Brian Hartline spreads the blame for offensive struggles

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
While Daryn Colledge may have put all of the blame on the offensive line for the team’s struggles, wide receiver Brian Hartline took a different approach and spread the blame throughout the entire offense. He was candid and blunt and understood that there are many problems to be fixed.

“I can’t put my finger on just one thing. I think that we had some drops in the receiver room, we had Ryan (Tannehill) running around a little too much, I think we didn’t open enough holes in the running game consistently, I don’t think we had enough good blocks downfield because the backs were getting through the line and getting tackled at the safety level, so I think it’s a whole team effort and we obviously need improvement. It was not good enough.”

Much was made leading up to the game about how the team has gotten off to a slow start in the past two games but they didn’t do anything to quiet that noise after coming out to another slow start against the Chiefs. However, Hartline said the team doesn’t focus much on that.

“We don’t dwell on that. We don’t say ‘Oh, we came out slow again.’ We just know where we’re at, and go score some points before the half, which we did. We should have scored more points, but we didn’t. We were down by 11 at the half and you try to make up that deficit over two more quarters and we didn’t.”

Hartline was also asked about Ryan Tannehill’s recent struggles but said that he didn’t think Tannehill was lacking confidence. However, his answer wasn’t very promising.

“I don’t think so. I think it’s probably on a person to person basis, but I’m confident in myself and how I’m going to show up to work. And I can only take care of my responsibility, I can’t expect anyone to give me confidence.”

There will definitely be a lot of storylines this coming week and Tannehill’s struggles and confidence is only the tip of the iceberg. We’ll see where this leads us in the next few weeks.

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