Brock Osweiler will start for the Miami Dolphins again on Sunday, but the Detroit Lions aren’t altering their defensive game plan.
Ryan Tannehill showed up on the injury report late last week for the Miami Dolphins with an injury to his throwing shoulder, and Brock Osweiler wound up starting in his place against the Chicago Bears. The results were good, as Osweiler threw for 380 yards and three touchdowns (with two interceptions) in a 31-28 overtime win.
Osweiler will start again this week against the Detroit Lions, and in Week 8 as well with a short week for Miami and Tannehill likely to remain out.
Tannehill has a sprained AC joint in his shoulder, which puts him in line for a multi-week absence that seems to be coming to quick fruition. So the Lions were probably preparing as if Osweiler would start this week anyway, and safety Glover Quin confirmed that’s the case while also citing a minimal difference between Tannehill and Osweiler.
People think there’s a huge difference … Yeah, Tannehill may run a little more, but it’s not like Brock can’t run. You look at what Tannehill was doing, it wasn’t like he was coming out trying to run for 50, 60 yards a game. If you gave him a situation where he had to pull it and run it, he did it. Well, Brock can do the same thing. If it’s short-yardage, something like that, and they do a zone-read and you don’t cover the quarterback and all they got to do is get 2 or 3 yards for a first down, Brock can do that as well. I don’t know if it’s going to be that much of a difference in what they try to do offensively, but we’ll be ready to go.
The primary difference between Osweiler and Tannehill, at least for one game, was production. The Dolphins set season highs with 31 points and 541 yards of offense against the Bears. But Chicago also didn’t have any chance to prepare for Osweiler starting, and the Lions have a full game of tape at their disposal.
Quin probably wasn’t trying to take a shot at Tannehill by suggesting there’s not a dramatic difference between he and Osweiler. It was more of a commentary on the Dolphins not greatly altering things to account for a different quarterback running the offense, and the Lions are following suit by seeing no need to dramatically alter their defensive game plan for Week 7.