Tag Archives: Danny Amendola

When the Going Gets Tough…

25 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in Dan's Thoughts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been putting this off for a while now as I wanted to get my head properly around the goings on in the off-season in South Florida. It’s been a difficult off-season to swallow, if I’m honest. One of the most difficult that I can remember in my 20 years of following the ‘fins, and I have a feeling that’s only going to become a theme when the season finally rolls around in a few months time.

Where to start? Well, probably the most logical place would be at the Head Coach position, where Adam Gase was (to the surprise of nobody) relieved of his duties and replaced with former Patriots Defensive Coordinator Brian Flores. This is his first head coaching position, having fulfilled various roles in New England since 2004. It would be easy to be a bit sceptical about his abilities given this fact, but personally, I quite like the sound of the noises he’s making.

B-Flo (as I will be referring to him forever more) has a hell of a job on his hands. It’s a season of change in Miami, and he’s the one who has to oversee that change. There have been a LOT of big names who have also left the franchise, some of which had been around for years. The likes of Ryan Tannehill, Cameron Wake, Danny Amendola, Frank Gore and Ja’Wuan James have all departed this year, and it’s left an extremely young, team with fairly limited experience in some areas.

Some of these names came as more of a shock than others. It’s always going to be difficult when someone who you had pegged as being your franchise quarterback departs, but I do think it was Tannehill’s time to go. It’s an interesting move for him though, going to the Titans. I can’t imagine Marcus Marriota is particularly pleased about the move, but then again, he’s hardly set the league alight in the last couple of seasons.

In his place, we’ve signed Ryan Fitzpatrick. Yes, Dolfans, you can be forgiven for calling him Fitztragic a few years ago when he was in the green half of New York! It’s a move which comes with a number of questions for me, not least surrounding the draft and our strategy this year. We’ve got pick number 13 this year (assuming we don’t trade between now and the draft – this writer can’t be held responsible for that!) and many fans have been expecting a QB to sit under Fitz for a year and take over the reigns next year. And I can see why that’s a popular opinion – it makes sense after all. Fitzpatrick is no spring chicken and has played for pretty much every team in the league (near enough!) so I’d expect his best days are behind him. However, for me, that’s not the pick we should make this year. I absolutely think we’ll pick up a QB in a later round (possibly the second) but for me, first round needs to focus on our pass rush positions.

The loss of Ja’Wuan James was a big one without question – our loss is the Broncos’ gain there. And while he didn’t play much last year due to injury, it would have been extremely useful to have Josh Sitton around the place, but he has decided to hang up his boots. If we don’t strengthen our offensive line, it doesn’t matter who’s throwing the ball, they’ll be spending more time on their backside than actually passing. Besides, from what I understand of the draft classes of this year and next year, the QBs are going to be much stronger next year, and given that we’re potentially in for a rough season, we should be quite high up the draft board and in a position to pick someone who can take us forward.

But lets see what happens. The Draft is always interesting and always throws up some unexpected turns somewhere so anything really can happen. You watch us go and take a Wide Receiver in round 1 now…

It’s been a while since I’ve written so I’m trying to think of what else I have to tell you… I’ll do it in pictures!

I was clearing out my spare room over Easter weekend and this little beauty turned up – this was my playing jersey when I played at Uni. I’d imagine there are kids all over the place now wearing 31 in my honour…

I’ve also got to pick my Super Bowl winners bet – I’d like to do it in the next few days as I’m already a lot later than I was in last years’ losing effort in picking the Rams. Any ideas would be much appreciated, but this is how the top few odds are looking as of today (24th April) – the Dolphins are at 125/1 and Bengals at 80/1, out of interest…

And with all of that said, I’m off to watch this! [Not exactly a realistic negotiation stratergy – Ed.]

Until next time…

@TWFDan

Advertisement

Seasons on Life-Support

27 Tuesday Nov 2018

Posted by in Dan's Thoughts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We really are at the business end of the season now, and believe it or not the next time I post we’ll be in December – a scary thought! Thursday night will see the start of Week 13, meaning that most teams have just 5 games to either seal their position in the play-offs or at the very least finish the season on a high. But that is going to be a little easier for some than others…

Sunday started for me with a trip to the Rugby – I’m not a huge fan but my wife is a Leicester Tigers season ticket holder so I went to keep her company. And while there I did the hilarious thing that I always do… I referred to Tries as Touchdowns and time periods in Quarters rather than halves. I still don’t understand why when they kick the PAT they get 2 points rather than 1! So as you can imagine, I wasn’t particularly in her good books.

I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned this on the blog, but my wife is also a Cincinnati Bengals fan, so just imagine how little she must have enjoyed Sunday night’s pretty one-sided affair between the Bengals and the Browns, given that I’d already given her the raging hump! To their credit, the Browns looked good on Sunday night, but you do get the feeling that the Bengals season is very much on life-support, if it’s not already called it a day. This, largely, is due to the impact that the loss of Average Andy Dalton [How many times has Ryan Tannehill got your Dolphins to the playoff? – Ed.] is going to have on the team.

