Why the high-powered Dolphins still need to make some fixes | The Exempt List
Yahoo Sports NFL writer Charles McDonald is joined by Nate Tice to discuss how Miami needs to adjust after suffering its first defeat of the season in Buffalo. Hear the full conversation on “The Exempt List with Charles McDonald” - part of the “Zero Blitz” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
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CHARLES MCDONALD: [INAUDIBLE] had a little sizzle. Dolphins. Look, this is probably the most fixable. I would say this is easily the most fixable, right, of the offense that we've seen. I wouldn't even say that this is like a the Dolphins offense needs to be fixed or anything, because they just scored 70 points and they were good against Buffalo. Until they hit a point where they had to start dropback passing, right?
And you kind of lose the element of some of what makes the Dolphins offense great when you're down two scores and teams are like, OK. The Bills are just like, well fine, we're just going to tee off. If we get gashed in the run game by Achane every once in a while, that's fine. But we're not going to let Tyreek Hill beat us. We're not going to let Jaylen Waddle beat us.
And then when Terron Armstead went out with the injury and he got replaced by Kendall Lamb, that's where you got to see where some of the criticisms for Tua come in. Where it's like, bro, you need to make a play by your damn self sometimes.
And it just it looks hard for him when the bodies start getting close, the pocket gets congested. And you can see, oh, he's not a guy that can just fire a dart to the outside like Josh Allen can or even run and make a play like some of these other quarterbacks can really all the time. He's good for a little 6, 7 yard scramble. But when it's time to be a generator of offense, I thought that that's where he kind of struggled this past week.
NATE TICE: When things get difficult, are you lifting it up or are you guys just the almost like seven second or less [INAUDIBLE] that as soon as you have to get into a half court offense that it's like, oh, they can't generate any points when they have to grind it out this way so.
CHARLES MCDONALD: Right.
NATE TICE: And that's what you have, an offense like that. You have to be able to have a game script like that. And not saying like the Dolphins aren't going to be able to blow out a lot of teams the rest of the season. They're going to.
But the Bills are really fricking good. And they're really good on both sides of the ball. They have an offense they go toe to toe with you. And they have a defense that's going to make it really tough. And a vet defense that knows how to pass everything off.
I thought they did like another basketball reference, they basically did the Jordan rules against them. They packed the paint, packed the middle, got physical with all the receivers. And they were just saying, we'll let you throw it to the outside. We're just going to stay in the middle.
The Bills linebackers didn't even care about the flat. They just stayed in the middle. It was hilarious, because they knew Tua wouldn't chuck it down over there. I think he did it once.
CHARLES MCDONALD: Yeah. So it was awesome game plan from the Bills. But again, this is like what you're saying and what I'm hinting at is that like that's why some of these upper tier quarterbacks that we talk about, the Allens of the world, the Mahomes of the world, the Herberts of the world, they can kind of create when all the other stuff is not going well, when the defense kind of has your number of what you're calling.
