Mythbusters: Why no-huddle isn’t the universal cure for every ailing offense

In this series, Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar dives down into the NFL’s common myths and examines what the real story is. In this installment, let’s look at the idea that the no-huddle offense, especially at a quick tempo, is a fix for a passing game on a no-matter-what basis.

In the second half of the Dolphins’ 19-7 Week 13 win over the Bengals, offensive coordinator Chan Gailey was trying to get rookie quarterback Tua Tagovailoa out of the mud. Tagovailoa had missed the team’s Week 12 game with a thumb injury, and his Week 11 performance against the Broncos was the worst of Tagovailoa’s short NFL career.

What did Gailey do? He presented Cincinnati’s defense with all kinds of different looks out of a much higher no-huddle rate. In the first half, Tagovailoa completed 11 of 19 passes for 111 yards and no touchdowns. With the increased no-huddle palette on his plate in the second half, Tagovailoa completed 15 of 20 passes for 185 yards and a touchdown pass to tight end Mike Gesicki with 11:35 left in the third quarter. But it was this

35-yard pass to running back Myles Gaskin that flipped the script came with 12:35 left in the third quarter. Miami had second-and-7 from the Cincinnati 40-yard line with 12:35 left in the third quarter, and Gailey was calling no-huddle all the way through that drive, which started on the Miami 25. This was the fourth straight no-huddle play, and the Dolphins had success both running and passing the ball out of it.

Here, Miami lines up in an empty formation. Gaskin is wide left, with receiver Antonio Callaway in the left slot. At the snap, both Gaskin and Callaway run what appear to be quick in-cuts, but against Cincinnati’s Cover-1 defense, Gaskin then turns his route upfield, easily leaving safety Vonn Bell in the dust. Meanwhile, Callaway runs a crosser to clear the middle. At the last second, Bell splits his attention between Gaskin and Tagovailoa, who’s scrambling to his left to extend the play. Jessie Bates III is the deep safety, and he covers the front side instead until he realizes where the ball is actually going.

“I’d say the only thing that was different was our tempo,” Tagovailoa said of the contrast between the first and second half. “We just got on the ball, and then we played. The question previous, the reason we did that was, it confuses the defense not to get into their calls that they want to get into whether it’s a pressure call or a coverage call. So I think that was our only adjustment. We’ve just got to play football. That was it.”

Bates agreed.

“Yeah, I think they sped it up a little more in the second half. That’s exactly what they did, actually. In the first half, we stopped the run and eliminated the explosive plays. And then in the second half, I think they got us on our heels when they went hurry-up and that empty formation they continually go into, they kind of got us backed up.”

Generally speaking, when teams have success out of no-huddle, there’s an immediate “build the whole plane out of this” statement regarding the help tempo can give a passing game. But it’s not always the case. First, there are different kinds of no-huddle — it’s not always speed no-huddle. When Philip Rivers was with the Chargers, I distinctly remember a lot of no-huddle in which the Chargers would bleed the clock. That was less about forcing a defense to hurry up, and more about keeping a defense in unfavorable personnel without the ability to substitute. Second, there are instances in which it can hurt a quarterback as much as it can hurt a defense.

Asked on Tuesday about increasing his own tempo version of no-huddle, Gailey pushed the brakes to a degree.

“I think we will continue to use it. How much? I think it will depend on the game; it will depend on the situation. We felt like that would help us in the second half of that game and obviously it did. I think as time goes on, we’ll just have to see how much of it we’ll use or what direction it goes. It was obviously good for[Tagovailoa] — and for us. It will be a part of what we do, I’m pretty sure, from here on out.”

So, Coach, why not just go with the Black Box offense and use it all the time?

“The challenges are he doesn’t get as much time to see what is happening,” Gailey said of how speed no-huddle can actually hinder a young quarterback’s reads. “The benefits are the defense doesn’t get as much time to see what’s happening. You have to decide the trade off and that’s where it is. Are you gaining more by being in the up-tempo or are you hampering the quarterback’s ability to see everything that’s going on? As we design it – what we might use each week – we try to take that into consideration and use it to however it might be the most beneficial to us, so we can get the most out of it. Those are the two things that I would say.”

It’s also not true that all quarterbacks benefit from it. This season, per Sports Info Solutions, Kyler Murray has taken the NFL’s most no-huddle snaps, and he’s the league’s most proficient at it — 117 completions in 176 attempts for 1,128 yards, 582 air yards, 12 touchdowns, and three interceptions. But for every Kyler Murray, there’s a Jared Goff, who has completed 69 of 108 no-huddle attempts this season for 769 air yards, two touchdowns, and four interceptions in no-huddle. Daniel Jones and Carson Wentz have combined this season for two touchdowns and four interceptions in no-huddle.

Some quarterbacks need more time to see it, as Gailey intimated. And that’s why some coaches are just as wise to go with different concepts as Gailey was smart to present it to his quarterback in this particular instance.