MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The list of reasons why the Miami Dolphins in Week 14 suffered one the league’s worst upsets of the NFL season is long, but two significant causes will sound familiar to anyone following the team.
They managed just 20 points on five possessions that crossed the Tennessee Titans’ 5-yard line. And they converted just four of their eight third or fourth-down short-yardage tries (defined for these purposes as three yards or less).
Goal-to-go and short-yardage offense have been bugaboos for head coach Mike McDaniel all season. The Dolphins actually have a slightly higher conversation in the red zone (71.1%) than they do goal-to-go (70.6%), which means, remarkably, that they’re more likely to score a touchdown from the 11-20 than they are from the 1-10.
These stats make sense when viewed through this prism:
Those game scenarios call for a dependable tight end. Only seven teams are spending less than the Dolphins on the TE position this year ($5.1 million). And of the seven teams behind them, all but three have drafted a tight end in the first three rounds in the last two years.
So if you want to make the case that the Dolphins have the worst collection of tight ends in football, you probably wouldn’t get much pushback.
Remarkably, however, there’s a potential fix still available to them, even this late in the season.
Miami Dolphins Should Make a Run at TE Zach Ertz
His name? Zachary Adam Ertz, whose 709 catches rank eighth in NFL history among tight ends, and whose 7,434 receiving yards rank 12th.
Ertz has been a free agent since asking for — and receiving — his release from the Arizona Cardinals on Nov. 30.
In the two weeks since, he’s had conversations with at least six teams in the playoff hunt, per NFL Media, but is waiting for the best possible situation before making a decision.
The Dolphins could be that situation. They don’t need an every-down tight end. They have Durham Smythe for that.
What Miami needs is a 20-30 snaps a game third-down and red-zone threat — which is perfect, given Ertz’s age (33) and pedigree.
There are obvious questions about how much he has left in the tank. Ertz’s success rate this year (41.9%) is the lowest of his career, as is his yards per catch average (6.9).
MORE: Miami Dolphins Hard Knocks Episode 4 Showcases MNF Collapse
The obvious counterargument? In Arizona, he was catching balls from Joshua Dobbs, who has been traded to and benched by two different NFL teams this season.
Is he a perfect solution?
No. You rarely, if ever, find those in December.
But Ertz would certainly help a Dolphins TE room that has accounted for 8% of Miami’s passing targets, 7.8% of its catches, 6.1% of its receiving yards, and zero of its 25 passing touchdowns.
A big-bodied, sure-handed tight end could transform an offense that has already lost two games this season because of red-zone execution.
“Getting down there and not scoring is unacceptable,” Dolphins right tackle Austin Jackson said, when asked about Monday’s struggles against the Titans. “That’s just a clear-cut execution on our part. We got to execute and handle things.”
Added McDaniel: “You can point to that as the No. 1 reason we didn’t win the game. For me, you call plays for them to work, and they didn’t. … I felt like we just lost a lot of points there.”
Want to predict the rest of the 2023 season with our FREE NFL Playoff Predictor? Looking for the most up-to-date NFL standings? What about a breakdown of team depth charts or the NFL schedule? Pro Football Network has you covered with that and more!