Offensive Film Grades From Miami Dolphins' 28-27 Week 8 Loss To Arizona Cardinals

Tua Tagovailoa returned and brought life to the Miami Dolphins offense — just not enough of it. Miami fell to 2-5 on a walk-off field goal. But 27 points is a nice change for the Dolphins anyway...

2-5 is not fun. Having your starting quarterback back in the lineup and slinging the ball around, however, is. And we’ll take all the moral victories we can get this season for the Dolphins. How much did the rest of the offense elevate their play with Tua back in the lineup?

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. Arizona

What a disastrous performance for the tight end room. No group experienced greater per-play regression across the board than the TEs. It was a sufficient bounce-back week for FB Alec Ingold after a critical fumble against the Colts but Durham Smythe, Jonnu Smith and Julian Hill all struggled to play to the standard of their respective assignments. Smith had a brutal drop with a ton of room to run, Hill fumbled on a would-be touchdown on the opening drive and Smythe failed to generate any movement in the run game while simultaneously falling off all of his blocks in space.

Tyreek Hill enjoyed his best performance of the year with Tagovailoa back in the lineup. The difference in his energy was visible both in-person and on tape. Here’s to Miami getting this version of Hill the rest of the way — who was impactful both in the run game and as a pass catcher.

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All-22 Coaches Film Analysis