The Miami Dolphins continue to get ready for the Seattle Seahawks. How are we feeling about this matchup? Malik Washington, who missed the first two games of the season, returned to practice on a limited basis yesterday. Leroy breaks down Skyler Thompson vs. The Seahawks and Geno Smith.
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00:00Uh, getting set for the Seattle Seahawks and that gets going at four o'clock on Sunday.
00:06You got a game day uncensored coming your way in noon. And, uh, you know, this is one
00:12of those interesting matchups Leroy. Cause like, do you find it helpful at all? Does
00:17it matter at all that they have a basically defensive cousins here? You have a Mike McDonald
00:23who runs the Seahawks defense, their head coach, their whiz kid from the, uh, uh, from,
00:31from Baltimore and you got Anthony Weaver who was his D line coach last year.
00:36Um, some similarities, but a lot of times when a guy breaks free, he puts his own imprint
00:44on a defense. Yeah. DK was saying yesterday he notices the Dolphins like the blitz a lot
00:49more. Right. So, but, but that's, look, one of the things about defenses, it's not who
01:02blitzes is how many. So always think of that. Um, and I learned this playing Pittsburgh
01:11and losing so many times they had, and they started what is known as the zone blitz. And
01:18that means you bring five, but you don't know which five. And then they drop D lineman
01:23and linebackers and rushers into the lane, the throwing lanes. If you're looking at the
01:30wrong guy, then one guy comes free and they only rush five guys. Or if you don't read
01:37it properly offensively, you end up breaking or running a hot route or a site adjustment
01:42route. And you're running right into the defender that's dropping in that area. So
01:49I pay attention more to how many and not to who some people just consider if a safety
01:56comes or a slot guy comes, that's a blitz. But what if it's only four or five rushers?
02:02You see, so you gotta be careful with that. Um, so there's a lot of guys that add their
02:07own little nuance to that, um, how they try to show one thing or another. And I'm guessing
02:15because Schuyler Thompson is young and hasn't played as much as two, uh, that they going
02:21to give him as many looks as possible. They going to have guys rotating and moving after
02:26the snap to give them a pre shot look or pre, uh, a pre, uh, snap look so that he gets maybe
02:35confused, hold the ball a little bit longer. And, and that's, that's kind of the game you're
02:40going to play. I mean, he is going to hold onto the ball longer cause nobody gets rid
02:43of it faster than two. Like, is there going to be like, is there something that he could
02:47get deeped into with defense because they think, Oh, he'll improvise a little bit more.
02:53He won't like what he sees initially. No, because the other thing is, is that there's
02:59two things there. There's two types of quarterbacks. There's the tool quarterback time release,
03:04uh, pinpoint accuracy, stuff like that. There's the other quarterback that tries to hold the
03:11ball a little bit longer and put you in a position where, listen, once you get to three,
03:17four seconds, it's hard to cover anybody. I don't care how good your secondary is. And
03:23so once that quarterback gets that ball and they're able to protect or he's able to create
03:28some space and move around for four seconds, somebody's going to come open. And that's,
03:34you have those types of quarterbacks, right? You see a lot of, a lot of your big plays
03:42aren't necessarily schemed, but they're, they're, they're plays that are a little off schedule,
03:49right? And, and those are the plays that end up being the big plays. So I don't know, like,
03:57for example, what if you run a blitz and the team has max protection, right? Now you got
04:06a DB dealing with waddle and Tyreek for three, four, three, four seconds. One of them's going
04:13to get open. That's kind of how that, how the, the, the cat and mouse game works offensively
04:19and defensively.
04:20Yeah. That's the thing I'm kind of interested to see with him, right? Like, cause it's like
04:23he has experience, you know, he's been there, he's had a year where he's kind of gotten it
04:28under his belt, played in a, played in a big time game, played in big time games, got a little bit,
04:33got a little bit of mobility to him. You know, like he's got, you know, he, he's not definitely
04:37a guy who just will stand back there and can roll out a little bit. I think the thing you just worry
04:42about, I'm like, you know, you do have those weapons. It's almost like that bleep at Tyree
04:46kills down there somewhere. Like I want him to still take shots. And I'm worried about him being
04:50a little bit gun shy mistakes, you know, and especially like, I remember the last game that
04:54he was in with waddle while really let him down. Cause he had some nice throws and, and, and yeah,
04:59his eyes weren't there for him. I hope that this is one of those games where they pick them up.
05:03Well, and, and that's the thing that's when we started the week, what did I say?
