Lamar Miller had an underwhelming start to the 2014 season.
His six touches against the Atlanta Falcons gave him just 19 total yards. It's hard to blame Miller for his production though. He broke two tackles on his first reception of the game, while also gaining eight yards on two of his carries when he was given running lanes to attack. On his other two carries, the Falcons defense swarmed to the football at the line of scrimmage and dominated the interior of the Dolphins defense. Indeed, that is what the Falcons defense was built to do over the offseason.
Miller's talent is easy to see. He's an electric runner who has good, not great vision and the ability to make defenders miss in space. In the right situation, he could be a very productive running back and fantasy option.
Considering the Dolphins' offensive line, it's easy to presume that he isn't in the right situation entering the 2014 season. It's true that Miller's outlook would be a lot better with more viable options at the guard and center positions, but the frailty of the offensive line also shouldn't be used to completely condemn him as we hit the heavy time of the year for fantasy drafts.
What makes Miller more apeealing, outside of his talent of course, is the Dolphins philosophy on offense and his apparent presence at the top of the running back depth chart.
Miller was the only running back to touch the ball when the Dolphins first team offense was on the field. Part of that was the absences of Knowshon Moreno and Daniel Thomas, but Mike Gillislee's presence did offer the Dolphins an alterate if they wanted to use multiple backs with their starters. Expecting the Dolphins to heavily rotate their backs doesn't fit with the philosophy that Bill Lazor appears to be bringing to the Miami Dolphins this year.
Lazor arrived in Miami after being the quarterbacks coach in Philadelphia, where Chip Kelly brought his uptempo, spread out offense to the Eagles. If the first preseason game of the year is anything to go by, Lazor is bringing exactly the same philosophy to Miami. In 04:46 of gametime against the Falcons, the offense executed 10 plays to get into the end zone. This is the kind of pace that afforded the Eagles the opportuntiy to give LeSean McCoy 366 total touches during the regular season last year.
Miller isn't McCoy, but their styles are similar. Both are agile, speed backs who won't consistently break tackles with their power, but who also won't shy away from contact when running with built-up momentum. The benefit of being that style of back in this kind of offense is that the back should be able to take advantage of space.
Kelly, and by proxy Lazor, puts a greater emphasis on an offensive lineman's ability to move rather than his ability to move defenders. This allows them to run zone blocking plays more effectively. Those zone blocking plays fit perfectly with the shotgun runs that are prevelant in this offense.
While the passing game in the NFL is all about mismatches, the running game is all about numbers. Because most teams don't involve the quarterback in the running game, the defense more often than not has more pieces to work with than the offense. This is a staple run of the Kelly offense that Lazor is bringing to Miami. On this play, the defense has seven defenders in shot. The offense has seven blockers to account for those seven defenders. However, the design of this run is purposely going to leave one of the Falcons defenders unblocked, number 94: outside linebacker Jonathan Massaquoi.
At the snap, the Dolphins offensive line slides towards the top of the screen to create a wall. Massaquoi is left to run clean into the backfield, but quarterback Ryan Tannehill is looking directly at him as he hands the ball off. Tannehill never turns his back to the defense and he holds the ball in such a way that suggests he may take it and run outside with it in his hands.
Even at this early stage of the game, Tannehill had already taken the ball in this kind of situation to throw into the opposite flat on a screen pass. It's not necessary for the quarterback to be a dangerous runner for this concept to be effective. Nick Foles proved that in Philadelphia last year. It does help if the quarterback is a big play threat with his feet though, because that becomes a point of emphasis for the defense when gameplanning the for the offense.
Tannehill showed last season and the year before that he is a very good athlete.
Massaquoi plays this run as well as he could have expected to. He kept his eyes on the football throughout the play and only hesitated for a moment during the handoff. That very short stoppage was all that Miller needed to escape through the running lane for a four yard gain. Importantly, the interior blocking on this play was terrible. It didn't matter because the focus of the blocking on these kinds of runs is generally put more on the edges. While the Dolphins may be lacking talent on the interior of their line.
Branden Albert is a very talented, proven starter at the left tackle spot and Ja'wuan James is a very good athlete and first rounder on the other side of the line. An offensive coordinator can only play to the strengths he is afforded by the talent on the field. Lazor's offense appears to be set up to do that and Miller should be the big benefactor.
While the running back position isn't one of the more difficult spots to translate from college to the NFL, it can take some time for players to establish themselves as consistent starters. Sometimes players need time to develop physically so they are ready for the punishment of the game, other times players need to develop more consistency in their discipline to get used to the speed of the professional game. Miller gets a bad reputation as a player who has promised big things on multiple occasions and failed to deliver. However, he is only just 23 years of age and won't turn 24 until after this season.
