Miami Dolphins looking to improve on red zone opportunities

Written by Matthew Cannata at 9:20 AM EST | Twitter: @PhinManiacs

During Sunday’s game against the San Diego Chargers, the Miami Dolphins had plenty of opportunities in the red zone but failed to score on three of those chances and instead, settled for field goals. While it didn’t matter in Sunday’s game, these lack of touchdowns will come back to haunt the Dolphins at some point in the season if they continue on their current trend. Joe Philbin said that’s one thing that they will focus on improving throughout this week.

“There were a lot of things we can do better. We had a couple of opportunities offensively. Our red zone has room to develop and grow offensively. I think the thought process I’ve always used, and as mom and dad probably taught you, honesty is the best policy. So watch the film, make the corrections that need to be made. Show them the corrections that they are doing well. It’s on the film. You’re not lying. You aren’t trying to create a false sense of where they are as a football team. Just communicate as honestly as you can about what you see and if they are doing the things you want them to do on a consistent basis. I told the staff that we have to be honest. We shouldn’t brow-beat them if there is nothing to brow-beat them about. Obviously correct the mistakes, show them the good things that they did and let’s get on. We have another big game coming up.”

Bill Lazor added on to this and said that it’s been something they’ve been talking about the past several weeks and thinks that the execution has been improving but hasn’t fully gotten there yet.

“We’ve talked about it the last couple of weeks, no more or less bothered than we have been. I think we have a pretty good grasp. Believe it or not, I think our execution is improving. I think there were some balls that we would have thought would have converted for us. I thought we were in the right place, I thought we were on time. A couple of the runs probably didn’t produce as much as we wanted. A couple of the passes where we thought we had the situation that we wanted, just didn’t end up being touchdowns and you can probably picture some of them in your mind. There’s only one way to work at it. I thought we had great emphasis on third down and red zone, third down numbers improved, here we go with the red zone again. We’ll get there.” 

One thing that’s good about coaches being honest all the time – negative or positive – is the fact that when they say something in the future, you know that they’re likely telling the truth. When Lazor says that the team will get there, you have to be confident that this is exactly what will happen.

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