Thoughts on Miami’s 16-6 loss at home to Atlanta

[tay0365]

I DVR'd the game and analysed individual performances this afternoon.


Disappointing in order:

-Jared Odrick, I'll be surprised if he starts the season. Terrible! No penetration, was thinking WAY too much! Gave up on plays. Did not make one play.
-Chad Henne, he was the biggest reason we didn't move the ball against the 1's. Played scared rushing his throws, pocket awareness was poor. Could've run on a couple of plays but chose to force throws that weren't there. Poor decisions in general. Did not recognize blitzes properly. Throws were off. Piss-poor performance. Big factor in sports performance (any performance actually) is the cool factor. Brees, Brady, and Manning are cool customers. Heck even Sanchez has a calmness to him. Chad was skittish. He better tone it down a few notches or the other Chad may replace him for the sake of the season.

Totally disagree, actually the biggest reason Miami's offense had problems moving the ball was not being able to run the ball. There were also some balls dropped yet again for Henne, but once Miami decided to forget the run that was not working as much and threw the ball more then run in the final 1 min & 1/2, Henne looked much better, even though that final INT was a huge mistake.

Henne did not have a good night, but neither did Ryan who is supposed to be heads and shoulders better then Henne, and for that matter, Pennington in his 1st 2 drives scored the same amount of points as Henne in his 1st 2 drives... the Falcons defense looked very tough

Finally, I was able to watch the Jets game also, and no Sanchez did not look less scared then Henne, and his INT against a much more inferior defense looked way more concerning then Henne's that was just tipped.

[KTDolphins]

Is it just me or has Ronnie slowed a bit? Seems like every time he tried to cut it outside there was like 5 dudes waiting everytime. I would like to say it is the speed of their defense, but one has to wonder.

[greasyObnoxious]

Is it just me or has Ronnie slowed a bit? Seems like every time he tried to cut it outside there was like 5 dudes waiting everytime. I would like to say it is the speed of their defense, but one has to wonder.

Atlanta has a fast defense. you can't run around them. you have to run it right at them, but we weren't able to do that. not at all surprised the outside runs went nowhere though

[finfan54]

I read the first paragraph and could not disagree more. We should have been up 13-10 or even 17 to ten but penalties on us or penalties not called stopped us.

I thought it was a complete throwaway game where we wanted to see what we could do against them in a very very vanilla way, and if we were succesful, they would have been smiling from ear to ear!

If you watch the Jax game and then this one, you can see the total diff in play selection.

[WILDCATFINFAN]

I don't put much stock in pre-season games. The stands are nearly empty and the teams aren't fired up at all. They are putting in just enough effort to get the play over without injury. Our run game was weak because the RB's didn't go full speed and the line knew it. I'll be glad when we only have to suffer through two pre-season games a season. We will know what kind of team we have after playing Buffalo in a game that counts. I was happy to see Karlos Dansby covering Gonzales though....last season the TE's killed us.

[finfan54]

Totally disagree, actually the biggest reason Miami's offense had problems moving the ball was not being able to run the ball. There were also some balls dropped yet again for Henne, but once Miami decided to forget the run that was not working as much and threw the ball more then run in the final 1 min & 1/2, Henne looked much better, even though that final INT was a huge mistake.

Henne did not have a good night, but neither did Ryan who is supposed to be heads and shoulders better then Henne, and for that matter, Pennington in his 1st 2 drives scored the same amount of points as Henne in his 1st 2 drives... the Falcons defense looked very tough

Finally, I was able to watch the Jets game also, and no Sanchez did not look less scared then Henne, and his INT against a much more inferior defense looked way more concerning then Henne's that was just tipped.

And as I have said before, Atlanta is not a team you just run straight ahead at. And I believe our coaches know this, they just wanted to see what happens if we run straight at them. The plays that worked were dumps to ronnie/ricky. Atlanta has not had a good preseason too so they were worked up for this one. We showed more in Jax by design.

[Shawn-l]

Totally disagree, actually the biggest reason Miami's offense had problems moving the ball was not being able to run the ball. There were also some balls dropped yet again for Henne, but once Miami decided to forget the run that was not working as much and threw the ball more then run in the final 1 min & 1/2, Henne looked much better, even though that final INT was a huge mistake.

Henne did not have a good night, but neither did Ryan who is supposed to be heads and shoulders better then Henne, and for that matter, Pennington in his 1st 2 drives scored the same amount of points as Henne in his 1st 2 drives... the Falcons defense looked very tough

Ok, let me break it down.....

1st Series:

1st down - Jerry gets beat (inside pressure, almost everyone got beat!), Henne throws it quickly to Hartline. OL was in total disarray that play. Nice read by Henne.

1st down - Wildcat, 5 yds. Decent blocking.

2nd - Loss of 1. Blocking was not that bad, if Ronnie had bounced outside to the left it would've been a long gain.

3rd - 6 Blitz, one gets free from right side of OL. Pass to Marshall (incomplete). Henne needs better blitz recognition.

2nd Series:

1st down - Ricky rush for 2yds. LB's just plugged the holes.

2nd - Draw to Ricky for 1yd. Grove was the biggest reason this play failed but Ronnie had a pretty poor block attempt as well.

3rd - 6 man blitz caused quite a bit of confusion. Ricky let his guy go to create an option for Henne but his guy got the sack.

