Sustaining Fourth Quarter Leads, QB Footwork and Assistant Coaches Talk Jets, Getting Better

daily dose of Miami Dolphins football. And on today's show, it's our last air quotes bye week type of podcast, although it's gonna look a lot like our usual Wednesday pod as we hear from the assistant coaches on a variety of topics. Will look at the fourth quarter and how to close games. Coach Fry touches on the importance of footwork and how he thinks to excels in that area.

Plus coach lamb g A. Burke's Camp Clark as well as co offensive corner George Gottsie talk to us about the New York Jets playing the same team twice inside of one month, and the self scouting processes of the bye week. All of that and a heck of a lot more from the Baptist Health studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex. This is the Drive Time podcast. As all of you know, or maybe you don't know, I don't know. The Thursday preview podcast always requires the most

research from me. Between watching some of the games and then going and finding the data, A lot of hours go into that podcast, and I would be lying if I said getting one week off from that wasn't a little bit nice. But now that we're here and the preview episode is out tomorrow, I'm kind of itching to

dive back in, Like, give me a Dolphins game. I want to see how this team comes off the by and plays, and while you're listening to this podcast, That's what I'll be doing on Wednesday here working on that preview podcast. We have a whole bunch of other goodies and sound bites on this particular show to play for you all today. So I'm gonna kind of sit back and let the pH d s as I call them,

do their thing. But first before we get to the media availability, where I had a list of questions for each coach and a few sidebars here that went off script, all of which was tremendous. I wanted to look at something that has really piqued my interest not just for the Miami Dolphins, as we kind of talked about the craziness in the NFL this year from a parody standpoint,

but something that involves the entire National Football League. Like we talked about, you know yesterday, I was kind of a sponge for the week fourteen games around the league, just enjoying an opportunity to watch football on Sunday outside of the aquaand Orange. And the theme of the week has been the idea that no lead is safe. It started on Thursday Night Football. Viking see a to seven lead entering the fourth quarter come down to a last

second throw in the end zone. And we're not talking about a hell Mary, something like the eleven yard line going in for a chance to score and get to to come back in a game where they trailed by twenty two points in the fourth quarter. The Ravens recovered an onside kick and we're just a couple of first downs away from putting Justin Tucker, the all time greatest kicker on the National Football League, in range to win a game that they trailed twenty four to three at

halftime and two nine entering the fourth quarter. We talked about the Bills and Bucks three and it goes to overtime, the Bengals and forty nine in the fourth quarter goes into overtime. And look, this is not some Week fourteen revelation we're talking about here. This is every single week in the National Football League. I'm not gonna list more examples, because again, it's every single week. Go look go look

for yourself. It happens multiple times every single week. And I really became interested about this because it was something that's become a bit of a theme under Coach Flora's here in Miami, the ability to salt away leads and salt away games and hold those leads and get yourself into the victories the winner circle, I shouls say, and not just hold on to the victory, but not even letting it come down to that final drive or that

final pass into the end zone. This literally started in the first win of the Brian Flores era back in nineteen A two score halftime lead only became an eight point lead with fifteen seconds to play in the fourth quarter against the Jets that year at home. Last year, it happened frequently that seventeen never became a game late

seventeen over the Rams. I think one of those scores to get closer was there late in the fourth quarter over the Chargers in a game that was with under four minutes to play, three over the Jets again, nineteen seven over the Bengals, twelve over the Patriots, with Miami C's control of that game in the third quarter, and then ahead to this year, only the Jets were able very late once again to pull that game to within a one score game over the course of the winning streak,

aside from the Texans game where the score goes seventeen to nine with eleven at two to play and the defense was able to prevent points on three straight drives there. So this certainly does not have any bearing on this week heading into the New York Jets at home here, but I thought it was an interesting storyline, so I wanted to ask our coaches about this, starting with the head coach, Brian Flores, what's the key to assaulting away

games in the fourth quarter execution? I think that's at the end of the day, That's what it what it goes down to, really, in all three phases, I think you gotta pay, you gotta play well at the end that goes without saying, that's when you get your opponent's best shot. You give them your best shot. And so I put the same question to co offensive coordinator coach George Gatzi, what is the key to closing out games

in that fourth quarter success? Here's coach. Yeah, I mean, it's it's about putting the game away and uh sometimes it's you know, controlling the ball and making sure that those possessions are you know, the only your best players and making sure that you know, we're calling the plays that I feel like we'll give us the best opportunity to move the chains. Um. You know, so third downs

are critical. We've been fortunate to convert a couple of big third downs, I know, just off hand the last few games, we were able to convert those and again turn some clock. Um obviously opponent, depending on how many time outs they have, you know, it's important, uh to save those to the very end. So if we can use those up and get first downs, get into score and rains, make it a multiple score game, then yeah, that gives our defense a chance to pender your part.

