mouths. And to go further on what coach said, first off, I got some great questions when I tweeted the quote about some of the finer points of how

this all works. So when we throw a swing to eight chan up the sideline, it's easy to look at that and say, well that was an easy throw, no credit for the quarterback. But what you're not seeing there is get into the line scrimmage pre snap and deciphering. Okay, I've got this look that I believe is Cover three.

I've got this route concept two man route combo to the swing route side, and my one receiver is on this vertical that I think should pull the Cover three defender into his deep third responsibility and vacate the first fifteen yards of the perimeter to that side of the field, and now I just have to occupy this curl flat defender who's zoned off to work the first route that breaks inside, and if it's not there, he's gonna get with and key the running back on that swing route.

But because we switch release, which is where the one and two basically switch downfield after the snap, with the two taking the vertical to lift that cover three cornerback off the perimeter, and now that inside release gets that curl flat defender running forward and towards the middle, or rather towards the middle of the field, meaning the flat

is all alone. And as the quarterback, if I can convince that curl flat defender, who again he's in zone, so his eyes are playing me, he's not coming, you know, he's not playing the receivers in the route, He's playing the quarterback. And they have to respect my helmet position, my feet, my shoulders. The way I can influence them. Every part of the quarterback is a tell about where

the football might go. And since Tua is literally the best in the league at showing the defense the ball is going one way and then quicker than anybody else in the world can do it is able to get the ball back to the spot that he just opened up. With his manipulation, he can force that curl flat defender to totally vacate the flat and then rip the ball to Chan on a dead sprint on the upfield shoulder so he doesn't slow down and takes him right into

the round for the catch. It's a five yard air throw. It gets knocked for that. That gives eight Chan fifteen more yards of runway before he even gets touched. That is winning football. So what one person sees as an easy swing route, you gotta understand the finer points to go into it. That's what's impressive about it. And if it were that easy, that every quarterback would do it.

But I promise you it's not that easy. And Tua took hundreds of thousands of reps as a youth with his pops back on eva beach to be able to develop that rare trait which I think you could compare to when you're in the triple threat position in basketball. Right, he can shoot, he can pass, he can dribble drive, and Tua can sell you on the dribble drive attack and within that same motion where he gets you to take a deep drop step to get depth to cut

him off on the way to the basket. He can then pull up and knock down the shot right in your eyeball. Does that track? Let's go ahead and take our first break right there. Come back on the other side, and I'm gonna keep going, baby. Drivetime Podcast, your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by AutoNation, simply continuing that first segment idea and talking about two one and comparing him to a great dribble drive basketball guard with the

ability to hit jump shots in your face. I think that Tua's game has grown that way with his ability to you know, fake the glands and throw the rail or throw the flat or you know, rip the vertical whatever whatever he needs to do without having his feet set, without you know, being able to quickly set his feet to make that happen. And it just meshes so perfectly with the skill players that we have, with the run game that we have, with the system and the entire

operation as a whole. That's why I think this offense is going to be an absolute problem down the stretch. It's what I thought we were going to get back in Week one, which again it sucks that I was wrong about that early on. It does. I wish it were different. I mean, imagine Tua stays healthy and hits this stride back in Week three against the Seahawks and the Titans and the Colts, and the defense was balling

at that time. I have no proble and saying confidently we're five and three right now if that's the case, which is probably disappointing based upon the Cardinals result and not pulling that Buffalo game out late, but it is what it is. Five and three, I would say this team is about to win the AFC East still. Well maybe not because you got split Buffalo, but I digress on that once again. I just think that we're at

worse five and three, but that's not the reality. The realities were two and six and now have to play damn near perfect to get in. And that's where I want to go back to this SoundBite from Coach when he was asked on Monday about the idea of yesterday on Tuesday being buyers or sellers of the deadline. Here's Coach, and he gave you a pretty good answer here about how this team believes in their program and kind of affirms I guess what I'm saying as the team mouthpiece

right now. This is steeped in research and study and x'es and o's, and you podcast listeners from the last six weeks know that this is not I wasn't doing this two weeks ago, so just bear with me. Here here's coach on the team's internal review of their own operation.

that is that is real to me. But I know, first and foremost we are absolutely convicted in uh this, this this team being better than the win loss column right now and believe that it can it can make a turn.

