The Miami Dolphins entered Week 4 needing a bounce-back performance — something to prove they weren’t dead on arrival without QB Tua Tagovailoa. Despite that, the offense was somehow worse than DOA on Monday. 

In the team’s 31-12 defeat, the offense logged 184 yards and didn’t score a touchdown until three minutes were left. Tyler Huntley made his first start of the season, and he — predictably — looked just as bad as Skylar Thompson did against Seattle. 

Miami’s defense put up a solid effort for the second week in a row. It held the Titans to nine first-half points and only allowed 244 total yards. Plus, Tennessee was only 2-of-12 on third down, so it’s not like they were sustaining drives. 

This week’s All-22 breakdown will focus on the offense. Until that gets fixed, the defense’s actions are somewhat irrelevant. Let’s look at how a team sporting Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, and De’Von Achane can’t move the football. 

Stars Not Burning Bright

Perhaps the most alarming takeaway from the All-22 was how poorly Miami’s stars played. Hill, Waddle, and Achane are supposed to be the core of the offense with Tua out. None of these guys played up to their standards on Monday night. Hill was the victim of poor quarterback play (we’ll get to that), but he had some rough moments, too. 

Chief among them was the drop on the backward lateral. Hill struggles to catch the football sometimes, but it really doesn’t get easier than this. 

This was a back-breaking play. Miami had obtained good field position via an Emmanuel Ogbah INT, and Hill’s mistake just gave the ball right back to Tennessee. In fact, the Dolphins are lucky Arden Key didn’t run the ball into the end zone because it might’ve been seven points. 

Moving on to Waddle, he was dinged up during the first half. His ankle was wrapped for most of the game, and he spent a reasonable amount of time on the sideline. Still, this drop at the start of the second half was a backbreaker. 

This was Huntley’s best throw of the night, and it was one of the few times Miami could attack the middle of the field without the Titans using a robber safety (we’ll talk about this in a second, too). 

The drop put Miami’s offense in third and long, a place they could not be with their quarterback and offensive line struggles. 

Last but not least, we have Achane, who rushed for 15 yards on 10 carries last night. The offense line didn’t do him many favors, but Achane made some questionable decisions. 

The funniest of those came on this fourth and 1 play early in the fourth quarter. It’s a read-option play with a puller. Pay attention to Huntley, who literally points to the hole Achane was supposed to hit on this play instead of running outside. 

None of this is to say that Waddle, Hill, and Achane are suddenly bad players. Or that they deserve all the blame for the loss. Instead, it’s more of a warning. 

When you cover this league long enough, you realize plenty of bad teams have good players. Sure, you have a few rosters each season that are just uncompetitive. 

But most struggling teams end up bottoming out because the star players can’t overcome the horrible situation around them. Miami is trending in that direction right now. 

Tyler Huntley Is Not The Guy

Piling on Huntley feels almost unfair. He was on the Ravens practice squad two weeks ago, and Miami’s offense is not easy to operate. That said, it’s impossible to tell the story of how poorly the Dolphins’ offense played without looking at Huntley. 

Overall, he was pretty bad. He left a ton of yards and points on the field, was inaccurate, was a poor decision-maker, and was not in control of the offense at any point. 

Let’s get some of the easy ones out of the way. Huntley missed Tyreek Hill on two potential touchdowns. The first one was a straight go route down the right sideline that Huntley grossly underthrew. 

He then proceeded to overthrow Hill, who blew by the outside corner without deep safety help. 

These are touchdowns. Hill is one of the NFL’s best deep threats, and he’s wide-open. NFL quarterbacks have to hit at least one of these — even backups. In a game where Miami struggled to generate any offense, there were explosives to be had. 

What makes these misses so frustrating is the Dolphins schemed these routes open. Looking at the clips above, you’ll notice one of the deep safeties dropping into the box post-snap. Teams do this constantly against the Dolphins because they love to run in-breakers so much. 

Tennessee did this throughout the game, and it’s — partly — why Miami struggled to hit routes in the middle of the field. How do you beat it? You run verticals right past the safety that drops into the box. 

Here’s a clip from before Huntley missed Hill. 

Watch the deep safety at the top of the screen. He’s so aware of Miami’s tendencies that he runs across the field just to put pressure on Waddle’s route. If Huntley’s eyes are correct, he should be reading that post-snap and chucking one up to Hill. 

Instead, he comes to the checkdown and misses Jaylen Wright, who isn’t even open. You can scheme up anything you want, but it doesn’t matter if the quarterback doesn’t see the field correctly. 

Another example is this third-down play. 

It’s a sprint out with a high-low concept at the top of the screen. The Titans cover it up, so Huntley, correctly, slides up in the pocket. While he’s moving up, Braxton Berrios sits down in a zone wide open. Throwing this ball to Berrios is trivially easy on such a basic concept. 

Instead, Huntley decides to tuck and run. He didn’t get a first down, and the Dolphins lost a challenge trying to prove that he did. 

Another week of practice could make Huntley more comfortable and lead to better play. Still, he looks like a quarterback without baseline NFL accuracy and decision-making. 

Poor Game Planning

I’m sure plenty of you are wondering where all the criticism for Mike McDaniel and the coaching staff is. Well, we’re here. We started by highlighting the players because blaming how the Dolphins played entirely on McDaniel just isn’t fair. 

The offensive line couldn’t run block, the receivers dropped passes, and the quarterback couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. You can scheme up all the open plays you want, but if the players aren’t executing, it won’t matter. 

That said, there are plenty of problems with the offense that fall at the feet of McDaniel. Those problems can be summed up easily, too. It’s all down to an inability to adapt. 

Teams playing robbers in the middle of the field is not new. I wrote about how that affected the team’s offense back in 2022. When Huntley was announced as the starter, I wrote about how the Dolphins needed to simplify the offense for him — cutting down on all the pre-snap motions. 

Last week’s All-22 breakdown covered how the team needed to run the ball up the middle instead of constantly pushing the outside zone concepts. 

Okay, so how did we do? Well, not great. 

We already covered the robber problem, which was more of an execution issue, so I guess that’s something.  

As for running more in the middle of the line, Miami only rushed into the middle gaps twice. To be fair, Titans DL T’Vondre Sweat isn’t someone you want to run at, but they are still over-committed to running outside. 

The Dolphins ran outside or right at the tackle on 16 of their 28 rushing attempts, according to PFF. If you remove jet sweeps, Miami finished with 43 yards on 13 carries. It’s just not working, and Miami continued to bang its head against the wall. 

McDaniel keeps asking small receivers and ineffective tight ends to make key blocks on the outside. The All-22 features Braxton Berrios trying to block an inside linebacker, D’Wayne Eskridge leading the way for a Hill bubble screen, and plenty of bad Julian Hill snaps. 

The Dolphins didn’t tone down their use of pre-snap motion, either. Despite having a quarterback who has only been with the team for two weeks, he was expected to orchestrate the offense like Tua. 

That led to four illegal motion, shift, or formation penalties. The head coach has to see that the quarterback is struggling to get everyone lined up during the week and adjust. 

The Dolphins have no change-ups — no ability to throw anything different at teams. The core tenants of the offense have been the same since McDaniel showed up. The Dolphins stick to their identity to a fault. 

If they want to turn things around, they must find a new one.

 

Open the Window and Let the Stink Out