You know, our ears back on their quarterback and how about how he assesses the play of the quarterback to a tongue of vloa in those fourth quarters. Fourth quarters. Yeah, he's been he's been well. In the fourth quarter, he's done well. And um, you know, again we want to make sure that he's making good decisions. And you know, when it comes down to playing our best to bury end of the game is ultimately where you need to

play your your very best football. Um, And we learned through the course of the game how it's being played and at the end we need to make sure where you're adapting and applying our best football back. Now, I think that final point right there is very very interesting with regards to adjusting throughout the course of the game, finding out what things work for you, what things didn't work for you, and how to apply those later on.

We've talked about this on podcast before. You know, going back to the Patriots game last year, you have a snapshot of essentially not the same play, but two very similar plays where to A throws a kind of scramble picks are not a pick six, but an interception in the end zone to J. C. Jackson, one of the best ball hawks the entire National Football League. And then in the fourth quarter, coming down the opposite direction to

the other end zone. He's in the same a similar third down scramble situation, and rather than take the throw, he puts his foot in the ground, makes a move on a player, and gets in for the touchdown to really help put that game away. So learning from the earlier blessings you take throughout the course of the football game and applying them in the fourth quarter, sir, only a good trade, especially for a young player, especially for a young team like your Miami Dolphins. So really good

information there from coach Godz. As always, he's always so transparent and upfront with us about his football knowledge and giving that knowledge to us as people in the media and fans of this team and of this game. And speaking of two, uh, I want to pick it up

here with quarterbacks coach Charlie Fry. And again my theme here was kind of three pronged, again with some off script follow ups as well, which I got with coach Fry too, But those three prongs were talk about yourself scouting process for your particular room slash position group, and don't say talk about it because that's like journalism one

on one, that's not how you ask a question. Number two, what are the pros and cons of seeing a team for the second time within the span of one month, because the Dolphins and Jets played back in week eleven and now again here in week number fift team and what are the Jets personnel and scheme do to challenge your specific room or position group. So let's go ahead and pick it up here with coach Fry. The first question for coach was about seeing the same opponent within

the span of one month two times. Yeah, I think in this league, Um, it's hard to beat anybody twice, you know what I mean, Just so you know the second time around, you you've got a better field for each other, and you know, a second time game planning against each other, and you know, so you don't know each other better. So you've got to just take the approach of just starting all over again, um, saying attention to detail in your preparation. Uh, same same way to

attack it, um, and just just go from there. And then listening back to my interview here with coach, I literally told him this is probably a dumb question, but we'll ask it anyways. I asked him, if you put more emphasis on the particular Jets game that you just played against them than other tapes as you prepare for your opponent, because you're obviously gonna have more than one tape you look at. Is there an emphasis on the

last time you played this team? Yeah? I think you you you learn a lot him the first time you play them. Um, there's a lot of a lot of things that you you like, there's a lot of things you wish you you could do better and correct. So I think it's a it's a good place to start, um. And then just you know that the the next three games, it's okay, this is how they played us. You know,

are they what are they doing different? Going back on script here, back on the theme talking about coach fries self scouting process and how he kind of put that to the quarterback room to make that group better. Yeah, it was just get better, you know. That was that was kind of the message during during the bye week

was get better. Um. So you know we attack different areas, you know within you know the structure of of how we attack, and we said, okay, if we do X, Y and Z better, you know that we're gonna get a higher rate of efficiency on on this if we can you know, marry our feet within our progression maybe we can get the ball out half a second fashion, so you really don't have you know that that gives you some time to really dive into, you know, things you've been doing and and just see how you can

get better. I thought that point was very interesting from Coach, especially the idea of just trying to clean up some of the little things that can create better efficiency within every single play. Obviously every drive and every game is that kind of plays out over the course of a sixty minute game, but talking about the footwork and getting certain things cleaned up, and we'll come back to that here in just a second, as I had a follow

up question for Coach on that particular topic. But we've talked about it on the All Twenties two Review podcast, right like how we think that even though the team is playing pretty well right now, there are some opportunities for corrections to make things even better, and especially on the offensive side, where you get one offensive penalty or one mislocated pass or one dropped football and all of a sudden, the entire dynamic of that drive, of that

particular maybe even game changes with that one mistake, and cleaning up those mistakes can lead to more efficiency and of course better results on the scoreboard in terms of being in more comfortable positions and not just winning games are closing out games type, but maybe you find yourself in a position where you can dominate a game, kind

of like we saw in the Carolina game. So I really enjoyed that with Coach also enjoyed his answer talking about what are some of the strengths of the Jets scheme and personnel they can do to challenge your group, your position group. The quarterbacks, I think they're built. I don't know from the from the front to the back. You know, just they got it. They got a really good front and they can get pressure um in a lot of different ways, so whether it's pushed the pocket

or come off the edges or or things. I think for us that would just be you know, focusing on our footwork's gotta be exact, our eyes got to be in the right place. So that a is us the ability to help the unit by getting the ball out. And I think this is our last one here with

