Ryan Tannehill seeks breakthrough with Dolphins under Adam Gase
DAVIE, Fla. – Ryan Tannehill is one of three quarterbacks in NFL history to throw for 15,000 yards in his first four seasons. Peyton Manning and Dan Marino – a Miami Dolphins deity around here – are the other two.
He’s strong-armed, prototypically built, and athletic. But Tannehill hasn’t escaped criticism because he has never led Miami to a winning record.
His new head coach bets he can change that.
“It’s going to come down to one thing: being efficient in the passing game,” Dolphins coach Adam Gase told Paste BN Sports recently. “Being the quarterback that can protect us from ourselves. He has the flexibility of putting ourselves in the right play when I don’t call the right play. That helps the entire team. If we protect the football, with the way our defense is playing, that’s going to put us in a great position.”
Before, Tannehill’s coaches and offensive coordinators handcuffed him.
Now, Tannehill, 28, wields more than just the freedom to audible between pass concepts and run-pass options.
“It’s everything,” Gase added. “He has the whole playbook at his fingertips. So we always have a structure for him, but he can legitimately go to whatever he wants.”
So what will a Gase-Tannehill offense look like starting today in Seattle?
The key lies in what Tannehill does well.
Perhaps more so than any coach in the NFL, Gase molds his offense to the skill set of the players in it. Tim Tebow, Peyton Manning, Jay Cutler, and now, Tannehill: Those are the passers Gase has tutored in the past five years.
If there’s one theme in that list, it’s how dissimilar they all are – on and off the field. Yet, Gase enjoyed success at each stop because he tailored playbook.
With Tebow, he built a simple, one-read passing game and bolstered it with read-option rushes.
With Manning, he crafted a juggernaut that eclipsed NFL records for points (603), touchdowns (76), passing yards (5,477), and passing first downs (293) in 2013 by empowering Manning’s pre-snap knowledge and ability to make anticipatory throws.
In Chicago, he simplified the scheme and reigned in Cutler’s sometimes carelessness with the ball through smart play calls.
“That’s what coaching is,” Gase said, before adding that the Dolphin offense is “going to look a lot different than we looked in Chicago, or Denver.”
If training camp and the first three preseason games forecast the future, Miami will attack opponents with a no-huddle, quick-release, short-to-intermediate passing game that takes its chances down the field selectively.
Gase said in August he was “fine” with the conservative approach because NFL passing offenses trend “10 yards and under.” Gase wants to protect Tannehill – whom opposing defenses sacked an NFL-high 184 times in the past four seasons. “If you want to stand back there and have your quarterbacks get his brains beat out, go at it.”
He’s on to something.
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton led the league last year in average yards per completion (8.4). Tannehill tied for eighth at 7.2.
The Gase-Tannehill union, however, is still in its infancy. And Gase knows success takes time.
Gase remembers the first plays he ever called for Manning. It was the preseason of the record-breaking 2013 year.
At the time 34 years old and coaching a then-36 Manning, Gase’s first three series at the helm of the first-string offense produced two punts and a fumble.
“I remember (Manning) coming to the sideline and me thinking: ‘Great start,’ ” Gase said with not-so-subtle sarcasm. “With me and Ryan, the relationship gets stronger every day. It’s just going to take a minute for us to figure each other out within games. That one always takes a second, no matter who you’re with.”
If the Dolphins are to break a seven-year postseason drought this year, they better hope it’s a quick minute.
That goes for Tannehill, too.
He signed a four-year, $77 million contract extension prior to the start of last season. He’s set to make $9.34 million this year. But 2016, as Tannehill told Paste BN Sports in June, is a “very important” season for him. His salary shoots up to $17.975 million in 2017, with only $3.5 million of that guaranteed.
So if Miami wants to move on, next offseason would be the time.
But the Dolphins aren’t thinking that way. Tannehill said he felt that Gase’s hiring is “coming at a great time for me.”
His bosses do, too.
“We’d love to have them together for a number of years,” Dolphins executive vice president of football operations Mike Tannenbaum told Paste BN Sports. “That gives us the best situation to be successful. Ryan has played at a high level. I expect that to continue. Look, if we have success, we’ll lose coordinators. But again, we’re trying to put systems in place where we can have continuity for years to come. When we made the commitment to Adam, we were doing it for a long time.”
Follow Lorenzo Reyes on Twitter @LorenzoGReyes.
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