Offensive Film Grades From Miami Dolphins' 16-10 Week 7 Loss To Indianapolis Colts

Close but no cigar was the theme for the Miami Dolphins in Indianapolis. Miami fell to 2-4 after sputtering late. What did the film show from a performance perspective?

The Miami Dolphins nearly made it back to .500 on the season in Week 7, coming out of the bye and playing inspired football early before conceding 16 consecutive points over the final 31 minutes to fall to the Colts and cast their season further into doubt. It wasn’t all bad on offense, despite the lack of points…where are the silver linings?

I’ve graded the All-22 coaches’ film. Let’s find out.

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Methodology

I am implementing a portion of the grading process used by Pro Football Focus this year to quantify player performance.

“The PFF grading system evaluates every player on every play during a football game…did the quarterback make a great throw, but it was dropped? The quarterback contributed to positive production and will receive a positive grade for that effort, even though the receiver let him down, earning a negative grade.

Each player is given a grade of -2 to +2 in 0.5 increments on a given play, with 0 generally being the average or “expected” grade. There are a few exceptions, as each position group has different rules, but those are the basics. The zero grade is essential as most plays feature many players doing their job at a reasonable, or expected, level, so not every player on every play needs to earn a positive or a negative.”

— Pro Football Focus on their grading methodology

This is where my implementation of the PFF approach ends, however. Pro Football Focus converts this scoring into a number on a 0-100 scale while factoring in the weighted value of certain types of reps for certain positions. That isn’t what I intend to produce. I’m much less interested in an “adjusted” consumable score for a player than a true reflection of their net excellent and bad contributions relative to the reps they are assigned throughout a game.

I intend to grade each game for the Dolphins this season with this approach. This will allow us to see the full scope of spectacular and game-changing plays from players, ascertain who are models of consistency, and help further amplify poor player performances by the cumulative sum and per-play average in 2024.

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Offensive Grades Vs. Indianapolis

The Dolphins continue to find plenty of positive contributors in any given game, no more so than rookie RB Jaylen Wright — he’s been among the top scoring individuals in three of the last four games. But with just 6 snaps in Week 7, Wright is left out in the cold from a volume perspective.

Be sure to give your flowers to both Aaron Brewer and Terron Armstead up front, who logged the highest and third-highest individual game scores for any offensive line performance all season.

Meanwhile, it continues to be difficult to win football games with quarterback play grading among the worst contributors on the field in any given week. Skylar Thompson achieved that feat in Week 3, Tyler Huntley achieved a bottom-5 score against Tennessee in Week 4 and now Huntley and Tim Boyle graded among the bottom three performers in Week 7. Miami, unsurprisingly, went 0-3 in those three contests without starter Tua Tagovailoa.

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All-22 Coaches Film Analysis