Welcome to the Miami Dolphins’ 2021 offense.
If you’re expecting it to be about one system that is the brainchild of one coach — perhaps like the West Coast offense or the vertical passing attack or a running game using inside zone, outside zone or power — you’re going to have a hard time.
Because based on what George Godsey and Eric Studesville said Monday in their first conversation with reporters since becoming the team’s co-offensive coordinators in late January, the new Dolphins offense might include some of those concepts.
Or all of those concepts.
Or none of them.
Because this new offense wasn’t one grand idea in one person’s mind. It was instead birthed from the best thoughts of the team’s various coaches and the various experiences those coaches have been exposed to through the years.
“We work well together,” Godsey said of his relationship with Studesville. “We meet every day together, too. We spend a lot of time before we meet with the group together, digesting each other’s outlook ... And obviously all the other assistant coaches have a big part in it.
“We say it’s a collaborative effort. We don’t see it as a two-person job. We see it more as a unit, and that’s the way we’ve kind of approached it.”
So get ready to see the word “collaboration” and all its cousin words when reading about the Dolphins offense in 2021. Because everyone pitched in.
Which means everyone gets credit.
Or blame.
“We’re all involved in it,” Studesville said. “We all have input. Players are involved. The entire offense is built to be a collaborative effort.
“Right now, it’s building that way. That’s how we’ve done the playbook. That’s how we started with the players right now. That’s how we’re doing things in the walk-throughs, and I don’t see that changing in any way going forward.
“It’s all collaborative. We’re all going to have input on it.”
If you absolutely must have a pedigree name to identify this offense perhaps you should forget that. Think instead of a mutt that tries to combine all the best of many different breeds.
Start with last season’s offense. There’s apparently some 2020 offense in the 2021 edition.
“There’s some things we’ve done well and maybe some things we need to improve on,” Godsey said. “That internal discussion on what plays we need to grow on and build off of, I think we’ll see some of that. And then obviously maybe some things we haven’t seen.”
Studesville, who came to the Dolphins when he was hired by Adam Gase in 2018, acknowledges combining everyone’s thoughts was a process, but the result so far is now entirely a Miami Dolphins product.
“Everything that’s in there is ours,” Studesville said. “So there’s not what did you want to get in or what didn’t get in. We all had input. We all had suggestions on things. And we all have experiences. Every one of us as coaches has brought something from a different place.
“And hopefully we tried to use that as a collaborative effort to try to bring as much as we can to be diverse so that all our experiences bring something to the offense.
“There’s nothing in there that I’m uncomfortable with or that I don’t like. And the things that aren’t in, it’s not so much about plays, it’s about execution. There’s a lot of good plays out there and they’re not very good plays if we don’t execute well. So if we execute well, you can run simple plays and be really, really good at. So I don’t worry about plays we don’t have in.”
And the Dolphins 2021 playbook which is now being taught to players in the club’s organized team activities (OTA) sessions, is not necessarily complete.
“I don’t think the playbook is done,” Studesville said. “I don’t think it’s ever done. We’re all looking and studying, and if we can get something from somewhere else that we think is good for us, then we’re going to continue to add.
“Maybe some things aren’t as highly [repeated] in practice and don’t have a great a frequency but I don’t ever see a playbook as done. To me, a playbook is a living document. It continues to grow and evolve based on the players you get and what they can do. Because in there we want to find out what our players do best. And those are the plays we want to use.”
So this is quite a wide net the Dolphins have cast. And we’ll see in the preseason and then the regular-season what the team catches.
But some stuff we know.
We know there is likely to be motion in the offense. Quarterback coach Charlie Frye spoke Monday about the advantage of running core plays out of formations that shift and change the defense’s view of the formation play to play.
All that will require great communication.
“The communication between the center and the quarterback and the quarterback’s communication to the skill guys, the quarterback’s communication in calling a play and making sure the formation is right, you have a shift, you have a motion,” Frye said. “So I think communication is the building block of every system. “
The offense will obviously try to employ the sub-4.4 speed of a number of Miami receivers, including first-round pick Jaylen Waddle, free agent signee Will Fuller V and others.
“Any time you can stretch the field vertically, it puts the defense in a bind,” Godsey said.
And we know the offense could conceivably change game to game.
“It’s a long season, too,” Godsey said. “So you can’t just repeat the same thing each week.”
But will continuity, which Dolphins coach Brian Flores embraced in announcing the promotion for Studesville and Godsey, suffer amid all the new collaborative thinking?
“We’re going to develop continuity going forward,” Studesville said. “Continuity doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to take something we did last year and bring it forward. We’ve evaluated last year, we’ve looked at it. And we’ve said, ‘these are things we feel that our players are good at and maybe scheme we’ve looked at that we like.’
“But moving forward we’re going to develop continuity. Continuity isn’t something you develop in a backpack. We have to develop that. Our players have to demonstrate consistency to develop that continuity to make us say this is what we’re going to do.
“There are some things that built into our offense -- some terminology things, some scheme, some pass routes, that we have run in the past. If that’s continuity, then that’s continuity. But we’re going to go back and figure out what our guys can do. We have to create continuity not rest on our laurels kind of thing based on what we did in the past.”