to make a historic type of run. Quite frankly, I think that with our offense the way it is, if it stays healthy and continues doing what I think they will, which is have that same run game commitment, have the same commitment to taking the profit, and also having the explosive element mixed in like you saw in Buffalo, the perfect triple threat attack. I think that in those games against teams that don't have Matt Stafford or Jordan Love or c. J. Stroud or Brock Purty, I think you're

gonna wipe the floor with those teams. I'm talking about the Raiders, Patriots, Jets, and Browns, which is five games, which gives you four more games with Matt Stafford, with Jordan Love, with CJ. Shrowd and brock Purty. You have to find a way to win three of those. It starts on Monday, against the Rams. If you get that one, then I feel confident that we can find two more

of the other three. But let's just let that happen when it happens and hopefully make a historic run through December to turn a two and six team into a playoff team. But because because of this early hole, maybe it's too late. And that bleeds into my next point that you know, to recap. I think this team can get hot, but even getting hot and going seven and

two might not be good enough. We'll see. I don't think the seventh seed in the AFC is going to have an imposing record like was the case last year, where it felt like you had to have ten, maybe even eleven wins just to get in the damn playoffs. I mean, we clinched the playoffs in the Cowboys game at eleven and four, and we would have made it at ten and seven had we lost that game. But at the time, it was like, well, if it lose to the Ravens and the Bills and the Cowboys, maybe

they don't get in. But you get what I'm saying. It's I think it's lighter this year, but of course so much can change. And that's the second part of this and something I've been thinking about, you know, looking into the last couple of days. If they go seven to two and miss out on a tie break, that

would be a disappointing season based upon preseason expectations. Maybe not so much about the seven and two end, but the six and the two and six start that made it so they have to be one of the best two or three teams down the stretch just to get a road playoff game against a Baltimore or Buffalo or whoever it might be. I think there's a bit of a disconnect on this next part with regards to fans and patient level, patience level, or the old trope of no excuses just to accomplish X, Y and z like

that is logically in any walk of life. That's such a flawed way of thinking of only being results based and not being processed based because you are not allowing yourself to see the full picture of things. And again, I totally get the frustration, and maybe that's why you feel that way in your sports life because the rest of life does have gray areas. Maybe you want to

have it black and white in your sports life. Again, feel free, but just please understand that it's logically flawed, right, Because the biggest plea that I can make is one that I think is steeped in logic and not emotion, and that is this, you cannot let the results of

seasons past informed decisions in the present. Like I keep thinking about this, if we convert that fourth down in the twenty twenty two wild card game at Buffalo and then we pop an explosive that gets us into the end zone and we win that game and you dethrown the Bills as a seventh seed, does the fact that

we gain fifty more yards in that one game. And for argument's sake, let's say that we go to Kansas City the next week and with Skyler Thompson get absolutely waxed, which we definitely would have do those extra fifty yards from the Skyler Thompson lead offense change the way you feel in twenty twenty four going forward, because all the discourse I see is playoff win or bust. That would have been it, and you would have reset the drought. But does that make you feel any different about twenty

twenty four team. Not for me, And that's my point in all of this. You cannot let the playoff drought impact the projection of decisions going forward, because it's simply not relevant. It is for fans, it's not for anybody in the NFL that works in this business and makes decisions based on the information they have, which should not incl the two thousand and seven season, or the twenty twelve season, or the two thousand and six like, it doesn't matter what happened back then. And that's why I've

always firmly disagreed with the principle of no excuses. Whether they get hot and get in or they come up a game or two short, maybe that's still just a few games where we fail to close it out and we go six and eleven, which is a horribly disappointing season. I would agree with that, whether it's six wins, eight wins, or ten wins. I don't think those final results dictated ultimately who you are and where the program is going. And to weave this back in, let's actually go ahead

and take our last breakreak there. I went back and looked at some teams that have had really good runs, really good programs for an extended period of time, and pointed out a couple of years where things just didn't go their way. We'll do that next Drivetime podcast, your

host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by Auto Nation. So to to do the weave and bring this back in, I just wanted to look at some good football teams, which I believe the Dolphins will be in the second half of the season, that just had some bad bounces or bad injury luck or whatever it was that made their record a game or two short of what they wanted to be, but then came back and were right back to the team that we thought they could be

or had been in recent seasons. And the first one I thought of was the team that we often get compared to on the other coast in the other conference, in the San Francisco forty nine ers. So Kyle Shanahan gets there in twenty seventeen, they get Jimmy g on Halloween and they're zero to eight, and then Jimmy takes a week to get on boarded and starts the game

against the Giants and they win Bila. Then they have a bye week, then they lose to a good Seahawks team, but they win the final five games to finish out six and ten. Now they go into twenty eighteen and it's like, oh, there's the Shanahan that helped you know, RG three go off, the Shanahan that helped the Browns look like a football team that they weren't previously, the

Shanahan that took the Falcons of the Super Bowl. But in twenty eighteen, they lose Jimmy G in Week two after one on one start, they lose the next six games. They go three and five the rest of the way, finishing four and twelve with CJ. Beth, Nick Mullens and a bunch of bad backup quarterback play, and this affords them the second pick in the draft, which turns into

