In one of the most underrated moves of free agency the Dolphins signed arguably the most consistent right tackle of the past five seasons for a mere $3.5m. Tyson Clabo (+3.0) showed against Tampa Bay why he’s only graded outside the top ten right tackles once in the PFF era. Clabo didn’t allow a single pressure and had no downgrades for the game. Barring a precipitous decline in his play, Clabo will be a huge upgrade for the Dolphins this season.

The Dolphins’ defense whiffed on 10 tackles.

Imagine how good the D will be once we stop missing!

Spending a mid-round pick on a fullback is akin to a first round pick at any other position. The expectations for that fullback would be high. So when the Chicago Bears drafted Evan Rodriguez (+2.1) in the fourth round in 2012, many believed he would be leading the way for Matt Forte for much of the foreseeable future. It didn’t end up working out that way after multiple off the field incidents led to Rodriguez’ release this offseason. The Dolphins’ signed him a day later and he’s been in competition with incumbent fullback Jorvorskie Lane ever since.

Against the Bucs Rodriguez demonstrated why he was drafted so highly. He caught two balls for 16 yards and had multiple positively graded blocks as a lead blocker. Rodriguez is an amazing athlete for a fullback. At the combine he ran a 4.58s 40 yard dash and had a 36″ vertical leap at 242 pounds. On both his catches he flashed that running back level athleticism. On his first catch with 8:23 left in the fourth quarter, Rodriguez came out of the backfield to the flats and had a good five yards of sepearation on the trailing linebacker and picked up a first down. He ran a similar flats route just a few plays later and made two defenders miss with a smooth cutback and picked up nine yards. It was just one game, but it will be interesting to see if Rodriguez has showed enough for a roster spot this sesaon.

Good point Rich. The best teams in this league constantly innovate, and the ones that struggle play catch up. The most successful team we've had in this last decade was the one that started a league trend of using the Wildcat.

Rock, I don't disagree with anything you said. The Wildcat was a short term answer, and didn't hold up. But that doesn't take away that the Dolphins went against the grain, and it worked, if only for a year.

A lot of innovating is finding the right players, and then utilizing them correctly. The 2 TE sets worked for New England because they had two playmakers at TE. If we roll out Egnew and Clay thinking we'll bust the seems open, it's going to get ugly.

If Rodriguez is someone that can add a twist to our offense, we should get him on the field; especially if it's in a way that opposing defenses aren't seeing week in and week out.

The Wildcat ended up being a 1 year fluke .... lightening in the bottle scenario. Yes, other teams attempted to emulate it, but nobody is running it full-time .... hell not even a quarter of their offensive snaps.