Coach Fry go ahead and finish up. I talked to about the pieces of content we covered on the podcast yesterday with regards to Peyton Manning and J. T. O. Sullivan breaking down QB one here and two a tongue byla and about the idea of getting your feet set among every possible situation where there's a heavy pass brush, whether you're outside the framework of the route concept, whether you're you know, off structure because of the pressure getting

in on you, or receiver not getting to his landmarks soon enough. Maybe the quarterback didn't make the right read to get himself in position to make that threatening throw, a threatening position to make a throw, make a run, what have you. Here's coach Fry about setting the feet and delivering the football in that regard and working on those things as you get deeper into the season and deeper into your career. It's every quarterback you know, it's

it's your your footwork. It's kind of like your your alarm clock. It's there's a lot of things in relationship to what happens throughout a play and relationship to the quarterbacks feet, and you try and marry your feet as your timing mechanism going through progressions, going through and also in as on an alarm if something breaks down. So we spent a lot of time just makes making sure your feet are right that you're always in a position to throw. And you know, a quarterbacks back foot is

a mindset, it truly is. It's it's a it's a tough guy mindset. It's a I'm gonna dig my back foot. I know they're coming, i know they're pushing, and I'm gonna rip this ball up. And so with that great detail they're from coach, I had to follow up and ask about the very first play of the last game where you see two of his eyes and feet go flat, seeing back to the flat and just kind of keeping

himself aligned that way. I wanted to ask coach if that was a good example and just how he kind of thought about that play and what it says about two was relationship between the eyes and the feet and hard hiring those two elements of your game together. Yeah. So yeah, and when things break down, you know, the first thing that usually breaks down with with younger quarterbacks is their foot work. So it's just it's just continuing to develop it, continuing to stress and work on it.

That that's at the end of the day. Your feet, your eyes, your progression, that's that's that's what allows you to sleep at night, you know what I mean? No one knows things stone cold so that in your mind they can't get you. Yep. I can talk to coach about that kind of stuff all day, and that's basically true of all my conversations here. I could just continue ripping off these things all day along with these coaches, as they give us so much detail and information about

the game we all love. It's like I love assistant coach media day. It's the very best. With that in mind, let's go ahead and move on now to coach Lemil John Pierre, who I asked the same question that I posed to every other coach pros and on about seeing a team twice the New York Jets within the span of four weeks. It's like it's a special opportunity, like

it's very you know, unique as it is. You know, we play him that close, and whenever you play at divisional opponents, I was gonna be tough, and then you play them closer, so it's like, yeah, like you got the game. You just play so hopefully because you have film all against guys you just played against, but knowing like you played the same team another time, it's not not the same matchup. To me, it usually ends up being a little bit tougher because now like he's like

that chess match was like it's closer. You know, maybe injuries, you know, they might get guys back and might have happen. We have those those things that change a little bit. But um, it's very unique in terms of what it presents you as the preparation things like that. Let's go ahead and stay on the script here and ask coach about what challenges the Jets front presents this Dolphins front in terms of bowl scheme and personal im in front, I mean they're very good and I mean that's really

in the front seven. I think they're very good and talented. They got speed and those guys do play hard on defense. They're very talent up front, and then you know they they present something different in terms of you know, they got size and then they got power. Like along the line of scrimmage. You know you see you know mostly the guy you see every game you say, like you said, you're talking, he plays the energy. Well you see the speed.

