Tua Tagovailoa will make his first career NFL start for the Miami Dolphins in Week 8 against the Los Angeles Rams. Going up against Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey might not be an ideal circumstance for a pro debut, but it’s an important step in the next part of the plan in Miami, one that might already see them ahead of schedule at 3-3.
The Dolphins made the call to go to the rookie quarterback after their bye in Week 7, which makes sense with an extra week of preparation for the quarterback switch. Miami might have targeted its bye week all along but that date was moved up once the NFL shuffled around the schedule. The Dolphins’ original bye was supposed to come in Week 11 but was flipped to Week 7 as the league worked around rescheduled games.
While the playoff would be nice, especially as the AFC East is more wide open than it's been in nearly two decades, the future of the Dolphins is more important to explore. The process already put into place across the organization, from general manager Chirs Grier to head coach Brian Flores, has allowed the timing to work and a new era in Miami to begin.
Quarterback Transition
Under Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Dolphins offense had been effective enough. Miami was just 21st in yards per drive but 15th in points per drive. Fitzpatrick himself ranked 18th in Expected Points Added per attempt, though was fifth in positive play rate, which is the percentage of plays that produce positive EPA, per Sports Info Solutions. Fitzpatrick had been playing well in an oddly non-FitzMagic way with both the extreme highs and extreme lows most smoothed out this season.
It won’t just be some of the production the Dolphins will try to replace on offense, but there will be other elements added into the offense that fit Tagovailoa’s game more than Fitzpatrick’s.
Much of Fitzpatrick’s success this season has come from threading some tight windows. Per NFL Next Gen Stats, Fitzpatrick has thrown 20.3% of his pass attempts into tight windows, which Next Gen Stats defined as a yard or fewer of receiver separation, the fifth-highest rate in the league.
Tagovailoa isn’t expected to live in those tight windows, but that’s not necessarily a knock on the rookie. Few quarterbacks challenge tight windows as often as Fitzpatrick has over the past few seasons. Since 2016, Fitzpatrick has four seasons with at least 20% of his passes into tight windows, including 2020. He’s the only quarterback to hit that rate in more than two seasons over that span.
Considering the best offenses in the league have worked to create more space for quarterbacks, that’s where the Dolphins will need to make the biggest adjustment as Tagovailoa takes over.
The most immediate change could be in a higher use of play-action. Through Week 7, the Dolphins have used play-action on just 21.8% of dropbacks, which ranks 23rd per SIS.
Tagovailoa was a heavy play-action thrower at Alabama. 43.6% of his dropbacks had play-action in 2019 and he was nearly perfect with the play-fake: 11.4 yards per attempt, 17 touchdowns, and no interceptions. Of course, that shouldn’t take away how good he was without play-action, too.
Tua Tagovailoa, With/Without Play-Action, 2019
| Play-Action | Comp/Att (%) | Yards (YPA) | TD/INT |
|---|---|---|---|
| With | 76/112 (67.9%) | 1350 (12.1) | 17/0 |
| Without | 104/140 (74.3%) | 1480 (10.6) | 16/3 |
What is perhaps a more interesting split is how infrequently those play-action attempts came from under center. The shotgun-under center transition from shotgun-heavy college quarterbacks can be extremely overblown, but where it can have an impact is when a quarterback has to turn his back to the defense on play-action.
So far this season, nearly half (49%) of Miami’s play-action attempts have come from under center, which is still one of the lower rates in the league (24th). The Dolphins could get Tagovailoa more work under center or the offense could look more like the play-action games of the Arizona Cardinals and Baltomore Ravens, who have been under center on 10% and 1.9% of their play-action dropbacks, respectively.
There are other elements the Dolphins already started to slide in over the past few games. Miami has used a two-back set in pistol more than any team in the league with 16 dropbacks. More often the two-back set is with a tight end offset to the quarterback in pistol, which can condense the defense and confuse coverage assignments with the tight end out of the backfield.
The Dolphins used this alignment to set up a screen for Myles Gaskin in Week 6 against the New York Jets.
RPO’s will also be a big talking point and likely will fit into that increased play-action transition and while the Dolphins haven’t been among the league leaders using them with Fitzpatrick, they have sprinkled them in this season, mostly recently inside the 5-yard line against the Jets with a pre-snap move from an empty look.
These adjustments aren’t necessary as training wheels for a rookie quarterback but they can also make life easier on an offensive line that has struggled some this season.
Per ESPN’s Pass Block Win Rate, the Miami offensive line ranks 30th in 2020. Though while the offensive line hasn’t been perfectly holding blocks, especially early in the down, they also haven’t been outright whiffing. By Blown Block Rate, each Dolphins offensive linemen is about average or better. Here’s where the top five Miami linemen stack up among others with at least 100 snaps on the season.