Luckily the Dolphins, while not able to get the W on Sunday against the Colts, have just got their Quarterback back under Centre, so I feel a little more optimistic than the Black and Orange half of this blog, but not by a huge amount. Miami played well in one of the later games on Sunday. In fact, I seriously think if it wasn’t for some poor play-calling in the last couple of drives, we would now have a winning record rather than a losing one. I do feel that for the first time this year, some of the blame for this weekend’s loss has to sit with Adam Gase and his coaching team. In the ‘fins final drive, with just a couple of minutes on the clock and the game tied at 24, we were backed up behind our own 15 yard line. Instead of really going for it, we played a couple of short inside runs, a throw for no gain, and I think there was even a loss of 5 yards through a Penalty. This unfortunately lead to us having to Punt it back to the Colts, giving them the opportunity to drive down the field and win the game with the last kick, which the did successfully.

It’s a frustrating one, because I actually thought other than that we looked pretty good. But with 13:36 remaining in the game, we were winning by 10 points. For me, we need to be a lot smarter with play calling in that situation. Tactically, surely we should have either tried to run down the clock and played for overtime, or go for it and try to win! The very last thing we should have done would be to turn the ball over. As it happened, we did just that, giving them the ball with 2:38 left on the clock, all of their Timeouts, and none of ours, and made it far too easy for one of the best (if not THE best) kickers ever to have graced the league to win them the game.

There was a bit of a scary moment too – once again with too many receiving targets already sat in the medical room, Danny Amendola took a serious knock which looked like it may have ended his game, but luckily he managed to shake it off and return to the field.

Oh and we scored on our first drive, and got our first Offensive touchdowns since Week 8!!

Elsewhere, the Vikings got the win over the Packers, and the Buffalo Bills got themselves a Win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. The latter of those two games has seen the announcement of some mid-season changes in Florida. Nathaniel Hackett has been relieved of Offensive Coordinator duties (a move which WR Dede Westbrook has said that the Offence need to take responsibility for), Blake Bortles has been announced for the bench next week in favour of Cody Kessler, and Running Back Leonard Fournette has been suspended for a game for Unsportsmanlike Behaviour and Unneccesary Roughness calls on Sunday night which saw him ejected from the game. Not a good time to be a Jags fan.

For the first time in 6 or 7 weeks now, the Rams aren’t the favourites for the Super Bowl in terms of betting odds – that position has been taken by the New Orleans Saints who to be fair are looking fantastic after another win this week over the Falcons. All in all, this makes the betting chart look like this:

So what’s coming up this week? Well, Rams/Lions will be a good game. The Rams are just being The Rams having lost just one game so far, and the Lions 4-7 record really doesn’t reflect how well they’ve played to this point this season. And the Vikings/Patriots match will be an entertaining affair too, I think – both good Offensive teams which should make for a good game.

And of course, I’ll score 6 in the Picks – because… that’s what I do at the minute.

Which games are you looking forward to? How are you feeling about your team going into the back end of the season? Drop me a line on twitter and lets have a chat!

Until next time…

@TWFDan

Super Bowl Preview

04 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Playoffs

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The big day is here and as the end of my fourth season of blogging about the NFL approaches it is just left to preview the Super Bowl and take a look at the coaching tape next week. This year the final game comes down to the Philadelphia Eagles taking on the New England Patriots.

The Patriots have reached the Super Bowl for the third time in the last four seasons and this is Tom Brady and Bill Belichick’s eighth Super Bowl in seventeen years, which is simply an unprecedented number for a head coach and quarterback that match any other team’s number of total Super Bowls. This year started poorly with a loss to the Kansas City Chiefs and two losses in the first four games but still the Patriots were able to amass a 13-3 record and once again make the Super Bowl.

Their defence started off poorly, particularly in coverage, but improved through the year as communication got sorted and they found their way. This defence is still not a great one in terms of yards given up and finished the regular season ranked thirty-first in the league by DVOA with the rush defence a poor thirtieth and the pass defence a more respectable twenty-first. Their front seven has lost talent recent years and losing Don’t’a Hightower and rookie Derek Rivers to injury really didn’t help. However, the Patriots managed to finish the season fifth in points allowed this season and have their classic bend but don’t break approach working well enough that they haven’t given up more than twenty-seven points since the first four games where they started so poorly. The secondary has been playing well recently and it was a very typical move to pick up James Harrison off waivers late in the season and it would not be a surprise to see the veteran pass rusher make a couple of plays again in this game.