They also got another linebacker spots and even that secondary, I mean you see them you know their physical down in there. So that's a very good defense. Let's go ahead and finish up with coach here about self scouting and the process of improvement over the time off for

the offensive line. Yeah, you know, just trying to keep digging and you got a little bunch of time to for sure, you know, folks and your guys and kind of take their time to you know, look at one of the things that you know you've done well, things that you need improve on, and things like that, and you know, overall what you see is the growth, which you know, it seems like he's starting the show. Like

we said, the effort for these guys have never changed. Um, they continue to you know, even during the bidby contacted them, send them things that contacted me. So we're very much in the ball. But once we get on the field,

it has to show. So there goes Coach Lamb. Let's go ahead and flip it over to the defensive side and the guys like up against the offensive line and practice on the d line here, and let's go ahead and work front to back and talk to coach Clark about his processes over the bye week for self scouting and again improvement. Yeah, so we look at, you know, things we've done well, things we need to work on. How teams are playing us, how we're playing them, Is

there anything we're given away? You know, you kind of go through, uh basically self evaluation. You know, personally, I start with myself, you know, what are we doing during practice or these drills or these techniques showing up in the game positively? Um, is there something that I'm not doing that I should be doing? Um from our defensive line perspective, and then it goes trickles out throughout the

whole defense. So I think it's a great exercise that it definitely uh tells the tale kind of of how guys can get better individually. You know, every player is different, so there may be something we're doing with one guy that we need to hit before practice extra because this player has this part figured out and maybe he needs to work on that. So I think he's a great exercise, you know, and and hopefully it helps his first jets.

And if you ever get a chance to come out for training camp next summer or any other summer besides that, make sure you keep your eyes on Coach Clark. He's a lot of fun to watch coach those guys up and it's high intensity throughout the course of the fundamental segment of practice, the individual portions, the team portion, whatever the case may be. Those guys are on ten at

all times. Go ahead and pick it up here with coach about some of the uh pros and cons of playing a team within the span of four weeks two different times. Yeah, I think it's especially a team might digests that are that are veteran good group up front. I think it's definitely a tough challenge. You know, these guys have played a lot of ball, They play hard, they work well together. Um, they've gotten better each week. Um. And I think it's tough for me coming from college.

That was a new thing at first, because you only really do that if it's a championship game, you know. But yeah, I think it's tough. I think there is a little familiarity in terms of personnel who you're going against, but they have that same familiarity. So it's gonna be a tough challenge for us. And and we're gonna have a great week of practice and hopefully play our best ball Sunday. Yes, hopefully play our best ball. I can't wait for that game. But it feels like it's been

forever since we last played a football game. Sunday against the Jets here at hard Rock Stadium. Let's go ahead and keep moving along the defense here, and let's go ahead and pick us up with coach Campanelli. Every time we talk, we talk food you have to do with coach just want to play a little sit bit here talking about some pizza in the South Florida area. You

know what it is. But they got like the He's right, the pizzas are kind of small, and then you just you just you end up beating, like pointing slices is not you know, I mean me anyway, I have no self control. So yeah, exactly, I look at like four pizza boxes and I'm like, I definitely ate the kids didn't feel like eating nothing. I'm like, well somebody ate this. Yeah, no doubt. I love it every time, the very best.

Let's go ahead and pick it up here with coach camp talking about his self scouting processes and what he uses the extra time for to help out linebacker room improve and get better. Yeah. I think you go back and you look at, um, you know obviously each player what they're doing well, and then schematically in each you know situation, Um, how guys are attacking you and you know, are there things that keep coming up? And that's really just kind of keeping yourself in a competitive advantage, I

guess is probably the best way to say. You know what I mean, really just kind of looking inward. It gives you the bye week, gives you a chance to look at that, uh you know, kind of look at every facet of the defense and what we're doing well. Uh, you know, was there any changes and and really, like like I said, how guys are attacking you throughout all those different situations in the field, so that you have

the bye week adjustments there for the linebackers. How about the challenges the Jets offense presents the linebacker group here in Miami in this game on Sunday. Yeah, I think, uh, just division games are they're always gonna be tough games because you know each other so well. So um, you're really really trying to do your do diligence uh on each opponent within the division, and uh, they obviously know us pretty well. Uh hopefully we're doing a good job

getting to know them well. And I think going back and looking at the games, obviously, you know in the second game, whenever you play, you're looking at what went well what didn't go well, you know, and you have it's always interesting, you know, you played each other twice, you have, and you do that every year. You have

a pretty good feel for their personnel. And they have a good personnel, you know, and they they're playing hard, and uh, you know, for us, just looking at ourselves that last bye week, you know, hopefully we're doing things down the stretch here in this game, which is uh, you know, the next one obviously being a very important game. Hopefully we're doing some of those things better as we move forward. I just think, you know, they've got they've got a bunch of good backs. They they they've done

a good job getting the ball to their playmakers. They have a good young quarterback who's obviously a playmaker himself, and uh, you know throughout the roster. I think they've done a good job building their team. And like I said, there are guys, uh play hard. You know, the tight ends have made a bunch of players this year as well. Uh, the running backs, like I said, they've done a good job in the run game in the past game. So they kind of certainly certainly test you, uh in every

