Miami Dolphins Must Involve Lamar Miller on Offense to Avoid Being 1-Dimensional

New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick once told reporters, "Stats are for losers. The final score is for winners." Miami Dolphins fans probably would prefer I open this column with a quote from someone (anyone) else, but it's important to keep Belichick's words in mind.

The Dolphins came out on top against the Washington Redskins, with a 17-10 victory, but not without a little help from the Redskins.

A seven-point Week 1 road win is a good start to the season, but the Dolphins might have never been in any danger of losing if they had involved running back Lamar Miller more on offense.

Miller finished the game with 13 carries for 53 yards and had one catch for 22 yards on a screen. In the first half, he had three carries for two yards against quarterback Ryan Tannehill's 17 pass attempts and 18 total dropbacks. 

Year	Run	RPG	Pass	PPG
2012	440	27.5	541	33.9
2013	349	21.8	652	40.8
2014	399	24.9	641	40.1
2015	18	18	37	37

It would be easy to say the Dolphins simply saw a weakness in the Redskins secondary they wanted to exploit, but that would assume this is a one-time thing; the Dolphins have held Miller back at times under head coach Joe Philbin.

In all of 2014, Miller never once had more than 19 carries, but the Dolphins' fourth-year head coach has said he's open to giving Miller more touches.

"I would tell you, if he's cranking and he got it 24 times a game and he's healthy and he's fast and he's explosive, it doesn't bother me one bit," Philbin said in late July. "But I think sometimes it's not taken into account what our run game is all about. The run game is really about the runner, the screens and the quarterback keeping the ball primarily. We have some plays where we toss the ball to Lamar and that's it. But a lot of them are [options], the highest percentage by far. I think that cuts into the carries a little bit."

That didn't appear to be the case on Sunday. The Dolphins were only trailing by more than three points for a minute and 22 seconds of game time, but they played almost the entire first half as if they were trailing by an insurmountable deficit. 

The Dolphins went three-and-out on their first drive of the game, and the Redskins controlled the football for 12 minutes and 43 seconds of the first quarter with a 12-play, 54-yard field-goal drive and a 10-play, 45-yard drive that resulted in a missed field goal.

That was the Dolphins' first opportunity to capitalize, which they squandered when the offense had to punt after six plays. The Dolphins were bailed out yet again—this time by a Brent Grimes interception—but the offense couldn't capitalize on a drive that began at the Redskins 21-yard line and turned the ball over on downs.

The Dolphins got some more help in the second half, when the Redskins' first four drives ended in three straight punts and an interception. Meanwhile, the Dolphins' first four drives of the second half ended with a fumble, a punt, a field goal and another punt. Tannehill dropped back to throw another 20 times in the second half, despite trailing by only three points the entire time.

That heavy imbalance between the run and the pass led to a time-of-possession imbalance that favored the Redskins (37:54) over the Dolphins (22:06). 

Make no mistake; Tannehill has improved each year in the key metrics for quarterback efficiency—touchdown-to-interception ratio, completion percentage and passer rating. On Sunday, he completed 22 of his 34 passes (64.7 percent) for 226 yards (6.6) and a touchdown for a 93.5 passer rating. 

And initially, Miller didn't get it going against the Redskins defense. After an eight-yard completion to Greg Jennings on first down, Miller had two opportunities to move the ball two yards on the Dolphins' first drive of the game. He got one yard the first time and was stopped for no gain the second time.

Only when the Dolphins needed to kill the clock did they finally turn to Miller. He had seven of his 13 carries on the team's final two drives, with less than eight minutes left in the game.

Miller is better than that; surely, the Dolphins coaches think so. They just need to do a better job of showing it in games if they want to be competitive throughout the 2015 season and not just in Week 1 against a team that practically hands them the victory. 

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained via team news release.