The Dolphins’ line is around the same area with similar snaps and blown block rates. None individually stand out. A takeaway from the disconnect between Pass Block Win rate and Blown Block Rate is that while no individual lineman has been below average, the line has taken turns on when those blocks have been blown, which could lead to the low overall win rate. Snap-to-snap consistency can be improved over time, especially when there is no weak link in the system.
A New Defensive Effort
Tagovailoa was the biggest piece in the Miami rebuild but the quarterback wasn’t the first or most aggressive move the Dolphins made to improve on the 2019 team. That came on defense, specifically in the secondary and how to defend the pass.
The Dolphins looked at the league and identified that passing well and stopping the pass would lead to the quickest turnaround and an effort was made to improve the pass defense. Miami went hard to sign cornerback Byron Jones and made a few moves along the defensive line, including a three-year/$30 million deal for Shaq Lawson in free agency.
All of those moves have come together to bring the Dolphins from a unit that was one of the worst defenses Football Outsiders ever tracked in 2019 to a defense that ranks sixth in DVOA against the pass in 2020. Last season, there were fun schematic wrinkles under Flores and defensive coordinator Patrick Graham (now with the Giants) but the talent just wasn't there. That's no longer the case this season.
Miami’s emphasis on coverage has certainly paid off with Jones and a healthy Xavien Howard on the outside. The Dolphins also used one of their three 2020 first-round picks on corner Noah Igbinoghene. The rookie out of Auburn has struggled some, but the learning curve for cornerbacks has been steep this season with seven rookies making up the bottom-13 corners in Adjusted Yards allowed per coverage snap, which adjusts yards allowed for touchdowns and interceptions.
Still, the Dolphins have been able to get by thanks to a top-five performance from Howard and plus play from Jones in the games he has been healthy this season.
The improvement in coverage has severely limited the damage opposing offenses have been able to inflict on the Dolphins compared to last year. In 2019, opposing defenses had no problems targeting the left side of the field. Howard’s injury last season left a lot of inexperience in the secondary and it showed.
But this season with good outside corner play, the Dolphins have been able to hold opponents to lower success areas with a heavy influx of short targets.
On top of the coverage, the Dolphins have also found a way to manufacture a pass rush. Last season, Miami was 32nd in pressure rate despite having the 11th-highest blitz rate in the league. This season, the trust in coverage has allowed the Dolphins to ramp up the blitzing (fifth-highest rate) and increase the pressure, third in pressure rate per SIS.
Lawson has been able to take advantage off the edge with the highest pressure rate (20.8%) among 100 defenders with at least 100 pass rush snaps. As a unit, the Dolphins are 10th in ESPN’s Pass Rush Win Rate, but the blitz has been where the Dolphins have been the most effective.
Per Next Gen Stats, Miami has recorded three of the 20 fastest sacks of the season. All three came on blitzes from linebackers, two from Jerome Baker and one from Kamu Grugier-Hill.
Miami has already used a 0-blitz 10 times through six games after sending the all-out blitz just 20 times throughout 2019. The results have been significantly more effective this season.
Miami Cover 0, 2019-2020
| Year | Plays | Comp/Att (%) | Yards (YPA) | Hits | Pressure Rate | Sack Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 20 | 10/19 (52.6%) | 116 (6.1) | 7 | 52.2% | 4.3% |
| 2020 | 10 | 4/9 (44.4%) | 17 (1.9) | 4 | 90.0% | 10.0% |
Still, for as well as the Dolphins have stopped the pass this season, they haven’t been able to do much to stop the run, with the league’s worst run defense DVOA. That’s a small price to pay for the all-in gamble on improving the pass defense.
Building for the future
What has created so much optimism about the Miami rebuild is that even with the early success in 2020, this isn’t the end game. 2020 was never supposed to be the make or break season, though it is nice to see some immediate progress.
The Dolphins still hold extra first- and second-round picks from the Houston Texans in the 2021 NFL Draft, which will allow for more potential high-end talent to join the roster. That comes a year after Miami had three first-round picks and a draft haul that included Tagovailoa fifth overall.
Miami also could have another advantage in free agency this offseason with some of the highest projected cap space in the league even as the cap is expected to drop to $176 million for 2021. The Dolphins will be one of the few teams with cap space and a settled quarterback situation. According to Over The Cap, Miami currently projects to have about $33 million in cap space for the 2021 offseason.
If we were to rank teams with the most positive outlooks over the next few seasons, heavily weighing the ability to get through this next offseason without major negative changes to the roster, it would be impossible to not have the Dolphins near the top of that list.
That’s what makes this weekend’s switch to Tua Tagovailoa so exciting for Miami. It’s not the last step in the Dolphins’ process. It’s still the beginning.
