Special Teams Coverage Review (2009 First Quarter)

For the past two years I've been keeping tabs throughout the season on which players are making the most tackles on special teams.

I do this because special teams tackles are rarely reported, and they are a good sign of which players are the most active on special teams.

Jason Allen and Patrick Cobbs were the unit's leaders last season, with late-season addition Erik Walden adding another weapon.

Walden had a big game against the Bills, but it's Lex Hilliard who has taken the early lead in special teams tackles. And that's great to see, since keeping a fourth running back on the roster is a luxury. Knowing that Hilliard can make a big impact on game day as a core special teams player is his ticket to sticking around for a while.

Here's how the players stack up according to special teams tackles:

	Tkl	Ast	Comb	FF
Jason Allen	2		2
Charlie Anderson	1		1
Patrick Cobbs	1		1
Tyrone Culver	1	1	2
Vontae Davis	1		1
John Denney	2	1	3
Brandon Fields	1		1
Lex Hilliard	6		6
Nathan Jones	2	1	3
Reggie Torbor	3		3
Cameron Wake	1		1
Erik Walden	3	1	4
Gibril Wilson	2		2

Week 4 vs. Bills Recap

I think that's what everyone was looking for - a complete team effort, with no one unit sabotaging the efforts of everyone else.

It might be a little easier to have confidence in this team going forward now.

Let's get to the bulletpoints:

• Most obvious: The running game is a beast. Got to give props to the offense line in this regard. Also, Ronnie Brown is currently leading the league in DYAR, with 133. He's second in the league in DVOA (34.6%) behind Marion Barber. Needless to say, that's fantastic. Ricky Williams is also playing out of his mind, with 64 DYAR (5th) and a 20.7% DVOA (9th).
• Chad Henne: It didn't really matter who we had back there this game. Pat White and Tyler Thigpen would have won this game as well. That said, the game did show a lot of areas that Henne needs to improve in. He may have a strong arm, but so far, it seems like he has a tendency to overthrow his deep balls. He also doesn't have a good feel for the rush. He took six sacks this game - and quite a few could be blamed on him not feeling the rush and moving around enough to get the pass off quickly. He's got to improve on that pocket awareness and getting the ball out quickly. I think a lot of it stems from his problems making multiple reads downfield at this point. It's taking him too long.
• Ted Ginn: Apparently the coaches were trying to send a message to Ginn by essentially benching him for most of the second half. If he can't get things turned out around immediately, this funk might linger for a long time.
• The pass rush: Cameron Wake showed up big time with Joey Porter out of the lineup. Jason Taylor also made his presence felt. It was nice to see, but we have to remember they were playing against a crappy Bills offensive line beset by injuries. Let's see if they can repeat their performance against a decent unit.
• Secondary: The team needed playmakers in the secondary, and that's exactly what they got with Vontae Davis and Sean Smith. Kudos to Will Allen as well for his two-pick game.
• Gibril Wilson is still missing tackles.
• I absolutely love the playcalling to go for it on fourth-and-ones or less.
• I care much more about how good this team is at stopping the pass than it is at stopping the run. You win when you can stop the pass. I think the brief sample size of Miami's season to this point will back that up.
  

Week 4 vs. Bills Prediction

Unfortunately, my prediction from last week came true, so I'm standing at 2-1 on the year for predicting Miami's games.

This week, Miami faces a much easier matchup than the Chargers, getting the Bills at home.

The Bills are facing a laundry list of injuries, most notably one of their starting tackles, Demetrius Bell, as well as their two starting safeties Donte Whitner and Bryan Scott.

That's good news since Miami may be without Joey Porter and they'll have Chad Henne making his first start.

The thing is, this team has done nothing to convince me that they will all of a sudden change course just because a new QB is under center. In fact, I'm always leery when it comes to QBs making their first starts. Henne is being given a prime opportunity to make a good first impression against a poor Buffalo defense, but will he deliver in his first try? More importantly, will the rest of the team be up to the challenge? The entire team hasn't played a good game together yet. Until they do, I'm not comfortable picking them to win, even though this game looks oh-so-winnable.

So, I'm picking the Bills to win.

After last week's loss, Miami's playoff chances now stand at 0.9%.

K.C. Asiodu added to practice squad

The team made an adjustment to its practice squad today, releasing LB Danny Lansanah and signing LB K.C. Asiodu.

Asiodu (6'3, 240) was an undrafted free agent out of Central Oklahoma this year who spent training camp with the Rams.

The Dolphins practice squad now looks as such:

• DE Ryan Baker
• CB Will Billingsley
• LB J.D. Folsom
• WR James Robinson
• WR Julius Pruitt
• TE Kory Sperry
• T Andrew Hartline
• LB K.C. Asiodu
  

Phins trade for Tyler Thigpen

Looking to replace Chad Pennington, who was placed on Injured Reserve, the Dolphins traded an undisclosed 2010 draft pick to the Kansas City Chiefs in return for QB Tyler Thigpen.