05:08Everybody's going to have to pick up what's lost. So that means the run game is going to
05:13have to be a, you're going to have to have a better run game, right? You might have to
05:17run the ball a little bit better. You might have to play a little bit better defense. You might have
05:21to take more chances on the defense to give your offense more opportunities, right? Why receivers,
05:28they're going to have to catch balls that might not be right in their hands, but they're going
05:32to have to make a play for their quarterback. Like everybody's going to have to pick up the slack
05:36a little bit. The offensive line, you're used to the ball coming out quickly. You might have to,
05:42you know, protect a little bit longer, right? These are all the things that happen in the
05:48offense. And I see your look when I said the offensive line might have to protect more and
05:55you got, well, I mean, so you said three of them are on the injury report for shoulder injuries.
05:59Like I don't feel great about that. Right, right. But I don't, the Dolphins injury report, I pay
06:06zero to no attention to unless we know of a real injury, right? I just, you know, Armstead is just
06:14always, right. But that's that, that like, you, you know, he, like he, he comes, he practices in
06:20camp and I bet you, he put more days in camp than he'll put in all year, you know? So that's,
06:27that's just the nature of that. Like, so if, if you have somewhat of a concern, I get it,
06:37but you have a good enough offense where there'll be plays to be made.
06:44And, and I think that they're going to have to make a conscious effort this week with all the
06:52different types of runs you have, a conscious effort to run the football. You just have to,
06:59that is going to take a lot of pressure off and then get after their quarterback,
07:04press the issue a little bit, right? Press it, make it, make him throw the ball quicker than
07:10he wants to. Give him a whole bunch of looks, right? Because like, again, Gino Smith has played
07:17the last couple of years in Seattle and just live, live his little life in Seattle and really
07:31have no pressure on him. You cut out there for a second, buddy. Can you repeat what you're saying
07:36about Gino? I said, Gino Smith has been, has had kind of a resurgence in Seattle, right? With some
07:43weapons and stuff like that. I said, but he hasn't really been, had a lot of pressure on him.
07:53You know what I mean? There's never, I mean, and, and so from that standpoint, you got to turn up
07:59the heat on him. You got to turn up because all the other teams that he played for, the reason
08:05why he couldn't is because when things got hot, when the protection got tough, he threw it to
08:10the other team or he, he couldn't sit in the pocket. I don't know if he's grown from that.
08:16I don't know if he's gotten better at that, but you're going to have to defensively
08:22push the issue a little bit, give the offense more opportunities to, to with the ball. So
08:28it'll be interesting to see, because I don't know, both teams are thinking the same thing.
08:34Let's put their quarterback under heat and see if they can withstand it. Right.
08:41But like, do you think, cause you know, the dolphins, I mean, we saw a great game for Devon
08:45last week and you're getting most are back. Cause I'm thinking like in this crazy ass Seattle
08:51atmosphere, like, don't you want to try and dictate that run game early on? So you don't
08:56have to stress that so much. Of course that's, that's, it's got to start with the run. I've
09:00been emphasizing that all week with all the different, all the different ways you can run
09:07the football, right? Here's what you're going to do. You're going to use all those things to run
09:13the football. You're going to have, try to have some success running it. And then the play action,
09:19somebody is going to be wide open if you're able to run it, because they're going to do
09:23whatever they can to stop the run because they want to force Skylar Thompson to win the game.
09:31That's what they want. They want to, Hey, let's, anytime you play a backup quarterback,
09:36you want to put them in a situation where they got to rely on that backup quarterback.
09:40And they're going to say he's a backup for a reason. Cause he ain't the guy. So let's put
09:44some, some heat on them offensively. Even if you have to line eight guys up in the box,
09:50right. To give the appearance a lot of times here is going to be key this week,
09:55appearance, what things look like. So it is going to look like eight in the box.
09:59Skylar checks into a pass, then they drop back. Right. A lot of that stuff. So there's going to
10:05be a lot of times where you run a football and you might run it into an eight man box
10:11because you thought they were going to back out of it. That's okay. You can live with that.
10:17The offense, the way this offense operates, they have you thinking about every aspect of football,
10:25the run, the sweep, the quick pass, the deep pass, the middle of the field.
10:30They try to put pressure on every area of the field. If you can do that offensively
10:37and keep them on their heels, you can have some success. This is with any offense.
10:43Like a lot of the offenses, the better defenses, sometimes it doesn't phase them because you're
10:49not having the success. That's what happens with Buffalo. That's what happens with teams that you
10:54play a lot. These are the kind of things that happen. But if you can go a team that you haven't
11:00played a lot of, that is only seeing your offense on film, and you can go and kind of tweak it a
11:07little bit and open their eyes a little bit to say, oh my goodness, there's fast guys everywhere.
11:13What are we going to do? Then you have a chance. So I'm looking forward to it. I don't think
11:20the way people thinking in that, oh, see, I was just going to do this to them or the
11:25Dolphins aren't going to be able to do anything. Your offense is set up with all that speed
11:30that no matter who's the quarterback, you can create space. You can create space.
11:36And then it'd be just a matter of the timing and the delivery of the football in that space.