Does Bill Lazor regret his play calling on the Dolphins last drive?

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
On the last offensive drive of the game for the Miami Dolphins, they ran the ball on first down, threw an incomplete pass on second down and then ran the ball on third down before putting it away. Although Joe Philbin admitted that he told Lazor to run the ball on third down after coming out and wanting to be aggressive, Lazor still is looking back to see if he could’ve done anything different.

“My first thought was I wish we had made more first downs. I thought when we stand up in front of the offense, and we tell them we want to play to win, play aggressive, play loose, and I think it’s our job to coach that way too. When coach makes certain decisions on how we are going to play the game, then I think the players appreciate giving them a chance to go win the game. We could have started taking a knee two drives earlier and run the clock earlier, but that’s not how you play. My first thought is obviously we looked at every single one. Could we have called a different pass? Could we have called a run instead of a pass? What would have been best? But you can’t live that way. We try to make first downs. We wanted to win the game with the ball in our hands and we didn’t get it done, and I’ll look at my calls as much as the execution.”

Lazor said that moving forward, the offense needs to do a better job of making things happen and capitalizing on opportunities that are created either by special teams or the defense.

“That’s what we’re called upon to do when you want to play as a team, is when the defense makes a big play to get you the ball on a short field or special teams makes a big play, the way you play complimentary team football is you capitalize with a touchdown. It’s disappointing we didn’t yesterday because, I think when that happens, you have a chance to build momentum for the whole team and different sides of the ball play off each other. That’s why that was the most disappointing part of the game for me because we could have made an impact and really changed the course of the game right there.”

When Lazor was hired, there was a lot of excitement and optimism about the future of this offense. Now, there are lots of questions but we’ll see if he and the rest of the players on that side of the ball can get things figured out in time to turn the season around.

---