Offensive Film Grades From Miami Dolphins' 20-12 Week 15 Loss To Houston Texans

An unserious effort.

No sugar coating this one. The offense was bad on Sunday against the Texans. But why? Was it the offensive line? Tua Tagovailoa? Mike McDaniel? The run game? …well, yes it was. Thanks for asking. Week 15 illustrated everything WRONG with the Dolphins offense based off of this year’s build all at once.

I’ve graded the All-22 coaches’ film for each player and play. Here’s what I’ve found.

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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. Houston

Season worsts aplenty. The worst single game performance of any player on the offensive side of the football by players with at least 20 snaps via Jackson Carman. The worst game performance of the season by Liam Eichenberg. The worst game performance of the season for Tyreek Hill. The worst game performance of the season from Jaylen Waddle. The worst game performance of the season from Tua Tagovailoa. It was the second worst game performance of the season for Rob Jones.

This was a disaster. The coordination, attention to detail and strategy felt as though it was all disjointed. The tape doesn’t lie — and the play calling was, simply put, trying to play around the deficiencies of an offensive line that had two competent players on it on Sunday.

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All-22 Coaches Film Analysis