Offensive Film Grades From Miami Dolphins' 32-26 Week 14 Victory Over New York Jets

The Dolphins passing offense decided to party like it's 2023.

Waddle and Hill and Tagovailoa, oh my!

The Miami Dolphins carved up the New York Jets defense in Week 14 to post 32 points in an overtime win against the Jets — offering major callbacks to the Hill & Waddle-centric offense Miami sported for so much of the prior two seasons. How did things play out? Who were the shining stars of the day?

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. New York

Three players scoring below expectation is a nice day at the office. Now the needle moving performances were reserved for a lesser portion of the offensive depth chart, as names like Patrick Paul, Jonnu Smith, Julian Hill and De’Von Achane scored modestly above expectation numbers in this game. The stars of the game were exactly who you’d expect based on the box score — and Tagovailoa even left some meat on the bone with some balls slightly off the mark against New York.

Miami had a 26-yard run left on the field due to a holding call on Alec Ingold — that and two basic missed blocks to the front side on two separate runs throughout the game likely cost Miami some 50 yards rushing in this contest. That’s the margins for the current run totals the Dolphins are posting and much more respectable numbers on the ground.

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All-22 Coaches Film Analysis