Hyde: How Henne and Henning didn't work together

[CF DolFan]

It just amazes me that poeple outside of our organization can figure out the trends that our staff can't. I certainly have wondered why Henne continues to be under center with an empty backfield as that seems useless to me.

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports/columnists/hyde/blog/2011/01/hyde_how_henne_and_henning_did.html

By Dave Hyde January 11, 2011 08:17 AM

Dolphins owner Steve Ross wants a new and exciting offense. No surprise there. What Dolphins fan doesn't? Didn't H. Wayne Huizenga want that kind of offense for his final decade as Dolphins owner?

The problem is getting the parts. Question No. 1 is the quarterback. Question 2 is the offensive coordinator. Both no doubt will be replaced in the coming weeks. Of the two, the QB is clearly the harder to find - great quarterbacks make great coaches is the common line. And over the last decade, as I've written before, Norv Turner, Chan Gailey, Mike Mularkey and Cam Cameron all look better at calling plays after leaving the Dolphins' quarterback hole of the last decade and finding better quarterbacks.

This time, it was more than just Chad Henne. Offensive coordinator Dan Henning, who worked so well with Chad Pennington in 2008, was an issue, too. To show how a quarterback and coordinator must work together, here's some great research down by Chris Kouffman of UniversalDraft.com regarding Henne and the play-calling this past season. I could never figure out why they were calling so much play-action in clear passing situations. Chris took that one further. He researched Henne's work with and without the play-action plays.

The following is Chris' findings and conclusion:

Henne in play-action: 68 of 113 for 832 yards, 2 TDs, 10 INTs, 1 Fumble Lost

Henne without play-action: 237 of 387 for 2482 yards, 13 TDs, 8 INTs, 1 Fumble Lost

Disclosure: I did not count the interception against Pittsburgh in the final seconds as an interception, because…it wasn’t. I’ve seen other statistical services that don’t count it, either. My allegiance is to fact, not fine print. Also, my statistics might not jive fully with the official stat line (not materially different) if you add them up and whatnot, this is just because I wanted to see Henne’s tendencies and I was not concerned with things like unrelated penalties that resulted in No Play, etc.

Conclusions:

Dolphins used too much play-action, regardless of Henne’s strengths or weaknesses. I didn’t tally up Tyler Thigpen’s action but he only took about 1.5 games worth of snaps anyway. About 1 out of 4 pass plays were play-action. I don’t have numbers to support this conclusion but when I have gone about trying to observe other teams’ proclivities toward the play-action, I’ve found that they usually use it about half as much.

The Dolphins don’t sell play-action, at all. Of all teams I’ve watched in 2010, college and pro, they are either the worst or second-worst at selling play-action. Contrary to popular belief this is not all about the QB. Watch the OL play on all play-actions, just the OL, blind out the QB and RB and tell me whether it’s a run or pass. You’ll be right 95% of the time. It isn’t laziness, they’re not coached to sell it. Watch the RBs, they’re not coached to sell it either. Ricky Williams is worse than Ronnie Brown about it. Most of the time, Ricky doesn’t even bother to show up to the exchange point (sort of like he didn’t bother to show up for the 2004 season…or the 2010 season, for that matter). He just hurries into whatever his assignment is, blocking or running. Ronnie is mostly the same. When either of the backs does meet Henne at the exchange point, they both have their hands at their waist the whole time, not bothering to fake like they just received the ball or breaking down like they’re trying to pick a hole. This is a sign that they’re not coached properly and they don’t buy in. From a play design standpoint, play-action for the Dolphins’ coaches is a mere tack-on. When you watch the Jets’ use of play-action, you see two distinct plays taking shape. You see the run that they’re faking, and exactly what kind of run it is, and then Sanchez tucks the ball, the wide receivers release after faking a stalk block, and the actual pass play takes shape. In Miami, not even close. Not. Even. Close. Everyone just hurries into their pass play assignments. Quite frankly, the QB fake on the play-action is the most competent aspect of it. Henne is very inconsistent in his play fakes. That’s better than consistently bad or non-existent, which is the case with the other points of execution in play-action. And people should not act like it’s Henne’s fault if he’s inconsistent on the fake. Chad Pennington is Mr. Mechanics, but I dove into the 2009 footage pre-injury to get a point of reference, and he was very inconsistent and often lazy with his play-action mechanics as well. When you’re not coached on something, even the most fundamentally sound players can fall into taking shortcuts.

The Dolphins staff knew, KNEW, that Chad Henne does not like taking his eyes off the defense. How many times did we hear that they don’t call shotgun plays because Henne doesn’t like taking his eyes off the defense at the snap? Does it take a genius to make the connection that he would therefore dislike play-action even more, considering a play-action pass usually calls for you to not just take your eyes off the defense for a split second but to actually turn your back to it? Chad Henne is bad at re-acquiring the defense in his head after he’s been forced to take his eyes off it. It’s clear.

But that’s not the only reason he threw interceptions on about 1 out of 11 play-action passes. As has been complained about, Henne is not an aggressive quarterback. Play-action passes are by their nature aggressive pass plays. The timing is aggressive (deeper drops), the route combinations are usually deeper and more aggressive, and therefore not surprising that he averaged 7.3 yards per attempt off play-action as opposed to 6.4 yards per attempt non play-action. My theory is the play-action pass was the coaching staff’s attempt to force aggressiveness into Henne’s shot selection. He’s obviously not very comfortable with the coaches forcing something out of him like that.

This should go without saying but if you’re going to rely on play-action so much, shouldn’t defenses be scared of your ground game?

