The Dolphin
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- Mar 19, 2019
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The Dolphins parted ways with their two leading sackers from last season and they haven’t brought in any edge rushers to fill the spots left open by Robert Quinn and Cameron Wake.
Miami’s pass rush wasn’t overwhelming with those players and the current makeup of the defense hasn’t led to many predictions of a big jump in productivity. On Thursday, though, defensive coordinator Patrick Graham downplayed the personnel side of things.
Graham said he was confident the team had enough pieces to build an effective pass rush and stressed the role the coaching staff will play in making sure those pieces are successful.
“The beauty about the pass rush, and I’ve always said this, is it’s very fluid,” Graham said at a press conference. “Everything is very fluid. As you watch it and you try to get an understanding of it, you can take advantage of it in different ways, different shapes, different forms and different people. It doesn’t always have to be the cookie cutter idea that people have of a 6-foot-5, 250 pound whatever who runs a 4.5. That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s going to automatically guarantee you pass rush success. To me, pass rush success is us game-planning it, the players executing it and us trying our best to affect the quarterback.”
Graham and Dolphins head coach Brian Flores both have experience working with Patriots teams that have rushed the passer well without having the prototypical stars coming off the edge. It looks like they’ll need to repeat that trick if quarterbacks are going to feel uncomfortable against their defense this season.