Miami Dolphins are ranked 30th in the NFL in red zone touchdowns

Written by Matthew Cannata at 11:45 AM | Twitter: @PhinManiacs

The Miami Dolphins are ranked 30th throughout the NFL in scoring touchdowns in the red zone with 46.51%. The only two teams worse than them are the San Francisco 49ers and the Buffalo Bills with 44.83% and 41.18%, respectively. 

Against the Detroit Lions, they scored a touchdown 25% of the time they were in the red zone and have only scored a touchdown 33.33% of the time in the red zone in the past three games.

Joe Philbin said he’s been trying to get the problem resolved and while they know the issues that are plaguing them, it’s just a matter of going out and executing. Philbin said that it’s been something they’ve working on in practice each week but the improvement needs to be better.

“Well, we’ve had some negative runs down there. We’ve had some sacks down there. We’ve had some dropped passes down there. We’ve had some penalties. I think the execution, when we study it, you look at the film, there’s some reason. Some of it has been good defense by our opposition. We certainly have to do better, but there are a lot of things that we can do better to help our scoring average go up.”

Ryan Tannehill echoed Philbin’s words and said they need to work on execution and making plays happen when they have the opportunity.

“We haven’t executed. We’ve had our opportunities, whether it be a route, a throw, a block. We’ve had our opportunities, all types of ways to score when we’ve been down there. We just haven’t gotten it together to make it happen consistently enough. There has been times where we’ve scored, but we have to score consistently, especially against good teams. You don’t know how many times you’re going to get down there, so when you get down there especially inside the five, inside the 10, you’ve got to get in the end zone.”

If you’re a glass half full kind of person, you’ll see that the Bills are ranked last in scoring touchdowns in the red zone and that being the Dolphins opponent on Thursday, both teams should be in a similar situation. However, the Dolphins will need to continue to improve in the red zone if they want to beat the tougher opponents down the road.

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