The Miami Dolphins' Offense is Falling Apart
Can they turn it around before the playoffs?
The Miami Dolphins only scored 20 points and had to sweat out a failed hail mary attempt to beat a mediocre Raiders team coached by an interim coach and quarterbacked by a late round rookie 20-13. The Dolphins have now scored 20 or fewer points in two of their past three games.
The Dolphins had faced skepticism because they hadn’t beaten any team with a winning record. They still haven’t. But at least they would score 42 on a bad team like the Panthers and (lest we forget) 70 points on the Broncos.
The Raiders are not a good team. They might not be as bad as they looked earlier this year. Under interim coach Antonio Pierce, they have been competitive in all of their games. But they’re still not a great team.
Vegas is allowing an average of 20.5 points per game. Miami scored 20 on them. Sure, Miami scored 7 more than the Packers scored against Vegas, and 14 more than the vaunted New York Giants. But they scored 10 fewer than the Bears.
Miami’s key to success is its offense. Its defense is good. Its offense is great. Was great. Can still be great?
The Dolphins are a good team if they play like they have been playing. They’re good enough to consistently beat average-to-bad teams and consistently lose to elite teams. But if they want to be contenders, that has to be driven by their offense playing elite. And, so far, their offense has not played at an elite level once against an elite defense. More troubling, they are starting to play worse against average competition, too. On a week-by-week basis, their scoring and yardage is declining.
In Week 7 against the Philadelphia Eagles, for the first time, the Miami Dolphins gained fewer yards against their opponent than the average opponent did against the same team. In Week 11, Tua and Tyreek hooked up as usual—10 catches and 146 yards for Hill / 325 yards and 2 TDs (1 to Hill) for Tagovailoa.
But they still only gained about 80 yards more than the averaged Raiders opponent. DeVon Achane was still suffering from lingering effects of his injury, and he only carried the ball once.
Miami is hitting a plateau and may be on the decline come playoff time. Last season, Miami’s offense also mellowed out in the second half of the season, but it was more difficult to read a lot into it because Tua was concussed for much of that time.
I would be excited to see the can’t-catch-em offense of the Dolphins late in the season and in the playoffs. I hope they can turn it around for the sake of our entertainment.