The success of this trade depends in large part on what round pick the Dolphins gave up to get Thigpen. The Chiefs had been asking for as high as a fourth round pick for him earlier this year, and it would be ridiculous for Miami to pay that much for him. I really hope they simply traded back to the Chiefs the "future considerations" (aka probably a 2010 7th round pick) that the Chiefs gave to Miami in last year's draft.

But let's get to know Tyler Thigpen.

He's a third year veteran out of Coastal Carolina who is 25 years old. He stands 6'1, 224 lbs.

He is essentially a spread QB, much like Pat White. When Thigpen took over in Kansas City last year, the team implemented its "Pistol" offense - essentially a shotgun formation where the QB is in a shorter dropback position. Counting the pistol and shotgun snaps together, Thigpen took an astounding 359 of 420 pass attempts away from center (85.5%). And to little surprise, the Chiefs performed significantly better from these formations than when Thigpen operated from under center.

Thigpen is known to throw a lot of short passes, but he's got a strong arm and he's a good scrambler. He ran 62 times last year for 386 yards and 3 TDs, and a 15.2% DVOA. But he also finished with a below-average passing DVOA of -6.2% and a horrendous completion rate of 54.8%.

Football Outsiders also found a disturbing trend in Thigpen's performance by quarter. His DVOAs for the first, second, third, and fourth quarters were 25.1%, -6.6%, -10.5%, and -25.2% respectively. That means that he regularly started off games extremely hot and proceeded to regress to horrible play by the fourth quarter.

Thigpen isn't going to challenge Henne for the starting QB of the Dolphins. But his skills are so similar to Pat White's that he may end up becoming the backup before season's end since he has more experience. He's still just 25 years old so he has plenty of room to grow and he will need to if he wants to stick around.

For those interested, here are Thigpen's KUBIAK projections for this season (assuming 16 games played):

	Att	Comp	C%	Yds	TD	INT	FUM	NY/P	DVOA	Runs	Yds	TD
Thigpen	457	229	50.2%	2897	18	17	12	5.5	-14.8%	57	294	2

Thank you, Chad; Hello, Chad

In just a little over one year, Chad Pennington managed to become one of my favorite Dolphins players ever.

Now, it's very likely that his latest shoulder injury (torn capsule) is going to knock him out for the rest of the season. That's sad news for anyone, but even more so for a guy who has triumphantly made his way back from two prior surgeries on the same shoulder already. This has got to be demoralizing for him. Whatever his future may hold with this franchise or any team, I wish him the best of luck.

I think Ethan Skolnick may have summed up Pennington's impact the best:

What he did was bring respectability back to the franchise, and give fans one of the most unexpected, enjoyable seasons in South Florida history. He didn't do it alone, but he had a large part in it. And in my 14 years in this business, I have never covered an athlete who better understood what his responsibilities were, to the organization, the public and the media.

Pennington's a true class act and a great player - the kind of guy it's always easy to root for. Thanks, Chad.

*****

Hello, Chad. Chad Henne, I mean.

Now's the time when we see if this team will be able to return to contention next year, or if more years must be wasted as this franchise continues to search for its franchise quarterback.

Had Pennington's injury not been so severe, the team would have faced a decision as to how to move forward with the choice between Henne and Pennington, but that decision has been made for them. It's Henne's team right now and for the rest of the year - 13 games to put it all on the table.

No one should be anointing Henne as the franchise QB yet because quite honestly he hasn't proven anything. I'm certainly not sold on him. But the potential is definitely there. I do believe that.

As Dave Hyde declared:

Quarterback of the future? We'll see. He's the quarterback of the present.

And that's how we, as fans, must approach this. He's the QB of the present looking for a promotion. Nothing's guaranteed.

For those interested, here are the KUBIAK projections for Henne this season (based on 16 games played):

	Att	Comp	C%	Yds	TD	INT	FUM	NY/P	DVOA	Runs	Yds	TD
Henne	455	280	61.5%	3360	17	13	8	6.2	5.5%	15	61	0

If he could produce at that rate over the course of the rest of the season, I think it would have to be seen as a major success. The numbers aren't spectacular but they would show that he likely isn't going to be a bust, and that's the most important thing to find out now. The significant leaps forward will hopefully happen next offseason. Right now, he just has to show that he's not another John Beck or A.J. Feeley.

By the way, for comparisons sake, a 5.5% DVOA would be akin to the performances put up by Matt Cassel, Joe Flacco, and Sage Rosenfels last season. Not great by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely something to build on.

Week 3 @ Chargers Recap

I got an email right before the game on Sunday which read:

"If the Dolphins fail to win against the Chargers, at what point do you consider giving Henne a shot?"