This should also go without saying but, why did they keep calling play-action passes in 3rd & Long situations, or when in the midst of a 2 minute drill, or down by 38 points to the Patriots? I counted 12 times the Dolphins called a play-action pass on 3rd & 10+ yards. Shockingly, Chad Henne threw 2 interceptions in said situations (Cincinnati, @ New England). There were more instances either due to time or circumstance, that the Dolphins called play-action pass when there was zero reason for the defense to buy it.

The Dolphins changed things up against the Detroit Lions. They used shotgun more than they had all year, and used play-action fewer times than they had all year. The result was, as Tony Sparano put it, Chad Henne having the fewest negative plays in a game in his career…on 53 snaps. The offense scored 27 points (high, for them). He threw two picks in that game, critical ones at that, but I believe Sparano would go on to explain that the first interception was a route issue with Mickey Shuler, and the second was the one where Davone Bess fell down on his break. Curiously, after getting this positive performance (well, more positive than the others) from Chad Henne and the offense against Detroit, at New England they put the shotgun back on the shelf, reverted back to some of the same play-action ways (including calling one on 3rd & 14 which was intercepted) and of course the results were dreadful.

In the end, I’m not paid millions of dollars to figure out why Chad Henne can’t execute 12 play-action passes without throwing an interception, nor to figure out how I should adapt the offense to compensate for his shortcomings (most of which should have been known by now). But, they are…and not only did they not do that, they coached the details poorly.

Touchdown Rate: Play-Action 1.79%, No Play-Action 3.39%

Interception Rate: Play-Action 8.93%, No Play-Action 2.09%

Quarterback Rating: Play-Action 51.9, No Play-Action 82.4


By the way this shouldn’t be interpreted as really a defense of Chad Henne. He’s not a good quarterback and I’m pretty confident of that now. You were right. But it just shows that he’s not the only stinky piece of cheese in the refrigerator. When everyone obsesses about figuring out which side is so bad that it’s making the other side look bad, chances are they’re both bad. Chad Henne made them look worse than they really are in some ways, but they also made him look worse than he really is.

Addendum:

(Just so no one misconstrues what Chris is thinking - and because he posted on this subject below - I'm adding an e-mail he sent after compiling this research. -- DH)

By the way this shouldn’t be interpreted as really a defense of Chad Henne. He’s not a good quarterback and I’m pretty confident of that now. But it just shows that he’s not the only stinky piece of cheese in the refrigerator. When everyone obsesses about figuring out which side is so bad that it’s making the other side look bad, chances are they’re both bad. Chad Henne made them look worse than they really are in some ways, but they also made him look worse than he really is.

[Dolphster]

Very interesting article.  Still sorting through it all before I'm comfortable as to what my take on it all is.  But definitely an interesting read.

[tepop84]

does this include the plays where chad is too stupid to realize the play call, and just play actions anyways, even with an empty backfield?

[Pappy13]

It just amazes me that poeple outside of our organization can figure out the trends that our staff can't.

Make no mistake, the staff knows this information.  Tony Sparano knows how many snaps every player has taken in preseason, you honestly think they don't know the stats on Chad Henne in play-action and not?  If they don't then Tony is obviously concerned with the wrong information, but I don't think that's the problem.

The problem is that they don't know what to do about it.  Either they can't get the players to realize what they are doing wrong on play-action or they just don't focus on it.  I wonder sometimes what they are practicing during the week.  You heard Ricky mention that they didn't practice the wildcat much this year.  Are they practicing play-action passes and if so are the coaches using them to teach the players what they are doing wrong or do they just go through the motions and the players really don't learn much from them?  These are the questions that need to be answered.  Is it the coaching or the players?  I still feel like it has more to do with the coaching than the players.

Perhaps a new offensive coordinator and QB coach will fix that.  We can only hope.

[fyo]

The problem is that they don't know what to do about it. 

They could start off by NOT running play-action pass in 3rd and long when out of field goal range. That's a pretty rare thing for most teams to do... with good reason.

[Brian Fein]

I think I posted earlier in the season in the Fins forum about how they don't use play-action effectively.  Its a big problem, IMO, and he's right - NO ONE sells it.  Not the line and especially not the RB's.  Sticking the ball out with both hands death-gripping it while you drop back is not effective play action.

Its a coaching problem, and I'm surprised (and a bit disappointed) that it went unaddressed for 16 games.

[Pappy13]

They could start off by NOT running play-action pass in 3rd and long when out of field goal range. That's a pretty rare thing for most teams to do... with good reason.

True, but that's only a band-aid solution.  Granted that part of the solution is using it at the right time, but the root cause of the problem is that they don't have an effective play-action passing team.  That's not a good thing for a team that tries to be run oriented.  To really fix the problem they need to improve at play action passes.  The solution is to fix the play-action pass mechanics of your team, not quit using it.

Again I'm gonna go back to what Ricky said, Sparano is a detail oriented guy, almost to a fault.  It's great that Tony says they need to be good on third down and they need to be good in the red zone and they need to be good with ball security, but all of that is just words.  The question is HOW?  That's what the coaching staff is charged with.  Determining HOW to be all these things and teaching the players how to do it.  If they aren't doing it, you have to question whether it's the student or the teacher.  I believe that everyone CAN learn, it's just a matter of finding the right way (or person) to teach them.

[tits muldoon]

Sparano is to damn stubborn and stupid too be a good head coach. Poor mans Jeff Del Rio. Having said that its all about the players, half the coach's in this league owe their jobs too Brett Favre & Tom Brady!

[DZA]

Sparano is to damn stubborn and stupid too be a good head coach. Poor mans Jeff Del Rio. Having said that its all about the players, half the coach's in this league owe their jobs too Brett Favre & Tom Brady!

And Why does the League owe Brett and Tom again??