Now, for his question:
"Given the character of the draft, what type of offense do you foresee Miami running this year? I am optimistic there will be a new CBA in time to save the season."Well Tom, I want to first say that I am also optimistic about the new CBA. A lot of what I have heard on the radio and from Adam Schefter of ESPN has made me believe that there will be football, so I am going to assume that we will have a season.
As for the offense, I bet Miami will rely much more on the run this season than they did last year, especially if they have Chad Henne. Think two years ago when Henne had just come in to replace the injured Chad Pennington. The Dolphins ran the ball a lot, and Henne played pretty well as a result. They will try and recreate that offense to an extent if they still have Henne starting this year.
I wish I could tell you that Miami will be trying to air it out a lot now that they picked up the speedy Edmond Gates, but I don’t think that will be the case. Henne isn’t good at throwing the deep ball. I am expecting them to throw a lot of screen passes and short slant routes to Gates with the hope that he will be able to break free of the defense. That is what he did A LOT in college, and I expect the Dolphins to try and build off of that past success.
I expect that Miami’s other receivers like Brandon Marshall and Davone Bess would also be running a lot of short routes. If Henne can’t throw it to Gates deep, then he definitely won’t be able to throw it to Marshall and Bess deep. I don’t know how much Marshall will like that, but unless we find another quarterback that won’t change.
This could end up being a pretty good strategy for the Dolphins, but I still wish they could be able to throw Gates the deep ball to keep defenses honest. I’m not saying that they won’t try to throw it long, I’m saying that it won’t work because of Henne’s poor accuracy and touch on deep throws.
So, as much as I’m sure we would all like to see a high-powered offense, it is not going to happen with Chad Henne. If we have Henne starting, then expect a lot of running the ball with some short passes. We could see the occasional deep ball, but that probably won’t be successful.
This will all change if we have another quarterback, though. If we got someone like Kyle Orton, then I could see the Dolphins throwing it a lot more. They would still rely pretty heavily on the run, but not as much as they would with Henne.
I want to thank you for your question Tom. That was a really fun one to answer and it really got me thinking.
Thanks everyone for reading, and if you have a question be sure to email me at paul@dolphinshout.com or tweet me on twitter at twitter.com/PaulDSmythe.