3rd Series:

1st down - Pass to Ronnie for about 14 yds. Decent blocking.

1st - ILB and OLB blitz. This I have a problem with, Henne should've recognized this blitz and either audibled or made a hot call.

2nd - Draw to Ronnie for 6 yds. Pretty decent blocking.

3rd - Hartline on a comeback for a 1st. Pretty fair blocking. PENALTY - Holding

3rd - Incomplete to Marshall. Good blocking, Henne makes a decent read but made a bad throw. Here he could've stepped to the left of the pocket and took off or bought himself more time to find someone else. Cause there were three guys in Marshall's vicinity making it a fairly tough throw.

4th Series:

1st down - dump off to Ricky for 5. Outstanding blocking on this play, could've hung in there and found someone else or took off.

2nd - Decent read. Pass to Hartline for a 1st. Carey almost gave up a sack. Then again, Henne could've stepped up a bit. Henne consistently has concrete feet in the pocket. One of his biggest faults.

1st - Incomplete to Marshall. I don't know what he was thinking on this play. Threw it 10 yds out of bounds. Maybe it slipped out of his hands(?).

2nd - Play-action to Ricky for a small gain.

3rd - Incomplete to Bess. Threw a bit behind him cause he was covered well. He actually moved this time!! Could've hit Marshall as he had some small kid behind him. Would've been an easy 1st. Some reason he chose Bess. Bad call.

5th Series:

1st - Ronnie loss of 1. This was just a bad play design. They have Jake pulling from his tackle spot all the way over to the right to block out for Ronnie. Gee, guess what happened? The DE over Jake followed right behind Jake and tackled Ronnie. Brilliant play design!

2nd - Incomplete to Hartline. The "first" legitimate drop. Outstanding pass blocking on this play. Hartline was covered fairly well by Lofton. He had Ronnie in the flat with no one within 10 yds.

3rd - Complete to Hartline 2 yds short of the marker. 8 man blitz was picked up fairly well. That means Marshall, Bess, and Hartline were one-on-one in coverage and Henne throws it short. I'll bank my money on Marshall one-on-one anyday of the week against anyone. Bad decision.

4th - They go for it with Polite. Bet they didn't see that coming. No gain.

6th Series:

1st down - Incomplete to Marshall. Ball tipped.

2nd - Incomplete to Ricky. I don't know what he was thinking on this play. Outstanding protection with 5 receivers
and he throws it within 2 seconds. Play like you've got a pair, Henne.

3rd - Complete 2 yds shy of marker to Marshall. 5 man blitz was picked up well. I don't know, maybe throw to a receiver who doesn't have someone draped all over them short of the 1st down? This is the second time he's done this. I'm seeing a pattern where Henne is making 2 reads and throws it even if that second read is covered. Doesn't take into consideration that he has good blocking and could wait an extra second or two (ala Pennington or even Thigpen) or run with it. So, is it that he's programmed to force throws or is it that he doesn't want to take a hit? Watching two other QB's play in the same system (i.e. Pennington/Thigpen) I'm going to say he's afraid to take a hit.

7th Series:

1st - Ronnie draw loss of 1. Jerry didn't seal off and Berger didn't get to Lofton. 2nd level blocking has been a big contributer to the poor running game performance. Incognito pancakes his guy. Best OLmen performance of the night outside of Long was Incognito.

2nd - 35yds to Marshall down the left sideline. Beautiful throw.

1st - Incomplete to Fasano. Henne had good blocking, looked off Marshall then came back to Fasano. It could've been complete had he thrown it when Fasano made his break but he threw it late which gave the CB time to close and knock it away. Henne could've hit an open Martin just to the left of Fasano as well. Bad decision.

2nd - Sweep to Ronnie loss of 1. Again, second level blocking failed. Fasano did't hold his block and Incognito wasn't fast enough to get out in front of Lofton to cut him off.

3rd - Complete 20 yds to Marshall. Good blocking on 5 man rush. Decent throw.

1st - Spiked to stop the clock.

2nd - Tipped ball intercepted. I suppose he didn't see the LB between him and Fasano. Had decent enough blocking to make another read. Ronnie was one-on-one in the left flat. This kind of play is a back-breaker. Could've tied it going into the second half.

8th series:

1st down - Complete to Ricky for 13 yds. Decent blocking on 5 man rush.

1st - Ricky for 1 yd. Again, Fasano can't hold his block, he just got out-muscled. Jerry dominated his guy. Grove turned his guy inside which was wierd cause apparently the lane was supposed to be inside. He should've kicked him outside.

2nd - Ronnie for 2 yds. The line surged forward two yds but didn't have a hole to run through. Martin got out-muscled and pushed back into Ronnie. We need a better blocking TE. Martin is not good and Fasano, although good last year, is not doing well in this game. Later in the game when Pennington had the 3rd down in the red area on that roll-out, Fasano was the one that let the guy through that forced Penny to throw it away.

3rd - Incomplete to Hartline. Nice read/throw, it looked like a completion. Should've challenged that play. Solid 7-man blitz picked-up well. ATL blitzed a LOT tonight.

I'm not a Henne basher. I like his skill set and believe he'll make a great QB someday. He just needs to learn pocket presence and patience. Some of the great ones buy time to make a play, Henne needs a LOT of work in this area. Just step-up or out of the pocket once and a while. Hopefully, he'll get there.