Joe Philbin & Bill Lazor are happy with the offense but want to see more

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
There is no doubt that the Miami Dolphins offense was a whole lot better on Sunday against the Oakland Raiders after being stagnant for the previous two weeks. Everything seemed to be clicking and while it was the Oakland Raiders after all, the offense was able to dominate and continue to put points up on the board almost every drive. That in itself is an impressive feat, considering how hard it is to do that in the NFL. With all that success though, the coaches still want to see improvement from various parts of the offense.

“I liked what they did. I thought the production was good. The balance was good. Again, I think the big thing was there were not a lot of third-and-longs. That’s always helpful,” Joe Philbin said. “I think going into the game, they were 12th in the league on defense. They have some good defensive players, they really do. We didn’t want to get into a game where they were getting into (their) comprehensive blitz package. I thought we were able to keep them at bay. We had some balance. We were ahead of the game in terms of the down-and-distance for the most part. We were putting pressure on them and alleviating those tough situations that you have offensively. I thought overall it was good. Obviously, I thought we had really overcome, we got a little sloppy in the second half. Let’s face it, we had some penalties. We had some giveaways. We overcame I think two penalties on the opening possession, if I’m not wrong, and ultimately fumbled the ball. Obviously, you can’t do that. You don’t want to do that on the two yard-line. Overall, I thought there were a lot of good things.”

The team averaged almost nine yards per offensive attempt and Bill Lazor said that when they were planning for the game earlier in the week, this is the way they envisioned the game playing out.

“One of the easiest things for me to gauge, standing on the sidelines calling the plays is, if I’m calling a lot of third and sevens, eights, nines, 10’s and 11’s as opposed to yesterday, when either the third downs are easier or there aren’t many third downs. That comes from having good first and second down plays. Like I said, I think for all of us, the way we had hoped this game would play out is how it played out. We’ve got some time here to try to do it again.”

Lazor said that with a 2-2 record, he still needs time to assess the overall offense but feels that time is coming sooner rather than later. Let’s hope they can continue on the same path that they were on against the Oakland Raiders when they take on the Green Bay Packers on October 12.

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