Well, it looks like that question has been answered for us.

With Chad Pennington likely to miss at least a game and probably more than one with his shoulder injury, Chad Henne's chance to establish himself as this team's starting quarterback is starting right now. But before I get into a discussion of Henne, let's talk briefly about the game.

• Even with all of their significant injuries, the Chargers were still the better team - and it wasn't really close either. That's a bit scary and shows just how much of an aberration last season was and how much farther this team still has to go.
• The offense consistently bogs down in the redzone because the threat of a pass to a wide receiver is laughable in those areas. Who on this team is honestly a threat down near the goal line? No one. And so while Ronnie and Ricky might be able to carve out huge chunks of yardage between the twenties against most teams, their job gets a whole lot harder down inside the ten. It also doesn't help that Anthony Fasano has essentially disappeared this year, which is very disappointing after such a fantastic season last year.
• The middle of the field is still wide open against this defense.
• The run defense did an excellent job bottling up Sproles and preventing him from seeing any kind of daylight.

Now I'm going to veer away from the game talk for a bit because I'd just like to point out how hypocritical a lot of writers and fans are who write about and comment on this team. In the offseason, all I heard from pretty much every Dolphins blogger or commenter was how strong this team was across the board. I was amazed at how easily some pretty obvious areas of concern were simply whitewashed and explained away. (ex. Gibril Wilson might struggle in his switch to FS? Pish posh! He played FS for a team that won the Super Bowl - he must be great!; or, Ted Ginn is in his third year and we all know every WR in his third year suddenly becomes elite, despite the fact that nothing in his statistical profile would support that notion; or CB Eric Green will make a fine CB for this team - all he needed was a new environment and a chance to show what he's really got, etc.)

(Please note the dripping sarcasm in the previous examples)

I strive to be as honest as possible about the team and I'm not afraid to call out problem areas when I see them, even if it's the offseason and I'm simply projecting what is likely to happen. And see, that's the problem. Far too many fans (and writers who are fans) are so clouded by blissful ignorance that they can't accept that something might be an issue until the season rolls around and slaps them in the face with a proclamation of, "HEY, THIS HAS BECOME AN ISSUE!" Anyone can watch a game and see what is happening and then choose to react to something negative after the fact. It takes a tad bit more prescience and willingness to suspend hope in favor of reality in order to get a sense of these things before the season rolls around.

Now I'm not saying that I'm always right about the predictions I do make. But I'm certainly more accurate than the majority of writers and commenters who meet every story with a stamp of approval and who find ways to overvalue every player on the roster. What's the point of even talking about the team during the offseason if everyone's automatic response to any personnel move or bit of news is met with an unthinking, "Yup, that's a good move," or "Wow, according to every player interview I've heard, it seems like the entire team has made great leaps forward in their abilities. I smell Super Bowl!"

The disgusting thing is that the people who actually stuck their necks out and criticized certain moves and players during the offseason were themselves heavily criticized by the head in the sand crowd. Only now, it seems that almost all those people who wouldn't stand to hear any criticism of their darling perfect team back then have already made the abrupt switch in mentality when conveniently confronted with reality. Talk about a lack of conviction!

*****

Also, after this game I read something that almost made me spit out the water I was drinking. The writer (I won't point them out specifically) wondered whether Miami's last two games might show that the NFL is in transition - from a run-oriented league to a pass-oriented one.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

Actually, I shouldn't be all that surprised, since this is one of the most common (yet ridiculous) notions that a lot of fans have about the game. Too many people believe that the grinding ground games of the 1970s represent the traditional style of the NFL and that a pass-oriented mode of play is some new-fangled idea that is sweeping in a new era of play. That couldn't be farther from the truth. I'll let Football Outsiders explain it best:

Most of the current crop of NFL analysts came of age or actually played the game during the 1970s. They believe that the run-heavy game of that decade is how football is meant to be, and today's pass-first game is an aberration. As we addressed in an essay in last year's book on the history of NFL stats, it was actually the game of the 1970s that was the aberration. The seventies were far more slanted towards the run than any era since the arrival of Paul Brown, Otto Graham, and the Cleveland Browns in 1946. Optimal strategies from 1974 are not optimal strategies for today's game.

The NFL has been a passing league for a long long time. So the answer to that writer is "No." The league is not in a transition away from run-heavy tactics in favor of passing. That transition has already been made. Those teams (like our Dolphins!) who are based on pounding the ball on the ground as often as possible are the ones clinging to a past that doesn't exist anymore. And no disrespect meant, but it's no coincidence that the guy running the franchise (Parcells) is straight out of the era when run dominance was in vogue more than any other time in history. Unfortunately, that style of play may not mesh well in today's game.

Well, I've rambled enough for one post, but check back later when I get a post up about Chad Henne and what the Dolphins should do at QB for the rest of the year.