If there’s one thing you know about the Miami Dolphins’ run game, it’s that it’s packed with pre-snap motion. If there’s another thing you know about the Miami Dolphins’ run game, it’s that you’re going to see a ton of misdirection to put defenses on their heels, creating more explosive opportunities.
It’s important to remember that head coach Mike McDaniel was Kyle Shanahan’s run game coordinator with the San Francisco 49ers from 2017 through 2020 before becoming San Francisco’s offensive coordinator in 2021, and then getting the Dolphins job in 2022. So, there are a lot of similar concepts, and a lot of what the Dolphins run in their ground game could be said to be Shanahan’s stuff sped up about 20% because the Dolphins have such dynamic athletes on the field.
One of those dynamic athletes this season is rookie running back De’von Achane, the Olympic-level track star and Texas A&M alum who Miami took with the 85th pick in the third round of the 2023 draft. Achane ran a 4.32-40-yard dash at his scouting combine, and all of that speed has shown up on the field. This season, Achane has gained 804 yards and scored eight rushing touchdowns on just 102 carries, which gives him an insane 7.9 yards per carry average. Achane has 13 carries of 15 or more yards on the season, meaning that he’s good for a potential house call on more than one of every 10 carries.
Beyond the straight-line speed, Achane is also a real problem for defenses aligned in McDaniel’s motion and misdirection concepts. This was really true in Miami’s 21-14 loss to the Buffalo Bills in the 2023 regular-season finale. Achane had 10 carries for 56 yards and a touchdown in the game, and all three of his explosive plays came from a similar — and highly original — run scheme.
Each of these runs also featured pre-snap motion (of course), but the real tricky part was having Tua Tagovailoa taking the snap in the Pistol formation, and Achane right behind him. Advocates of the Pistol in the run game will tell you that putting smaller backs right behind the quarterback (Achane is 5-foot-8 and 188 pounds) makes it hard for a defense to get a clean run fit right off the snap, because the back is hard to see.
Now, we get into the misdirection fakes on each of those three plays. As seen below, Tagovailoa faked a handoff to his left to… well, nobody. The idea here was to get the same player on all three plays — Bills linebacker Tyrel Dodson — and it worked on runs of 11, 16, and 25 yards.
The @MiamiDolphins got three explosive runs from De'Von Achane vs. the @BuffaloBills with this Tua fake to… nobody, and then the pitch. LB Tyrel Dodson was the target each time, and each time, it caused a delay in the run strength. A new wrinkle for Miami's run game. pic.twitter.com/evPFffiisF
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) January 10, 2024
Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo will have to deal with all this stuff when Kansas City and Miami face off Saturday in the wild-card round of the playoffs. The Dolphins and Chiefs played each other in Week 9 over in Germany. Achane didn’t play in that game — he had a knee injury that put him on short-term injured reserve — but Spags is well aware that he’s scheming it up against a different offense now. He was asked Wednesday whether there’s an advantage to facing a team for the second time in a season.
“There may be some truth to that because we all say in this league it’s hard to beat a team twice, right? I think it helps the players in that they know the person that they line up directly against, but to both sides, there’s no advantage there either way. I’m sure they’ll change some things. We’ll have a couple of new wrinkles. It’ll be a whole different game, and it’ll be in a different country [laughter]. It’ll be a different game.”
It’ll also be below zero from a wind chill perspective in Kansas City for the game, which could have both teams leaning more on the run game.
In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys get into all the parts of Miami’s run game that could have them advancing to the divisional round. You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” previewing every game in the wild-card slate, right here:
You can also listen and subscribe to the “Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…
