Chat » Let’s learn a thing or two about one of the most unappreciat

ed positions in football."WhiteSections 2018 NFL Draft2018 NFL Free Agency2018 Mock Drafts2018 Draft ProspectsBreakingDolphins 2019 Draft picks: 13 - Christian Wilkins; 78 - Michael Deiter; 151 - Andrew Van Ginkel; 202 - Isaiah Prince; 233 - Chandler Cox; 234 - Myles Gaskin脳Offensive Line Technique 101 Adam Joseph Duhe Jersey , Part 1: “Z’s” at the KneesNew,22commentsLet’s learn a thing or two about one of the most unappreciated positions in football.ESTShareTweetShareShareOffensive Line Technique 101, Part 1: “Z’s” at the KneesJasen Vinlove-USA TODAY SportsWhat does a 6’1’, 170 pound former collegiate basketball player know about offensive line play? More than you might think, but this article is courtesy of my good friend Derick, who is the former starting center of the football team of the same college. I asked Derick if I could email him back and forth about OL technique this summer, and before even agreeing to it, he said, “Rule #1: Z’s at the knees”. This is part one of a series over the off-season.It immediately made sense to me — there’s a reason that basketball players can easily transition to football, and that’s because there’s technique overlap. Yes, a 6’1”, 170 pound shooting guard was taught a similar technique to a left guard. In basketball, we call it the “triple threat” position.You can pass, dribble, and shoot from this position — talk to any of your friends or family who have elementary-aged children or teenagers at a basketball camp, and I guarantee they talked about this. The “triple threat” position keeps your opponent guessing as to your intention, all the while staying balanced and in an athletic position to do different things. The main difference between the basketball player and the offensive lineman is the hands. A basketball player will have the hands near the waist, while an offensive lineman will be higher on the chest — this is where leverage comes into play.“Z’s at the knees” serves as the momentum strategy for an offensive lineman’s leverage. Again, the goal is to move with the legs, control with the arms. Scarnecchia likens it to moving a stalled vehicle: use the powerful muscles in the trunk, glutes, and legs to generate the force necessary to move the car, while using the upper body to steer. Moving a large human functions in an analogous way. It’s not different from shooting a 3 pointer in basketball. Generate the force from your legs, and use your upper body and follow-through to control the accuracy of the shot.But let’s think of leverage in two different contexts: general leverage and play-specific leverage. General leverage you acquire with better pad level (AKA “pad leverage”), this tenet always stays the same — what fluctuates is play direction and “anchor points”. Play-specific leverage or positional leverage helps the OL to understand what foot to step with and where to put his hands. Hand placement will be the next installment in the series. Play call does make a difference, however, as a pulling guard may not immediately get into a “Z’s at the knees” position until they get into the gap they are assigned to and get to the collision point. At collision, the OL will be expected to move their man with this ultra-basic principle, but beforehand, may be in a more vertical position that you are accustomed to seeing in an offensive lineman’s stance. We’ll progressively get more complex with this series, but as we trek into the mouth of NFL Draft season, keep in mind that the guy with the biggest bench press is nothing but an outlier if the lower body technique isn’t there. Functional upper body strength is important, but a consistent frame http://www.thedolphinslockerroom.com/authentic-minkah-fitzpatrick-jersey , footwork, and flexion of the lower body to drive defenders is the hallmark of high quality offensive line play. Please let me know if there’s anything specifically you’d like to learn about as it relates to offensive line play. The whole goal is to learn some things so if I can steer it in a helpful direction, I will! Ever since team owner Stephen Ross said at his season ending press conference two weeks ago that the Miami Dolphins might have to go 3-13 next year to get where they want to go, there has been quite of hand wringing and what I like to refer to as manufactured outrage. Both of the major South Florida newspapers that cover the Dolphins, the Miami Herald and Sun Sentinel, have run articles about how ‘tanking’ won’t work and why the Dolphins shouldn’t attempt to do so. As most of the regulars on this site know, whenever I’ve lamented Miami winning meaningless games late in the year, thereby greatly reducing their opportunities to land a franchise type player in the draft, I’ve been met with everything from people citing extraordinary exceptions to the rule -- “Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round”, “Aaron Rodgers went 24th”, “Marino went 27th”, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum, to outright ridicule from my fellow Phinsider brethren. As if something that happened 19, 15 or even 36 years ago has any relevance whatsoever to the here and now.Oh, and they like to bring up Russell Wilson, too, because, hey, quarterbacks who are 5’11” tall win championships all the time. It’s simply amazing how much money is made, and lost, and how much energy is expended by people who really, truly believe that because something happened one time out of a thousand, that it just has to happen again, and that it will happen to them. As I’ve said before, that’s why they sell lottery tickets. Here in Illinois, millions of people play the ‘Mega Millions’ lottery every year. There’s just one problem: the last time someone won the ‘Mega Millions’ was in 2012, nearly seven years ago. A whole lot of roads have been paved and schools built since then, by what has become known as the ‘tax of the ignorant’. But don’t tell those nice, well meaning folks who stand in line day after day, patiently waiting for the privilege of paying for their tickets. After all, they’re special Womens Cameron Wake Jersey , so they’re going to beat the one in three hundred million odds against them, or so they believe.When I said a few weeks back that the Dolphins will only get better with better players, one commenter responded with something to the effect of, “Dude, don’t you think we know they need better players?”Honestly, I’m not sure we do know that. If we’re going to sit here and say, with a straight face, that a draft pick in the mid twenties is every bit as good as a top 10-15 pick, because, ‘It’s not where you pick, it’s who you pick’, we might as well go out and join the ‘Flat Earth Society’ (yes, there is such an organization; you can look it up). Does anybody really think that the Dolphins will be as good as the Cleveland Browns next season? Do we think the Jacksonville Jaguars are going to go 4-12 again next year, after playing in the AFC championship game a season ago? Do we think that the Los Angeles Rams amassed their gaudy regular season record solely on the basis of outstanding coaching? Let me help you out a little bit here: the answer to all three questions is, or should be, ‘No’. The common denominator between the Browns, Jaguars and Rams is that they had superior draft position in years that some really good, game changing players were available. Players like Baker Mayfield, Myles Garrett, Joel Bitonio, Jalen Ramsey, Leonard Fournette, Jared Goff, Todd Gurley and Aaron Donald. Both the 2000 Baltimore Ravens and the 2015 Denver Broncos won Super Bowls without even having a franchise quarterback, because they stockpiled stud defensive players that were selected with high draft picks. I don’t mean to sound harsh or negative, but with all the hoopla, hubbub, hullabaloo and ballyhoo going on about who the Dolphins’ next coach is going to be, I really don’t care all that much. He may very well be fired by the time the team gets good again, anyway. What I do care about is the Miami Dolphins becoming a much better football team, and without a lot more good players, that wouldn’t happen if they brought in Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll or Don Shula Jason Taylor Jersey , circa 1972. At the risk of stating the obvious, we should remember that all NFL teams run, essentially, the same plays. It’s which players are attempting to execute those plays, along with when they’re called, that matters. I’ll grant you that throwing the ball on third and one, or running it on third and ten probably isn’t a good idea, but then again, perhaps if the team had some linemen who could actually block, they wouldn’t be throwing on third and one to begin with.But, back to the concept of tanking. What does it really mean, really entail? According to Wikipedia, tanking, as it relates to sports, is ‘match fixing, or when a competitor deliberately loses without gambling being involved’.At no time, to my knowledge, has anyone ever suggested that the Dolphins intentionally lose a game for the purposes of increasing the value of their draft picks. I’ve never suggested that, and certainly neither has Stephen Ross. All I’ve said is that the Dolphins have a nasty habit of winning games late in the season, when it has either already been determined that they weren’t going to the playoffs or that if they did go, they would be immediately trounced by the top seeded team in the conference in their very first playoff game. The latter was certainly the case in 2018, when the Dolphins were ranked near the bottom of the league on both offense and defense and also had a lot of players on injured reserve.What I’m fervently hoping for is not that the Dolphins intentionally lose games, but rather, that they don’t expend every last draft pick, every last free agent dollar and make every last personnel move to try and win the Super Bowl that same year. In other words, I’d like them to take their collective foot off the accelerator once in a while, instead of going for all the marbles when they clearly don’t have the horses to try and make a title run. That’s exactly how a team ends up finishing 8-8, which, in turn, leads to . . . . wait for it . . . . more 8-8 finishes! You have to build a team from the bottom up; you have to have a solid foundation in place before you build a house, have an actual cake before you add the proverbial frosting. You don’t spend six draft picks in a three year period on wide receivers when your offensive line has been decimated by ‘BullyGate’. Some of the coaches the Dolphins have had over the past couple of decades seemed as though they were a lot more concerned with their W-L record after they left than they were about the long term success of the team they were coaching at the time. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we need the head coach and the front office for the Dolphins to be on the same page as an organization. If you think that the Dolphins haven’t regressed mightily over the past few seasons, let’s compare the 2018 team to the 2013 edition. In 2013 http://www.thedolphinslockerroom.com/authentic-matt-haack-jersey , the second year for both head coach Joe Philbin and quarterback Ryan Tannehill, Miami went up to Pittsburgh in late December and beat the Steelers in the snow. They also, in just the second week of the season, traveled to Indianapolis and whipped the Colts at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, winning the game on the road in the process. Could the 2018 Dolphins have accomplished either of those feats? Of course not.At the end of the day, we’re all just fans here, and we all want to see the team do well. It’s the ‘doing well’ part where our respective opinions have a tendency to greatly diverge. I’ll say it right now: if I have a choice between the Dolphins going to the playoffs as the fifth or sixth seed, or not going to the playoffs, I’d rather they stay home. For the amount of physical wear and tear a playoff run causes the players to have to endure, plus having our draft pretty much ruined three months later, I don’t want to see them in the playoffs. Give me a third seed or higher, or give me nothing. Since the league added wildcard teams to the playoff field in 1978, only four teams over the ensuing 41 seasons have won three consecutive games on the road, in the playoffs, to advance to the Super Bowl: the 1985 Patriots, the 2005 Steelers, the 2007 Giants and the 2010 Packers. Every one of those teams either had one or more future Hall of Famers, a franchise quarterback, a dominating defense or some combination thereof. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see anything in that group of qualifiers that describes any member or unit of the current Miami Dolphins team, unless you want to count Cam Wake, as a potential HOF’er, and who was barely hanging on at age 36 last year.Here’s to hoping that the Dolphins do find a good coach who can oversee what promises to be both an eventful year and a forgettable 2019 regular season. If we do go 3-13, I’ll be doing cartwheels down the hallway of my building, and I don’t know if I’ve ever even done a cartwheel. Also, if someone could come out with a ‘Miami Miracle’ hoodie and T-shirt, perhaps we could come up with a similar product for the next season or two. We could have a slogan like, ‘Better Tanking For Two Years Than Stanking For Twenty’, etc. What do you think? Have a great week, everybody.