Dolphins Defense: Confuse and Conquer

The Miami Dolphins defense has been the key to the team's five-game winning streak

The day after the Los Angeles Chargers were held to season lows in total yards and third-down conversion percentage in their loss at Hard Rock Stadium, three-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Keenan Allen made a rather startling admission.

"They had a great game plan for us," Allen said. "They executed it well. I would say we we were probably pretty confused out there with all the looks that they were giving us.”

It's truly not often you'll hear an NFL player or coach talking about how an opposing unit left his group confused, but that's just what Allen did in praising the Miami Dolphins defense.

To be sure, the Dolphins made what is a pretty Chargers offense look pretty mediocre in their 29-21 victory.

The Dolphins held the Chargers to 273 total yards, way below their previous season low of 324 yards, and to a 30.8 percent third-down conversion rate after they never went below 40 percent with Justin Herbert as their quarterback.

But this wasn't the first time the Dolphins defense had made an opposing offense look bad.

It's happened pretty much every week during the team's five-game winning streak, with the one exception being the game at Arizona.

They made the 49ers offense look bad, both when Jimmy Garoppolo and C.J. Beathard were in the lineup at quarterback; they made the Jets offense look bad (insert joke here about how everybody makes the Jets offense look bad); and they certainly made the Rams offense look bad in Tua Tagovailoa's first start in Week 8.

The keys to the defensive success have been easy to spot: pressure and chaos.

The Dolphins have become a blitz-happy defense, and it has worked beautifully because of the confusion they've been able to create by so often lining up with seven defenders at the line and then sending any number of those seven after the quarterback.

Sometimes all seven will rush at the snap, sometimes it might be just three with everybody else in dropping back in coverage.

“They brought more than we could block,” Rams defensive lineman Michael Brockers said in almost admiration after the game at Hard Rock Stadium. “I felt like it was 11 guys on the line of scrimmage, and once you snapped the ball, everybody was coming. I've never seen that before, that many times. It was a lot. It was a little crazy to look at.”

Oh, but it worked.

The final stats will show that the Dolphins sacked Rams QB Jared Goff only twice, but they also were credited with eight quarterback hits. And you can add several hurried throws that were way off the mark because of pressure.

That is what you call "affecting the quarterback."

The stats were exactly the same against Herbert — two sacks, eight quarterback hits — but more importantly the Chargers first-round pick didn't look a thing like the guy who had been lighting up defenses since taking over as starter.

"They mixed it up a lot," Allen said. "You know, they ran blitz zero probably 20 times against the Rams. So every time they showed it, we thought they were going to bring it but most of the game they backed off and played coverage. It kind of messed with our play-calling a little bit.

"Like I said, we were confused. So the best thing to do was to just run the ball and not drop back and have to worry about blitzes and stuff like that, just run at them. It was working, it was effective. But we weren’t making any real plays with it."

Creating that kind of confusion and hesitation is a big part of what the Dolphins want to do.

Having cornerbacks who can cover like Xavien Howard Byron Jones, not to mention having two former cornerbacks at safety with Eric Rowe and Bobby McCain, allows them the freedom to take more risks to get after the quarterback.

The heavy-pressure defense has helped the Dolphins create a least one turnover every game this season, and their current streak of 15 consecutive games with at least one takeaway is the longest in the NFL.

“Each week we look at it," defensive coordinator Josh Boyer said. "We look at what we have available to us and we look at what our opponent’s trying to do. And as always, any time that we can put pressure on the offensive line, put pressure on the quarterback, which hopefully in turn puts pressure on the coordinator, just to get them a little bit off-balance, that’s always the goal. It’s easier said than done. There’s a lot that goes into that, but we’re always trying to make sure that we put pressure on the offensive line, put pressure on the quarterback. Some weeks that’s by scheme, some weeks it’s by varying fronts, some weeks it’s by varying coverage. Ultimately what we’re trying to do is just put our guys in the best position to succeed on a week-in and week-out basis.”

It's that blitz-happy defense, make no mistake about it, that's most responsible for the Dolphins' five-game winning streak and their firm spot in the thick of the AFC playoff race.

And as much success as they've had with it, there's no reason for them to stop coming.

Said defensive end Emmanuel Ogbah, who's led the charge with eight sacks on the season: “We work on that every day at practice and, until it gets stopped, we’re going to keep doing it.”