Nick Bosa. Then they go to the Super Bowl and have a ten point fourth quarter lead, but mahomes right Then in twenty twenty, they're supposed to go right back there, but Jimmy G only plays six games and they lose multiple other key parts, like Moster and Kittle playing eight games each, Debo playing seven games, Bosa plays just two, d Ford plays just one, Solomon Thomas plays two, Quiskey Tart plays seven, Kawan Williams plays eight games. Like you

get it. It is just one of those years for one of the most talented teams in the NFL, But then they get healthy in twenty twenty one sort of. They miss a bunch of guys early. They start off three to five. Their offense looks like it's stuck in the mud. They can't get much going. They have a Sunday night game where they score like thirteen points against

the bad Broncos. Then they win seven of nine and they have another ten point lead in the NFC Championship game after winning two more playoff games, and then they lose Jimmy g again in twenty twenty two, but Brock Purty so thirteen wins NFC title game. He gets hurt and they get blown out by the Eagles with Josh Johnson, who is basically our Tyler Huntley. Then last year twelve wins Super Bowl appearance. So you get the point right.

Twenty twenty and twenty eighteen were down years because of injuries and a quarterback that couldn't stay on the field, and the injuries at other key spots piling up. What about the Ravens, who have been a fixture in the AFC playoffs since like two thousand and eight, who have essentially been a contender for the Super Bowl. The minute

Lamar Jackson arrives. He goes six and one as a rookie, thirteen wins, an MVP in twenty nineteen, eleven wins in twenty twenty, but then he gets hurt in twenty twenty one and they win eight games. And he comes back in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty two rather and goes eight and four and gets hurt again. Now they sneak in with a nine to eight mark. They get beat in the wild card round, and suddenly questions about Lamar Jackson's long term viability come up, and he's made

available per reports and to trade. Nothing comes of it. He comes back, gets his contract, wins thirteen games, another MVP award, and then right now they are six and three, and quite frankly, I think this is the year they get their breakthrough, and I think they beat Kansas City in the playoffs and go to the super Bowl. That's conjecture.

Or the Eagles, who won a super Bowl in twenty seventeen won nine games the next two years as Carson Wentz is coming back off that ACL tear in total de reconstruction, and then they bought them out all the way at four eleven and one with their quarterback missing four games. In twenty twenty, literally all of their top five eligibles missed at least five games. Some of them missed ten games that year. If you want a non injury example. For example, the Saints went seven and nine

four times between twenty twelve and twenty sixteen. They have a historic twenty seventeen draft class that plays a huge role in winning eleven and thirteen games the next two seasons to get them over this hump of a team that was kind of one dimensional but you know, didn't make the key plays and they counted or for whatever reason, they went seven to nine four years out of five.

The entire point is that for every Chiefs or Patriots dynasty, there are two or three more elite programs that don't have the postseason success, granted, which is what we all want. And I'm talking about Super Bowls, and we experienced that in the nineties with Marino not being able to beat the Buffalo Bills. Sometimes it just happens. But for every Chiefs or Patriots dynasty, you have multiple programs that have

these amazing decade long runs. But within those programs, in those decade long runs, there's like a year or two where they got off the rails and they weren't very good, and they bounced right back. And that's my entire point, because it's football. It's not one hundred and sixty two game baseball season or even an eighty two game basketball season.

Sometimes you just it just doesn't go your way. And with some of the early season struggles, the injury to the quarterback, playing four qbs by week four, incorporating a new defensive system that was hoping to get stronger as it went along, only to see injuries decimate the front entirely by week ten, Like, I just think this is one of those years for the Dolphins, and in otherwise really good runs since twenty twenty and maybe I'm wrong.

If I'm right, I think you'll see this team go on a run and win eight to nine, maybe even ten games, and then we can reshuffle, reload, and get back into twenty twenty five with an absolute vengeance, the way the Eagles did in twenty twenty two, the way the Niners did in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three, the way the Saints did in twenty seventeen, and the

way the Ravens did in twenty twenty three. Now, if they revert back to old the week one, two, three four style of offense, I will throw this podcast in the trash and say I was wrong. But I don't think I am. I think we finally hit that pinnacle offensively where this team is gonna be an absolute nightmare for opposing defenses in the next nine games of the season.

There you go, that's my point. I was gonna do the week ten picks here on this show, but I got long, so we'll go ahead and bump that to Friday. I had Kyle Krabs on Dolphins HQ, which is going to run the entire interview on the Friday podcast part of it on the Thursday HQ episode. We got some really good content there with Kyle. You don't want to miss that. We'll have the game preview for you guys tomorrow as well. In the meantime, you all please be

sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Follow me on social at Lincoln NFL. The team at Miami Dolphins check out the fish Tank podcast with my guys Seth and Juice. Check out the YouTube channel for Dolphins HQ, Media availabilities and so much more, and last, but not least, Miami Dolphins dot Com Until next time. Finn's Up, Carolina and Cameron Daddy just come and hope