Snaps missing

Dolphins ranked last in plays from scrimmage

Miami looks at their 2016 offense.

It’s a numbers game. That’s what the Miami Dolphins concluded when they analyzed their 2016 offense, which ranked 24th in total offense (332.8 yards per game) and 17th in points per game (22.7).

“When we dissected the whole season, the whole thing came back to a lack of number of snaps,” offensive coordinator Clyde Christensen said.

“You could take any stat and if you multiplied it out, we were OK. We just didn’t get enough snaps.”

The Dolphins averaged 57 snaps per game (913 total), which was last in the NFL.

The Dolphins return nine starters, and the hope is continuity leads to improvement.

To that end, coach Adam Gase didn’t sweat the draft, a three-day span in which his team used five of its seven selections on defense. The first offensive pick didn’t come until the fifth round when the Dolphins selected Utah guard Isaac Asiata. The only other offensive selection was wide receiver Isaiah Ford, the seventh-round pick from Virginia Tech.

“I felt good about where we

were at on offense,” Gase said.

“There were a couple of pieces we were looking to add, but if it didn’t happen, I wasn’t going to be in a panic.”

After all, the running game was efficient, ranking ninth in the league at 114 yards per game.

The passing game was a bit lacking, ranking 26th at 218.8 yards per game. But that wasn’t due to an abundance of sacks. The Dolphins only allowed 30 sacks, 10th fewest in the league, and quarterback Ryan Tannehill had a career-best 93.5 passer rating.

So a big part of the plan for offensive improvement comes from within, getting more snaps, making the drives last longer, getting more plays per game.

Much of that, Christensen figures, could be accomplished by improving third-down efficiency, an area where Miami ranked 25th in the league last year (36.7 percent), not changing personnel.

To Christensen, the offense’s lower-tier ranking in categories such as yards and points was largely due to a lack of opportunity.

“We made big plays per snap, [it] was good number,” he said. “Our rushes were a good number. Even our passing efficiency was a good number.

“We broke down on third down, which cut down [on our snaps]. And now all of a sudden I think we had the lowest number of snaps in the league, or very close to the lowest number of snaps in the league, and so our biggest thing was staying on the field, eliminate some of those penalties and minus plays, and stay on the field, and then we’ll see some natural improvement just from year one to two.”

The Dolphins only lost two starters on offense — tight end Dion Sims (signed with Chicago via free agency) and left tackle Branden Albert (traded to Jacksonville).

They’ll shift left guard Laremy Tunsil to left tackle to fill Albert’s absence. They signed left guard Ted Larsen to replace Tunsil and tight end Julius Thomas, who was acquired in a trade with the Jaguars, replaces Sims.

The rest of the starting offense — Tannehill, running back Jay Ajayi, wide receivers Jarvis Landry, Kenny Stills and DeVante Parker, center Mike Pouncey, right guard Jermon Bushrod, and right tackle Ja’Wuan James — remains the same.

Part of the reason for the offensive continuity can be traced to the organization’s over-arching philosophy of installing a hard-working, no-nonsense culture and retaining players who fit the culture.

But most of the reason is because the Dolphins think they have the right players, they just have to get more snaps. That’s what their postseason analysis revealed.

“There were very few things that were just deficient proportionately to the snaps,” Christensen said. “They were actually better than we thought. It was surprising.”