Tua Explains What Defenses Are Doing Against the Dolphins

The book seems to be out on the Miami Dolphins’ passing game — pack the middle. 

Defenses are flooding the middle of the field to try to stop Tua Tagovailoa and Mike McDaniel’s quick, timing-based system. So far this season, it’s mostly working, and Tua is aware that’s what defenses are doing. 

“I would say that's the style that teams have played us in, and they’ve found a lot of success,” Tagovailoa said Tuesday. “As you see, we had to throw outside of the numbers this past game and then the check downs; we try to find ways to maneuver guys, to get out of the middle so that we can find those soft spots inside the numbers, if you will.

“But, yeah, this past game, that's how we were looking to combat that – throwing outside the numbers, taking the check downs and then running the ball as well.”

What’s interesting about this becoming a talking point now is that it’s not remotely a new issue. We wrote about the Dolphins struggling when teams took away the middle of the field all the way back in 2022. 

Remember those two games on the West Coast against the Chargers and 49ers? They had roughly the same game plan in those matchups. 

Why Is Miami Still Struggling, Then? 

Well, as the Dolphins evolved their offense, the defenses also evolved. 

Miami found some solutions through the running game in 2023, something that has been missing since then, and defenses have simply gotten better at defending the Dolphins’ core passing game. 

“It's not your normal Tampa 2, it's not your normal quarters deal,” Tagovailoa said. “It's guys are staying inside, allowing our guys to break outside where they can trap the corners, play up top with the safeties, and their backers are just getting depth, like they're not even getting to the spots where in a normal Tampa 2 or in a normal quarters deal, you'd get width or you'd get depth. They’re just literally packing the middle.”

This mirrors a talking point from senior passing game coordinator Bobby Slowik this offseason. He mentioned the team needing to focus more on its post-snap execution, rather than worrying about what the defense is doing. 

That doesn’t seem to be going well this season, and the Dolphins’ schematic solutions haven’t worked much either. Miami has always tried to stretch teams horizontally in the running game, but they leaned into that in the passing game in 2024. 

All of those screens to De’Von Achane and the now-traded Jonnu Smith were in place of the team’s nonexistent running game. They’re supposed to pull the defense sideline to sideline and prevent them from packing the middle. 

We’ve seen plenty of those concepts through the first two weeks of this season. Miami’s best play call Sunday was dumping the ball to Achane and letting him make someone miss in the open field. 

The Dolphins also tried to hit more out-breaking routes to Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle. They had some success in that category, but when the game was on the line, Miami still hadn’t spooked the Patriots out of packing the middle. 

While “throw more outbreaking routes” seems like an easy solution, it’s not that simple, and Tua agrees. 

“Yes and no,” Tua said when asked if those routes on tape would help. “Every game is going to have its own challenges depending on the flavor of the DC and what they want to do to combat what we've done previous, previous game or in games past against them. So it's really just figuring out what they want to do against us.”

Throwing more outbreaking routes might help a bit, but the Dolphins are not equipped to live that way consistently, and teams know it. 

Tua’s limited arm strength and the smaller stature of receivers like Waddle and Hill make it impossible to make contested catches on throws outside the numbers a core part of the offense. 

Tua can hit some of those throws, and Waddle/Hill are capable of making a few contested catches, but those are not their strengths. Those routes also tend to take more time to develop, which opens questions about the team’s offensive line injuries and personnel issues. 

What’s the Solution? 

If there were an easy solution that could be fit into one article, the Dolphins would’ have found it already. This writer would argue that the team’s personnel needs to change to allow for a more diverse menu of offensive options, but that ship has sailed for the season. 

The easiest solution is to play better complementary football. Getting the running game going for the first time since 2023 would go a long way in taking some pressure off the passing game in general. 

It would also go a long way toward getting teams out of two-high safety shells. However, that can’t happen if the defense keeps allowing multi-score leads in the first quarter. 

If Miami can stabilize the defense and find the running game, there’s a good chance they can find band-aid solutions to the issues in the passing game. 

That process starts with a Thursday night game against the Buffalo Bills.