Miami Dolphins still trying to figure out red zone issues

Written by Matthew Cannata | Twitter: @PhinManiacs
The Miami Dolphins are ranked towards the bottom of the league in scoring touchdowns when in the red zone. More specifically, they are ranked 30th and only the San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo Bills are worse. How is the team working to fix these issues? Joe Philbin explains. 

"We’ve had some of those penalties like we had last week on Thursday. There’s been a sack or two. There’s been negative yardage runs too where we’ve handed the ball off and gone backwards on those too. It’s a little bit of everything. I wish you could put your finger and say one thing and you’d probably be able to fix it, but one week maybe it’s the negative plays, one week maybe it’s a couple drops, one week maybe it’s a couple throws, one week it’s the negative runs, next week it’s penalties. It hasn’t all been bad. There’s a lot of good things on the film that I watched too. There’s a lot of good things and we’re close on a lot of others.”

Philbin was asked whether or not the lack of touchdowns from explosive plays impact the red zone issues but he said he views those as separate things and doesn't correlate the two together.

“I view those as separate entities. That’s why last night I just looked at those 45 possessions and watched every single play and some of the reasons why we hadn’t scored touchdowns. So I don’t know that they’re exactly related, but what’s that saying? Things come in bunches," he said. "Not surprisingly, there was a little bit of everything. There was, like last week, a penalty one time, a sack one time, a drop one time, could have been a better throw one time, unfortunately could have been better.”

If the Dolphins want to keep up with teams such as the Denver Broncos, they need to do a better job of converting red zone opportunities into touchdowns. If not, they can fall behind quickly and can impact the remainder of the game.

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