‘We have to be able to stay on the field’: Dolphins want to balance big plays with longer drives

MIAMI — Alec Ingold has five touchdowns in his five-year NFL career, none as wide open as the one he scored at the Miami Dolphins training camp practice Thursday afternoon.

The fullback caught a pass from backup quarterback Mike White on a wheel route early in practice and ran 60 yards untouched, with enough time and space to celebrate the score for the final 10 yards or so.

“It’s not often you see a fullback with that much space,” he joked.

It was a 7-on-7 drill but it was an example of what the Dolphins both pride themselves on and what they’re trying not to rely on.

Miami’s offense is one of the NFL’s most versatile. Nine Dolphins scored a touchdown last season, three of whom finished the season with double-digit scores in Raheem Mostert (21), Tyreek Hill (13) and De’Von Achane (11). They were 3 yards away from having four players with at least 1,000 scrimmage yards.

That production was the result of a concerted effort to strain and overwhelm defenses with several playmakers on the field at the same time.

“It’s being able to pick from a bunch of tools,” Ingold said. “I feel like that’s kind of what we’re doing. Maximizing the positives, minimizing those negatives, and being able to build out that tool belt so that you can pull from that slot receiver, that tight end, that wide receiver — whatever it is to make the plays when their number’s called.”

The Dolphins’ offense is also synonymous with big plays. Since coach Mike McDaniel arrived in 2022, they have the most offensive plays of 50 or more yards in the NFL (21) and the sixth-most explosive plays — rushes of 10 or more yards and completions of 20 or more yards — in the league (233).

Hill’s five receptions of at least 50 yards over the past two seasons is more than eight teams have in that same span.

But the league’s best deep-ball threat wants the Dolphins’ offense to sustain more drives in 2024 and rely less on the deep ball.

“For us, going back and just looking at all of it from a veteran standpoint, I feel like we have to be able to stay on the field,” Hill said. “Third downs are huge downs for us. For us, it’s either boom or bust. We’re one of those teams that if we don’t have the long ball, it’s like, ‘Ah hell, here’s [going to be] a long game.’ … I think just being able to extend drives, have those 12-play drives, have those 10-play drives versus having a five-play-and-under drive where it’s like, ‘Oh, he hits Waddle on a 75-yard post.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh, strike up the band.’

“And it’s like, bruh, we can’t do that every game unfortunately. We can’t. As fast as we are and as much as people want to tell us how special we are, we can’t do that. We’ve got to be able to have good drives, so that’s what we believe we’ve got to get better at.”

Since 2022, also Hill’s first season with the team, the Dolphins rank 18th in average time of possession per game at 29:35 and 21st in average plays per drive with 5.66. They rank seventh in both points per drive and the percentage of drives that end in scores.

So, while it’s hard to call them reliant on the deep ball, it wouldn’t hurt to be able to move the ball in multiple ways.

“I like to score, so whichever comes first,” wide receiver Jaylen Waddle said. “One-play drive, 11-play drive. We can do it all. We’re going to try to do it all.”

Hill’s willingness to move away from the deep ball reflects a change in attitude he has had in previous years, notably last season, when he publicly expressed his goal of hitting 2,000 receiving yards for the first time in NFL history. He fell short with a league-leading 1,799 yards, but Hill called that mentality “selfish” once he was able to reflect on it. Moving forward, he said he wants to focus more on team goals — winning a playoff game and ultimately reaching the Super Bowl.

When asked about Hill’s comments, McDaniel said he didn’t think the veteran was being selfish by setting an individual goal, but appreciated his receiver’s philosophical development.

“As he evolves as a man, it’s cool to hear that that’s his viewpoint on it,” McDaniel said. “I know that he’s a supreme competitor and uses a lot of different motivation tools. It’s a win for the Dolphins that people are finding different ways to try in their own mind to improve themselves as human beings, and as a leader, that’s a powerful statement regardless of whether — I promise you, his teammates aren’t worried about that, but that’s a cool thing to come from leader.”