Dolphins defense preparing for EJ Manuel's athletic ability

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
The Miami Dolphins will have their hands full when they face EJ Manuel on Sunday but not necessarily because of his ability to throw the football with accuracy and decisiveness. Instead, he poses the ability to break out of the pocket and run down the field on every play. This is something that concerns the Dolphins but they say they have been preparing for it all week.

“It’s difficult whenever you play a quarterback that has the ability to run and throw," linebacker Jelani Jenkins said. "We’ve just got to see if we can get a beat on him, get pressure on him. (We’ll) do the best we can to get him off rhythm and mostly importantly we have to stop the run to try to keep them one dimensional. So if we do all those things, it will be a better day for us. I’ll say that.”

Defensive end Olivier Vernon says that the key to stopping Manuel is to contain him and set his rushing lanes for him.

“You’ve got to contain him. We can’t let him escape, rushing. It’s not like how (Tom) Brady was, he was going to stay in the pocket and try to complete that throw. He’s dangerous, E.J. Manuel is dangerous. He’s athletic, he can get up out of there and throw while running. That’s the one thing we need to keep in mind, we’ve got to contain him and be disciplined in our rush lanes.”

Last year, in 10 games played, Manuel rushed 53 times for 186 yards, which is an average of 5.3 rushes per game. Last week, he only rushed once for 6 yards. We'll see if the Dolphins are able to contain him and keep him in the pocket and behind the line of scrimmage.

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