A significant way the Miami Dolphins are going in a different direction on offense
Throughout the 2019 season, as the Miami Dolphins were churning their roster with new players to seek upgrades and fill gaps, there were moments when coaches began to see a vexing trend.
Some players weren’t picking up the offense with great speed. It wasn’t necessarily holding the team back because, well, talent. But it wasn’t exactly helping.
Even some players who had gone through parts of the offseason camps were not always up to speed, per sources within the team. One such player was backup quarterback Josh Rosen, who often talked about the process of learning Miami’s system.
“I think it’s a really complex system coming from New England,” Rosen said on September 22, four months after arriving in Miami and going through training camp and the preseason. “I think it’s only a matter of time before enough of these reps and enough of these game reps and practice reps, we’ll get it down and slowly improve.”
When Rosen took the field, in his stretch of three consecutive starts, he was still trying to get comfortable with fundamental requirements of playing his position.
“I think finally I’m starting to really pick up front IDs pretty well,” he said. “...I’m starting to really feel a little more comfortable with regards to that front ID stuff that I was struggling with a little while ago.”
The amount of time it took Rosen to know the offense is hard to pinpoint. But it’s fair, one source said, to believe he never fully came to the finish line. It’s almost impossible for a quarterback to reach the finish line in one season.
But it wasn’t for his lack of trying.
“He comes here early, he stays late,” quarterback coach Jerry Schuplinski said during the middle part of the season. “He tries to do everything that he can to make sure he’s prepared for that week, whether it’s me meeting a little bit extra with him sometimes to catch him up to speed on a few things, whatever we’ve got to do.”
Even as Rosen was working overtime to learn everything, other players were also trying to understand the system and their roles.
Rookie running backs Patrick Laird and Myles Gaskin were forced to play toward the end of the year but perhaps not as quickly as might have been optimal. One reason? They weren’t fully versed in the offense so coaches initially had to trim what they asked each to do.
“We had kind of menus of plays that would be their plays, so it wasn’t in a situation for them that they were going to have to know the entire game plan, which I thought was important,” offensive coordinator Chad O’Shea said at the time.
This was November — three months into a four-month season.
So if you’re searching for reasons Flores decided to fire O’Shea as his offensive coordinator after only one season, after knowing him for more than a decade in New England and convincing him to leave that team and move his family, this could be part of it.
The Dolphins are switching offensive coordinators in 2020.
And they’re obviously switching offenses.
And, I’m told, Flores wants an offense that is easier to absorb and perhaps doesn’t take years to master. The Patriots offense, everyone knows, has evolved in some respects but it’s fundamentally the same as it was back when Tom Brady took over as quarterback at age 24.
He’s 42 now. So no wonder he’s comfortable in that system.
But the Patriots also don’t add half a dozen new players on offense every year. Or any year. And that’s good for them because some of the guys they do add sometimes struggle to learn the system, as Chad Johnson did in 2011.
The Dolphins are not the Patriots in this regard. And they apparently don’t want to be like the Patriots in this regard.
Enter veteran coach Chan Gailey.
Gailey, 68, is expected to sign a two-year contract with the Dolphins and install an offense players can learn fairly quickly.
The Dolphins currently have 14 picks in the April NFL draft. They will have approximately $100 million in salary cap room to sign whatever free agents they wish. The Dolphins might also be adding a rookie quarterback and expect to bring back a 23-year-old Rosen.
And the 2021 draft might offer no fewer than 10 selections.
That means a lot of new players will be coming into the locker room, and presumably, onto the offense. And it would be smart if Flores doesn’t want them taking a couple of years to get acclimated.
So the next Dolphins offense must be one players can pick up quicker.
That presents a small challenge in that the offense must be easier to digest without being, you know, simple for defenses to diagnose. Obviously, Gailey has run offensive systems in the salary cap and unrestricted free agency era.
And there are no reported significant complaints about that offense being too complicated. Or too simple. That’s good.
Because with the Dolphins about to add a lot of new players the next couple of years and start from scratch with players on the team last year, that sweet spot is going to be of major importance.
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 12:48 AM.
