Dolphins film study: Playoff loss shows clear areas for improvement in offseason
The Dolphins’ top decision-makers will soon go in-depth in dissecting the 2023 season and coming to a conclusion on why the year fell short of the franchise’s ultimate goal.
They will have 18 games worth of film to peruse, but the final weeks of the season — and in particular, Miami’s season-ending loss to the Kansas City Chiefs — were glaring in exposing issues on both sides of the ball.
Cover 2 problems
Throughout much of the season, the Dolphins’ offense was one of the most potent in the NFL. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa finished as the league’s passing leader (4,624) and set a career-high in passing touchdowns (29). But the offense sputtered in the final month of the year, culminating in a season-low 7 points in the wild-card round.
After the defeat, wide receiver Tyreek Hill pointed to one place for improvement with the Dolphins’ offense.
“We have to do a good job of being able to beat two-man and cover-two and things like that,” he said. “... Small attention to details. When guys are dropping back that far, it’s all about being in the right spots. You can see that we had a couple of off-target throws and a lot of it was on the receivers. We weren’t in position to make plays for our quarterback when he needed us the most.”
In his second season as head coach and offensive play caller, head coach Mike McDaniel introduced several new wrinkles to help Miami’s offense improve to the league’s second-highest scoring unit.
But Cover 2, a zone coverage concept that places two defenders covering the deep half of the field and five underneath defenders, continued to give the Dolphins issues in their biggest games as they couldn’t target the middle of the field with as much effectiveness.
The five games in which Miami saw the most Cover 2 — both matchups against the Bills, as well as the wild-card round loss to the Chiefs and regular season meetings against the Titans and Eagles — all happened to be defeats and were some of Tagovailoa’s worst games this season.
In those five games, Tagovailoa completed 65.1 percent of his passes with four touchdowns to five interceptions (79.6 passer rating). In all other 13 games, he completed 69.7 percent of his passes with 23 touchdowns and nine interceptions (108 passer rating).
Four of the games in which the Dolphins faced the most Cover 2 also coincided with the highest pressure rates allowed, signaling an offensive line that couldn’t adequately hold up against three and four-man rushes.
While Tagovailoa and the passing game struggled against these two-high-safety looks, Miami’s rushing attack couldn’t consistently take advantage of the light boxes that often come with these defenses.
McDaniel made significant strides in calling more run plays this season. After ranking 31st in attempts in 2022, Miami was 15th in carries in 2023 and led in the league in yards per attempt.
But in the wild-card game, the Dolphins couldn’t rely on their running game — and didn’t seek to lean on it. Miami had a designed-run rate of 25.4 percent, averaged 5.1 yards and had a success rate of 29.7 percent, all season-low marks.
While the struggles of Tagovailoa will garner most of the headlines this offseason, Miami struggled to adjust its approach against its toughest competition this season.
“I think the biggest hindrance really for the varied ways we could execute our game plan, and we did have some stuff down the field that was appropriate for the defense we were expecting, but it makes it real difficult when you are one of whatever on third down,” McDaniel said Monday. “I think we had the mindset to run the ball and we had some mirrored shots in the pass game that we felt pretty good about that had to be specific for their defense. But you don’t get to those calls when you have to either avoid third down, or you’re punting, which is the situation we found ourselves in that game.”
Pass rush
By the final game of the season, the Dolphins’ defense was decimated, missing five starters and another in outside linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel, who was effectively a starter throughout the year.
Miami’s defense dealt with injuries throughout the season, but the loss of its top pass rushers most heavily impacted the unit. Jaelan Phillips tore his Achilles in Week 12 and then Van Ginkel (foot) and Bradley Chubb (knee) went down in Week 18 and Week 17, respectively.
The Dolphins had to sign a trio of veteran linebackers to play in the wild-card round and coordinator Vic Fangio had to change his blitzing tendencies in the last two games.
Throughout the season, Miami had a blitz rate of 22.3 percent, which ranked among the lowest marks in the NFL. But in Week 18, the first game after Chubb tore his ACL, the Dolphins blitzed quarterback Josh Allen on 36.6 percent of his dropbacks. In the wild-card round, one game after Van Ginkel injured his foot, Miami blitzed quarterback Patrick Mahomes on 56.1 percent of his dropbacks. Both were season-high marks and were born out of necessity with the Dolphins lacking the juice to get pressure with a traditional four-man rush.
It had varying levels of success; Miami used Cover 0, an all-out blitz, on 18 dropbacks against Mahomes, which is tied for the second-most in a game since 2018, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. Mahomes was 7 of 18 for 74 yards against Cover 0.
But it likely wasn’t the ideal game plan for Fangio, who said in his introductory news conference that he wants to blitz “as needed and when I want to versus having to.”
With Phillips and Chubb facing long rehabs and Van Ginkel set to become an unrestricted free agent, Miami will need contingency plans if its top two pass rushers aren’t ready for the start of the 2024 season.
This story was originally published January 17, 2024 at 10:58 AM.
