Dolphins defensive blueprint worked at times against Buffalo, but still wasn’t enough

This was the vision when the Dolphins decided to run it back on defense.

Miami pass rushers swarming to Josh Allen, harassing one of the game’s elite quarterbacks and creating pivotal turnovers.

On Sunday, in multiple key moments, the Dolphins’ blitz-heavy scheme produced results like it did much of last season.

But like most of this season, it didn’t produce enough.

Despite sacking Allen seven times and creating three turnovers, the Dolphins gave up 34 points to the Buffalo Bills and found themselves again on the losing end - this time in the playoffs - against the team and quarterback that figure to be their biggest roadblock for the foreseeable future.

“We’ve always known who we are and we’ve always known the type of fight and type of guys we have,” Dolphins linebacker Jaelan Phillips said. “Today was nothing new. We’re obviously super disappointed about the loss but so grateful and proud of our guys.”

Miami will now enter the offseason seeking answers as to how to remedy a defense that regressed for the second consecutive season in multiple categories. This will undoubtedly lead to roster changes and potentially defensive coordinator Josh Boyer, who completed his third season in that role on Sunday.

More importantly, the Dolphins need to identify what kind of defense is most effective against the Bills and Allen as well as the league’s other top offenses.

Boyer’s implementation of Cover 0 made Miami’s defense one of the best and most aggressive in the league in 2020, allowing quarterbacks an 87.6 passer rating, which ranked 10th-best in the NFL according to TruMedia.

But this season when the Dolphins blitzed, quarterbacks had a 104.9 passer rating, which ranked fifth-best in the NFL (per TruMedia).

On Sunday though, the Dolphins were most effective when blitzing Allen which they did on 52.2 percent of his dropbacks. Six of Miami’s seven sacks came on blitzes and the Dolphins produced 14 pressures on 24 dropbacks. Allen went 9 of 18 for 166 yards, one touchdown with a 77.5 passer rating on such plays.

According to TruMedia, Allen went 14 for 21 for 186 yards, two touchdowns, one interception and a 106.4 passer rating when the Dolphins did not blitz.

Interestingly, Allen averaged 9.2 yards per attempt when he was blitzed as opposed to 8.9 yards per attempt when he was not although a big part of the former average came from the 54-yard completion to Stefon Diggs in the first quarter, on which Diggs beat Xavien Howard 1-on-1.

So why couldn’t the Dolphins replicate such success in Boyer’s scheme more often this season?

“It was just us executing,” said Eric Rowe, who stripped Allen on a safety blitz, leading to Zach Sieler’s fumble return for a touchdown that gave the Dolphins their only lead 24-20 with 13:59 left in the third quarter. “There were games we didn’t execute and had miscommunication. But today everybody was playing fast and executing and the ball was falling our way. We always strive for consistency and give it our all out there.”

Injuries to key players such as Byron Jones, Brandon Jones, Nik Needham and Emmanuel Ogbah played a part.

The Dolphins gave up 30.6 points per game during their nine regular season road games and continued that trend giving up 34 on Sunday.

Not producing enough turnovers was another although that was not a problem on Sunday with Howard and Jevon Holland each intercepting Allen as well.

“We’ll just keep progressing and keep taking steps,” Phillips said. “We’re going to look at this season really critically and really look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out what needs to change and what needs to be done to move forward and take accountability.

“I really love the guys on this team and I hope we can retain as many as possible but the reality of the league is that a lot of guys might not be here anymore. But I’m proud of our guys.”