Joe Philbin and Ryan Tannehill explain short yardage plays

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
When the Dolphins were driving down the field in the fourth quarter down by six points, the offense came up on a 2nd-and1 situation. When they failed to convert, they faced a 3rd-and-1 and failed to convert that as well, before also failing to convert the fourth down. Following the game, Joe Philbin and Ryan Tannehill explained what happened.

“We had a double move on 2nd-and-1 and I thought it was great field position. We kind of had the ball moving a little bit, I think. I knew we wanted to take a shot,” Philbin said. “I think we got flushed out of the pocket and then 3rd-and-1 we had another play in that area we’d been game planning all week. We certainly considered going for it on fourth down from that spot. We wanted to be aggressive. It was a close game. We thought we could make the play. Wanted to get the ball to our good players, but again we didn’t execute very well.”

Tannehill echoed Philbin’s sentiments but went into more detail about the actual play, including the reason why he didn’t hit a wide-open Daniel Thomas on the check down.

“It was a play-action pass. We played it exactly like we thought we were going to play it. I had two crossers and no one was able to win so I was trying to buy some time and get a run through and I got sacked. [As far as Daniel Thomas goes], he’s supposed to be over the ball so I didn’t see him.”

Tannehill has shown that he would rather try to for the long home-run rather than get the first down and keep the chains moving. It’s one of the things that has plagued him for quite some time and doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.

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