PLAY DISSECTED: Chad Henne to Anthony Fasano for a touchdown of 55 yards on 2nd down and 1 yard to go.

As stated in the debut of the Anatomy Of A Play feature, this will be a weekly segment that will focus on a single play in a game that the Dolphins took part in Today’s blog entry will focus on the touchdown pass of 55 yards from Henne to Fasano against the Jaguars defense. To open this feature, I am looking at the offense formation of the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins are showing two tailbacks, two tight ends, and a single wide receiver. The two tight ends pictured are David Martin and Anthony Fasano. Fasano is the tight end on the backside whilst David Martin is on the passing strength side. The passing strength is where there are the most targets presented in a pre-snap read.

The Jaguars countered this formation with a nine in the box look.



The Jaguars have a under front shown here. An under front is when the standard 4-3 defense is shifted to the weak side of the offense. The weak side of the offense here is in Anthony Fasano’s direction, which is on the left. The weakside linebacker is lined up wide of Fasano, the MIKE (or middle linebacker) is lined up across the B gap, which is the area between the left tackle and the left guard. The strong side linebacker is lined up straight ahead from the center. There is a cornerback (26) across David Martin and then there is a cornerback lined up on Brandon Marshall on the flank. Further, there is a single high safety that is lined up in between the hashes and is backpedaling with his shoulders squared. On this play, Dan Henning called a play action fake. The play action was started off as a Stretch play, in which the line pulled left and Lousaka Polite lead blocked Ronnie Brown. However, since it was a play action, it was a fake handoff and a roll out to the right for Chad Henne.

Whilst Chad Henne fakes the hand-off to Ronnie Brown, Brandon Marshall is beating the cornerback, who is trying to jam him,  out on the flank. Marshall beats the cornerback by using a pull-push technique. This technique requires Marshall to get his hands on the cornerback, bring him into his body and push him into the ground, leaving him behind. Marshall does this successfully and gets separation. Marshall does not do anything interesting here, as he just runs a 9 route, also known as a Go or Fly route. The tight ends have responsibilities of their own. David Martin, on the right, is asked to stay in and block on this particular play. Since Jacksonville put a defensive back on him, the defensive back is occupied by the inline blocking of David Martin. On the opposite side, Anthony Fasano has “check-release” responsibility. Here, he shows that he’s going to block and checks the linebacker. Once he does that, he beats the jam and releases into the open field. He gets behind the linebackers and runs a crossing route. Since the Jaguars safety has been back pedaling, he is unable to quickly close on the crossing pattern ran by Fasano so Fasano is able to catch the ball and run outside the numbers and up the field. The open running area down field is created by Brandon Marshall’s block. Marshall does a good job of getting his hands on the breast pads of the defensive back,  maintains leverage and walls off the DB. By walling off, he turns the DB back inside and has his back to the sideline, which allows Fasano to run behind him (pictured below). Finally, Brandon Marshall throws his body or is thrown to the ground into the free safety that attempts to make a play on the running Fasano and that frees up Fasano into the end zone.