An In-Game Adjustment That Helped the Dolphins Steal a Win in 2022

We always hear about teams making “halftime adjustments.” More often than not, this is overblown. The truth is that NFL teams aren’t just waiting until halftime when their players are taking bathroom breaks, eating orange slices, and gulping down juice boxes to make adjustments. They’re constantly doing so throughout the game.

In Week 2 of the 2022 season, the Dolphins were able to come back from a 3-touchdown deficit against the Ravens and score 28 points in the fourth quarter to escape with an improbable victory. In-game adjustments played a significant role on at least one of those four touchdowns.

This first play I’m going to show you was a 3rd-and-8 in the third quarter. The Dolphins would shift to a 3x1 formation with Jaylen Waddle as the single receiver to the boundary:

Pre-snap, the Ravens were showing 2-deep safeties, a blitz look, and Marcus Peters locking up in press-man on Waddle:

Baltimore would ultimately bring 5 pass rushers, including an overload pressure to the 3-receiver side. The two deep safeties didn’t quite rotate completely to a true cover-3. This was more a variation of a quarters-based coverage with the safeties cheating or tilting/pushing to the 3-receiver side:

The routes to focus on are Tyreek Hill’s deep-over from the inside #3 position and Mike Gesicki’s in-breaker at the top of the screen:

The Ravens responded as shown below, with the back-side safety turning his attention to Hill’s deep-over route:

Baltimore’s coverage took away the strong side, so quarterback Tua Tagovailoa targeted the boundary, where Waddle was running an out-route at the first-down marker against Peters:

That route isn’t a great option against press-man, but Tua didn’t have many other good alternatives. So he attempted to fit this ball in. The result was an incompletion, and the Dolphins would be forced to punt:

Head Coach Mike McDaniel knew that if the Dolphins found themselves in a similar situation and got the same look from Baltimore, they could run the same play just with a better option on the backside.

With just under 8 minutes remaining in the game and the Dolphins trailing 35-21, McDaniel got that chance.

Miami faced a 3rd-and-10. This time, they dressed up the play a bit differently to keep the Ravens off the scent.

The Dolphins shifted to a 3x1 formation again, utilizing the motion to help prevent the Ravens from being able to effectively disguise their defense. This time, however, McDaniel spread out his three receivers to the strong side instead of using tight splits with a stack. And instead of using Waddle as the isolated receiver to the boundary, he used Tyreek Hill: