How Lazor may be turning Tanny’s season around

Last year as everyone knows, Mike Sherman was the Offensive Coordinator for the Dolphins and was also Tannehill’s coach at Texas A&M. They spent 5 years together in the same offense and for some reason, Sherman could not figure out how to properly get the most out of Tannehill’s unique athleticism. Now Bill Lazor is the Offensive Coordinator and after 6 games it appears that he has already discovered a better way to help Tannehill’s skills flourish.

Last year the Dolphins were constantly trying to throw deep balls to Mike Wallace, which was not a bad idea, however Tannehill and Wallace had many issues connecting on the deep ball. All sports gambling fans were betting that Lazor was going to help correct this problem, however he has went the opposite way and has rarely even dialed up the long ball play. I am not saying this is a smart move, because I think they should at least take a shot down the field once a game, however, maybe Lazor sees that Tannehill will never be a long ball QB, so he does not want to waste precious downs. Instead Lazor is scaling down the offense to better utilize Tannehill’s strengths. The last three games Tannehill has been throwing a lot more short to medium passes, and as a result in two of the three games Tannehill has posted his 2 best QB ratings in his NFL career. We can complain all we want about Tannehill’s inability to throw the long ball, but if he can be successful with the short and medium passes and win us football games then phins fans should be able to live with that.

In addition Lazor has been incorporating more and more read option plays, and the results have been very encouraging. Tannehill is not only doing a great job of making the correct reads, but when he does make the decision to keep it and run he is making some big plays from it. I have mentioned many times before that Tannehill was a stud wide receiver in the SEC, so this is not a surprise that he can run the ball efficiently. However I do think Lazor needs to not over do it, because it will make our QB more vulnerable to bigger hits, but at the moment they are sprinkling it in at a perfect dosage amount. It is pretty clear now, that opposing teams will need to start taking this dual threat from Tannehill seriously.

Hopefully Tannehill’s trend of being more efficient and effective continues, because when Tannehill plays well the Dolphins win a lot more football games. This upcoming weekend in Jacksonville should be a chance for Tannehill to continue to preform at a higher level.