Does Adam Gase finally have all the pieces he needs to fall in to place on offense?
On paper it looks close to what a Gase offense needs to make his plans work.
Going in to his third season Gase has been building his perfect beast on offense. From past reports he favors a seam splinting TE, two all-purpose backs and something the same from his line, check off all those boxes on paper.
He also reportedly wants the offense as a whole to be versatile. And if you recall most of the plays he has called you can see those aspects all along. It seems to come down to having the matching moving parts.
His first two seasons have something in common. He tried to implement something like this along with the hurry up, no huddle. And both of those seasons early on and had to be watered down. Along with his showing of displeasure over this afterwards.
Gase showed displeasure over players not knowing the plays (or not executing them properly) along with having to run a simple plain scheme. Think a power run game with Jay Ajayi, or an over reliance of underneath passing with Jarvis Landry.
An early indicator of this to me was one of my favorite things Gase runs which is crossing backs. This move alone can cause confusion for defenses. The added multiplier could be the pair of all-purpose backs that could either be running the ball going out for a pass or being an escape valve.
Much like the play action we have seen so much of in the past it has to have bite to go along with the bark as in a real threat to run. With that type of play I strongly felt the running game should have been established first beforehand. I’m sure this has caused frustration for many fans.
I tried to find a clip of the play described above to no avail. But here is a highlight clip of Kenyan Drake who some ESPN reporter called not explosive.
A lot of the reporting has decimated the Dolphins. Some are comical like the one that stated Frank Gore is Jay Ajayi’s replacement. This one should have a look at the above clip that is readily available on YouTube.
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The reports that keep coming denigrating the Dolphins must stem from an overall view of the team and the parts lost and not much of the ones brought on like this little stat.
Albert Wilson averaged 9.4 yards on catches behind line of scrimmage last season Landry had 4.7. Of course he has to adjust to a new team and all that goes with it. But he has played four years now and he’s not some rookie. My guess is the screen/bubble play finally gets fixed with his addition but he can do so much more.
That was the optimistic side so let’s flip that a bit and cover some persistent faults. The Miami Dolphins had the most penalties in the AFC with 137 – 41 of these were offensive penalties which works out to about a third of all of them. I’m not sure if this ratio is the norm but Gase should be more concerned and try to get a handle on it. He has seemed to be lackadaisical when it comes to players expressing themselves on the field with celebrations but I don’t recall him addressing overall penalties that much.
As far as penalties on the line maybe Josh Sitton helping the younger guys can rub off there as well. In 2016 he had six penalties which is a few less than Mike Pouncey had last year. The real test for this might come from Daniel Kilgore.
For the dual all-purpose backs to work for what I have envisioned as Gase’s offense newcomer Kalen Ballage has to be cloned into Kenyan Drake. While Frank Gore is still a fine back he is getting up in age and would be better playing more of a specialist part. Hopefully Gase has learned not to overuse Vet backs (Arian Foster) and to give the new backs more work like what should have happened with Drake and now with Ballage.