Miller is still very young and only entering his third season in the league. Anyone who had huge expectations before this year weren't being let down by his ability on the field, but rather they were basing their judgment off of bloated expectations. It's not like MIller had a poor season last year. He averaged 4.0 yards per carry behind the worst offensive line in the NFL.
As a runner, there is little to worry about with Miller. He hasn't proved to be a fumbler, he doesn't lack discipline and he is explosive. The biggest threat to Miller's snaps in recent times has been his poor pass protection. Under Lazor, pass protection should be less of an issue. Lazor's offense should use a lot of play action where Miller's primary responsibility is to sell the fake rather than pick up a free edge rusher. According to Pro Football Focus, Kelly asked McCoy to pass block less often than any back who had at least 40 pass blocking snaps in 2013.
In fact, by their numbers, McCoy pass blocked on 14.8 percent of his pass play snaps whereas Miller pass blocked on 31.3 percent of his pass play snaps. That is a massive difference in terms of usage and should be something that allows Miller to stay on the field more.
Maurice Jones-Drew's Mojo?
As the Jacksonville Jaguars recapper here at Football Guys, last year I got to watch the different phases of Maurice Jones-Drew's season develop in great detail. Jones-Drew had a season that suggested he has hit the wall. He is no longer a high-quality running back who will produce for fantasy owners on a weekly basis. He is in the latter half of his career. He has had a huge number of carries in his career. He did have a major injury entering last season.
It feels like it's time to cut Jones-Drew from your thoughts if you want to anticipate his decline and not get stuck reacting to poor displays next season. However, Jones-Drew's reputation has caused him to fall so far that he is now becoming a value play.
He did turn 29 during the offseason, but he doesn't have a long history of injuries. Jones-Drew should still be capable of being a quality fantasy producer as a volume back. Even though he is sharing the backfield with Darren McFadden and Latavius Murray, Jones-Drew looks set to be a focal point of an Oakland Raiders offense led by the rapidly declining Matt Schaub at quarterback.
McFadden and Murray are more explosive than Jones-Drew, but McFadden can't stay on the field and Murray remains a relative unknown. Jones-Drew on the other hand is a technician. He is still the best pass-blocking runner in the NFL, so that will keep him on the field at the very least. He still has great vision and discipline to manipulate the defense, create running yards and continuously get what his offensive line gives him.
Last year, Jones-Drew played the first part of the season while still recovering from offseason surgery. He was clearly not fully fit. Not only could he not break off big runs, but his footwork was slowed and his agility to slip between smaller running lanes between the tackles was non-evident. That, combined with playing behind an awful offensive line that was decimated by injuries, caused Jones-Drew to average less than 3.0 yards per carry on five of his first 10 games.
During the second half of the season, Jones-Drew's production took an uptick that mirrored his improving health.
From Week 12 to Week 14, Jones-Drew averaged 5.2 yards per carry on 51 attempts. He also added 84 yards on 10 receptions. Just as Jones-Drew was rounding back into full effectiveness, he suffered a hamstring injury that would rule him out of Week 15. When he returned for the final two weeks of the season, he looked to be physically limited again. Because Jones-Drew played in a horrible situation and was physically hampered by separate injuries in 2013, it's hard to gauge what he can do in 2014.
We can't simply write him off based on last year. Jones-Drew isn't the kind of back who was reliant on his breakaway speed to be effective. It was certainly a nice trait to have and its absence will be missed, but the combination of Jones-Drew's agility, vision, discipline and power should make him a productive player in Oakland. Our first glimpse of him in the black and silver uniform was definitely gave off a positive vibe.
On these two plays, Jones-Drew showed off his quickness and fluidity as he moved in space. He appears to be much lighter at this point than he was 12 months ago and his comfort is significantly clearer because of it. In an awful situation last year, Jones-Drew had 1,100+ total yards on 277 touches. Just five touchdowns hurt his fantasy standing, but his 20th finish amongst running backs in standard scoring and 19th in PPR was more than admirable considering the circumstances.
Jones-Drew's standing in drafts this year is suffering because of last year's displays. He is the 34th running back in FantasyPros' PPR ADP list and 31st on their standard scoring list. The My Fantasy League ADP lists are similarly pessimistic on his outlook. In standard scoring, Jones-Drew is the 32nd back off the board, averaging 103.97 as his overall selection in each draft. In PPR scoring, he falls to the 36th running back and is being taken at 114th overall in drafts.
It's very possible that Jones-Drew doesn't outperform his ADP, but right now he is healthier than he was last year and in a better situation than he was last year when he was at least 10 spots better than he is currently projected to be.