situation in our room. And there he goes coach camp a lot of fun talking to these guys about you know, how their time off was about food, vacation, whatever the

case may be, but also the good football stuff. And they gave us great content every single time and helped teach us something about this game, which again is really my focus here on the Drivetime podcast, we have two more coaches left back to the secondary cornerbacks coach Charles Brooks, who I asked first about his processes for self scouting and getting the cornerbacks room better and ready over the

course of the bye week. Yeah, you know, from my from my process, uh first and foremost, we you know, I'll start with us as a scheme, uh, you know, within within our different responsibilities as position coaches. You know, we look at the overall scheme first and then we look at how that affects our position. And then you dive deeper and see how that expect affects your specific players, you know, so big picture, uh, position group, and then

just really the specific players. You want to sub scout them and you know, look at things that they're doing well, look at things that you know they're not doing as well. You know, how they can potentially be attacked, how they are being attacked. Uh, and then just really how you can get better from that detailed as always there with coach Brooks, let's go ahead and keep it rolling here and talk to him about the idea of playing the same team twice in a four week span. Advantages disadvantages.

Go ahead, coach, Are there some frozen cons to that? Yeah? I would say each game. Uh, although it's the same team, you know, it's it's a different game, you know, so you you got to give them that respect. I think teams change, you know over weeks. The one team may have an identity earlier in the season. One team may have an identity three weeks ago, and that identity may change by tithing they get to you. So depend on who shows up, how they want to play that game.

You gotta go into it. Although you're familiar with said team, we have to go into it, but basically a clean slate and approached them and giving that respect. So you have Coach Burke's talking about his cornerbacks. Let's go ahead and finish up here on the podcast today with safety or rather defensive backs Coach Gerald Alexander, same question to him, what's the pros and cons of facing a team twice

inside the span of one month. Man, I think the the pros of it is, you know, you've kind of seen, you kind of experienced some things, um just very recent in regards to how they played us and what we did and what our plan was. But with work, we

didn't work with the stakes we needed to correct. UM. Not that that the game is going to be the exact same, the strategy is gonna be the exact same, but you just have some familiarity with maybe the schemes that really mostly some of the players that the guys are gonna be competing against. Picking it back up here with g A a question about what this Jets offensive personnel as well as scheme can do to attack this Dolphin secondary and put or create challenges for that group.

They do a lot of different things for uh them offensively where they just move guys around pre snap and move different players. So I discipline is really going to be a key deal for us as far as um what they do pre snap, how they move, the temple in which they move. So it's always going to be a challenge to make sure that we communicate well, align well, especially when you have things going on presnap that kind of messing with eye discipline and alignments and things like that.

And we'll go ahead and finish up here with the same question I asked everybody else, what are your processes for self scouting and how to improve your particular position group over the course of the bye week? What's all really motivated behind self improvement? So when you have an opportunity to really look at your body of work, see the things that you've done well, see the things you need to continue to improve on. Um, see the strengths and weaknesses of things that have shown up, whether it

just be as a whole or individually. Uh, use that opportunity to address some of the issues, recognize some of the issues, and hopefully improve those things before and there he goes, and there we go. Hope you guys enjoyed this edition of the Drive Time podcast. Some education there as we get from the coaches every other week, and of course the assistance and coordinators, I should say, on those off weeks as well. It's a good information there

from the Dolphins coaching staff. Uh, that's it. Let's go ahead and get out of here. Jets preview podcast coming your way tomorrow. Cannot wait to dive in also can't wait to get out of here because Caroline has a Christmas performance at her school slash daycare, and I can't wait to get out there. They didn't tell us what they're doing as far as the kid's performance, but she's been coming home and completely on her own rapping out.

I think, what is the performance? She's singing head, shoulders, knees and toes, eyes and ears and all that fun stuff, but she's mostly just speaking gibberish outside of the fifteen or twenty or so words she knows. So as I say about seriously, everything that she does, it's my favorite thing that she does. But I think she's gonna destroy the performance and I cannot wait to see it. And if she doesn't, just roy I don't care because she's

the best regardless. So that's my Tuesday, looking forward to it. I hope you guys is Wednesday here. Today goes well and enjoy this podcast and the meantime. It is gonna be my time you all. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcast, Leave us a rating, leave us a review. You can follow me at Wingfield, NFL on both Twitter and Instagram. You can follow the Dolphins at Miami Dolphins across all social media platforms. Check

out the Fish Tank Podcast with Dwight Stevenson. This week Seth and o J killing it once again. Check out our YouTube channel for all the media availabilities as well as Dolphins Today and of course, last but not least, Miami Dolphins dot Com until next time finds up Caroline guys coming to watch her perform