The root cause why Dolphins offense can’t run enough, is bad on 3rd down, limits Kenyan Drake

The Miami Dolphins can run the football. Give them that.

For all their struggles up and down the roster, on offense, on defense, and lately on special teams a little bit, the Dolphins are averaging 4.8 yards per rush this season. That ties them for the fourth-best mark in the NFL with the Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams -- two teams headed to the playoffs.

So it makes sense if the Dolphins do this one thing very well, on average, they should be doing that one thing as often as possible because it maximizes their chances of succeeding.

Except the Dolphins haven’t maximized.

The Dolphins, you see, have run the football only 328 times this season. That ties them for 24th in the league in number of rushes. Eight teams have run the ball more than 400 times.

And the frustrating thing is the teams that run the ball a lot, like Seattle, New Orleans, Houston and others, are generally good teams enjoying success.

With all that information, logic would dictate the Dolphins address the problem by simply running the football more often. This seems obvious.

So why haven’t they?

“Because we’re bad on third down.,” head coach Adam Gase said. “We don’t have a lot of plays. I don’t even know what our play average is, but it’s not very good. I think that’s really probably the reason why the rush attempts are that low.

“The yardage is high because we’ve had those explosive runs. I don’t even know how many we’ve had. Having a 75-yarder, those type of things – that will do it for you real fast. That will get the average up. That will get the yardage up. If we had more plays, we’d have more attempts.”

Ironic that the Dolphins cannot run the football more because they don’t win often enough on third down, for whatever reason. And the primary reason is often the passing game isn’t good enough.

(Stay with me, we’re going somewhere.)

So, making the connection, a struggling passing game is keeping the Dolphins from utilizing their relatively effective running game.

“The fact that we find ourselves in third-and-seven-plus way too much and we haven’t been very good at even coming close to converting them, that really hurts us,” Gase said.

If the Dolphins were better at converting on third down, they’d have longer possessions, which means more plays, which means more rush attempts.

This is where I tell you the Dolphins convert 30.9 percent of their third down plays. That’s 31st in the NFL.

And that singular inability causes decisions to be made that make fans scratch their heads. That singular flaw exposes players. That singular flaw keeps the offense from producing.

Consider: Because the Dolphins are not good enough converting on third down, Gase has had to manage his personnel so that the offense stays on schedule and doesn’t face third-and-7-plus situations all the time.

That’s the reason he decided Kenyan Drake is a luxury he cannot afford as an early-down back. Drake, you see, is very explosive but part of that style is to go off script and maybe run where the play is not designed to go.

And sometimes that leads to explosive runs.

And often that leads to plays that lose yardage.

And since his offense is virtually incapable of converting a third-down situation when it’s third-and-7-plus, Gase decided to be conservative and use Frank Gore rather than Drake as his primary back.

Why?

Because Gore would go where the play was designed. And that rarely lost yardage, which would keep the offense on schedule for a first down.

“Frank was the kind of guy that if you got zero yards on first down and give it to him again on second down, you’re probably going to be in third-and-manageable,” Gase said. “I think that’s when we’ve had some kind of success in the game on first down – first, second and first down again, or third-and-short – because Frank did a good job of just making sure there were no negative plays and he was getting us back to efficient runs and keeping us in manageable down and distances.”

So, basically, the Dolphins have found themselves limiting the more explosive player from the running game because they couldn’t overcome a negative play when they got to third down.

And they certainly couldn’t run the football as much as other teams -- despite being good at it -- because, again, they only convert about 31 percent of their third-down plays.

So I ask the question you probably were wondering about four paragraphs ago: Why are the Dolphins so bad on third down?

Look, it’s a team sport. So everyone on the offense is responsible for Miami’s third-down problems.

But it is very clear the problem lies in the passing game. That means the protection. That means receivers getting open.

And that means Ryan Tannehill.

(And here we are.)

Tannehill has not been a good third-down quarterback this season. He’s completed 54.2 percent of his third down passes. His quarterback rating on third down is an unremarkable 75.2.

More?

The Dolphins have converted 28.8 percent of their third downs this year when Tannehill passes the football. That is last in the NFL among the regular starting quarterbacks for every team.

And if you think that problem applies to anyone asked to trigger the Miami offense, you’re wrong. The Dolphins converted 42.6 percent of their third downs this year when Brock Osweiler threw the pass.

This does not mean Osweiler is better than Tannehill. He is not.

It does mean that despite his obvious struggles when he was playing, Osweiler was a more efficient passer than Tannehill on third down.

And all of this together paints a picture of an offense that has committed to certain players and approaches that seem curious -- like limiting Drake in the run game -- but are employed to cover up for problems elsewhere.

It also paints a picture of an offense that needs better quarterback play on third down.

This story was originally published December 21, 2018 at 12:35 AM.