Offensive Film Grades From Miami Dolphins' 30-27 Week 9 Loss To Buffalo Bills

No one likes moral victories. But the Dolphins' offensive performance in Orchard Park almost feels as good as a win would have. Almost.

The Miami Dolphins scored 27 points for the second consecutive week — and for the second consecutive week they needed at least one more score to win the game. But this 27 feels a little different than the last 27; as these came on the road against the dreaded Buffalo Bills. Miami came up short but the offense, for the first time this season, looked like the product we expected all along. Who stood out? Who disappointed?

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. Buffalo

Wow. What a showing nearly top to bottom. This was Tua’s best game — perhaps of his career. It was Terron Armstead’s best game of the year. Same for Aaron Brewer. It was Jaylen Waddle’s second best performance thanks to good effort on the ground game and a few big catches down the stretch. Austin Jackson, Alec Ingold and Liam Eichenberg all also posted their second best performances of the season. Tyreek Hill had his third best performance of the season behind only Jacksonville and last week against Arizona.

This was an inspired effort. It’s a little sobering that it came so late in the season with the team sitting at 2-5 and needed to put it all together on the road.

Your under-performers should not surprise. Of regular snap takers, Durham Smythe posted a well-below expectation mark, whereas Raheem Mostert’s great work in the first half was nearly fully wiped away by the crippling fumble that almost certainly took points off the board for the Dolphins to open the second half. And Robert Jones had his hands full at times isolated in pass protection against Ed Oliver.

Given the performance, I did feel inspired myself — so I broke down the entire game performance play by play on the All-22. You can watch the video below.

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All-22 Coaches Film Analysis