If the Patriots defence has struggled, the offence has excelled once again despite Tom Brady turning forty as he fights time to keep his career going. Brady finished the regular season with four and a half thousand yards, thirty-two touchdowns and only eight interceptions and already has a trademark come from behind win against the Jaguars in the post season. They were the number one ranked offence in the league by DVOA leading the league in passing offence and number three in rushing offence. There was an overhaul of their receiver group but they had to do all this without Brady favourite Julian Edelman who tore his ACL in pre-season. Still, Brady has made use of the plethora of running back options out of the backfield as well as tight end Rob Gronkowski who led the team in passing yards and receiver Brandin Cooks who seems to have quietly gone over a thousand yards as well this year. Special mention ought to go to receiver Danny Amendola who showed up big against the Jaguars when it mattered most and has a reputation for making big plays in the playoffs.

If the Patriots march to the Super Bowl had an air of inevitability about then the Eagles are almost a surprise representative for the NFC. In the offseason GM Howie Roseman continued to develop his team and signed a number of veterans who all seem to have contributed at various points giving the Eagles one of the most complete rosters in the league. Not content to rest on what he had done in the offseason Roseman also traded for Jay Ajayi in what appears to have been an almost prescient move when Carson Wentz, who was having an MVP calibre season, was lost for the season to injury in the Eagles’ week fourteen win against the LA Rams. The Eagles actually only lost their final game with nothing to play for once Wentz went down and also finished the regular season 13-3.

The Eagles offence may have finished the season ranked eighth in the league by DVOA, but they have found a way thanks to creative play calling, an offensive line that gets the job done and a rush attack that looks stronger than its ranking of seventeenth by DVOA. There has been much talk of the rush-pass-option or RPO plays that they run, but fundamentally this is a unit that continued to play well with a backup quarterback who looked genuinely good in his last outing against one of the best defences in the league. The huge question for the Eagles in this Super Bowl is whether head coach Doug Pederson and his staff can come up with a game plan that allows Nick Foles to be as effective in the Super Bowl with all the pressure that comes with being the starting quarterback for the big game. The Eagles strength and depth amongst their skill players facilitate the multiple ways their coaching staff attack different teams and should allow for the coaches to play how they want against the Patriots.

The Eagles defence finished the regular season ranked fifth in the league by DVOA and been effective against both the run and pass but particularly against the run where they rank third. This is perhaps not surprising given that the strength of this defence is the defensive line that has not only played well, but features depth which allows Jim Schwartz to not only be aggressive but maintain a fearsome pass rush into the fourth quarter when a lot of team’s pass rush gets tired. The Eagles have enough in their back seven to take advantage of this pass rush but it will be interesting to see how they fare against a quarterback of Brady’s ability in the season’s biggest game and so now feels like a good time to get into the matchups.

The big cliché before this game is one that I have used myself when talking about a team’s ability to beat Brady, namely that the formula is rushing four and playing good coverage. Now it is true that this is a formula to beat most teams, but it is harder to do than it first seems and Brady seems to be so strong against most defence but the way to bother him is to get pressure up the middle. The Jaguars played well for the most part against the Patriots but Brady still found a way and that has to be the worry for Eagles in this game. They will blitz more than the Jaguars and possibly have a better pass rush although their coverage players are not a strong. Still in Fletcher Cox they have a formidable rushing defensive tackle and the Patriots’ ability to mitigate this will go a long way to deciding the game. In Dante Scarnecchia the Patriots have one of the best offensive line coaches in the league and between his unit and Brady’s ability to recognise what a defence is doing and get rid of the ball they have the tools to allow the offence to function against the Eagles rush. In what I think is going to be a feature of this Super Bowl, the coaching matchup between these two sides of the ball is going to be fascinating. How the Eagles chose to cover Gronkowski and their success in executing it could go a long way in deciding this game.

When the Eagles have the ball the coaching matchup is also going to be enthralling. The usual approach that Belichick is known for on defence is that he makes a team beat them left handed i.e. he takes away what the opposing team does best. I have written before about the way he does this in coverage by putting his best cover corner on his opponent’s second best receiver and double covering their best, but this is not so easy when the ball is spread around the offence and it doesn’t feel to me like the Eagles have an obvious primary option to use this approach on. My hunch would be that with a backup quarterback, even one as talented as Nick Foles, the approach will be to stop the run and make Foles prove that he can play near the standard he set in the conference championship game and beat you. Even then, this is another great coaching matchup and as usual, red zone defence is going to be a key factor as it usually is for a team that often gives up few points even if the opponent can move the ball between the twenty yard lines.

I am really excited about this game as it has great promise in terms of the coaching matchups and the players involved, but it is a real shame that the Eagles are without Carson Wentz and I have to give the edge to the Patriots. It feels to me like this should be a close game with the experience of Brady and Belichick likely to win the day but I definitely think the Eagles will be a stern test and I can see them winning. The greatness of this Patriots run is already assured and we are witnessing a historic head coaching and quarterback pairing, perhaps for the last time, but that doesn’t guarantee they will triumph.

Now all that is left is to watch the game and witness football history.