DAVIE, Fla. — At the midway point of his third season under center for the Miami Dolphins, quarterback Ryan Tannehill has begun to show signs that he may be turning the corner in his notoriously up-and-down career.

Tannehill put together his best game of the season in Miami’s 37-0 rout of San Diego at Sun Life Stadium, outshining one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks in Phillip Rivers. Completing 11 of his first 13 throws, Tannehill marched the offense down the field on back-to-back touchdown drives to start the game. He would finish the afternoon with 288 passing yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions.

With 10 different players benefiting from Tannehill-thrown passes on Sunday, head coach Joe Philbin had trouble picking out one defining moment from the victory to summarize his quarterback’s exceptional performance.

"It might have been that crossing route that he threw to Mike Wallace," Philbin said Monday from the team’s practice facility at Nova Southeastern University. "Maybe one of those ones that he just kind of went through his progression and sat in the pocket and didn’t panic and just kind of sat back there. I thought he did that another time with Charles Clay pretty well where you could see his eyes kind of scanning the field."

After completing just one pass to Clay during last week’s 27-13 victory in Jacksonville, Tannehill connected with his tight end five times for 65 yards on Sunday, including a 6-yard throw for the first score of the game.

"You know, I don’t know, you can’t tell the difference in his demeanor from game to game," Clay said of Tannehill after the victory. "I feel like he goes out there and plays as hard as he can. Everybody here knows he’s tough. The o-line did a great job protecting for him (Sunday), and he was able to make some good throws. And that’s what we expect out of him; he’s a great quarterback. Like I said, it’s just a matter of stringing a couple of weeks together."

By posting a season-high 125.6 quarterback rating against San Diego, Tannehill now has a 100-or-better rating in three of his past five starts and boasts an overall rating of 103.0 during that span. Miami is 3-1 this year when Tannehill achieves an 80.0 passer rating or higher.

Through Week 9, Tannehill has completed 178-of-281 passes for 1,907 yards, 14 touchdowns and six interceptions, good for a 90.9 quarterback rating. The last Miami quarterback to finish a season with a 90-or-better rating was Chad Pennington in 2008.

While it’s easy to point out everything Tannehill has done right in recent weeks, the key to his success and growth this season may have more to do with what he hasn’t been asked to do.

In 2013, Tannehill completed just 11-of-54 passes that traveled more than 20 yards in the air. He has been relying much less on throwing deep balls in his first season with offensive coordinator Bill Lazor.

During Sunday’s 37-point victory, he connected on one pass of 25 yards or more. Lazor has shown that the offense is most effective when the team is building around Tannehill’s strengths rather than trying to force improvement upon his weaknesses.

"I think for Ryan (Tannehill), it’s a mixture of his fundamentals continuing to grow, playing the way we want him to in the pocket," Lazor said Monday. "I think he’s a very athletic guy. We want him to play athletic, with his stance, with his knee-bend a certain way. It’s technical stuff, and it has increasingly improved, particularly lately. I think I see him buying into it, doing it, and I think the drill work and the practice is starting to show up more on game day where he can’t think about it, he just has to do it."

Under Lazor, Tannehill has excelled passing in shorter and intermediate ranges, while also utilizing his exceptional athleticism to contribute in the running game.

With a 22-yard rush against San Diego on Sunday, Tannehill joined Steve Young and Michael Vick as the only quarterbacks with a 20-plus yard run in at least four consecutive games in the past 25 years. Already with 245 rushing yards through eight games this season, his 7.9 yards per rushing attempt leads all NFL quarterbacks.

Also helping Tannehill live up to his potential in recent weeks has been the play of the team’s once heavily castigated offensive line. Aided by the return of Pro Bowler Mike Pouncey in Week 6, the o-line allowed zero sacks of Tannehill on Sunday for the second time this season.

In eight games this season, the Dolphins have allowed just 17 sacks and are on pace to finish the season well below last year’s franchise-record 58.

"They did a great job. I really wasn’t under any pressure the entire game," Tannehill said of the o-line’s performance on Sunday. "I was able to go through my progressions, from one, two, three, four. The touchdown to Rishard (Matthew), I got all the way through my progression and then escaped. It wasn’t a situation where I was going to number one and then getting sacked the entire day."

Riding a three-game winning streak into the second half of the season, the Dolphins (5-3) will need Tannehill to maintain his current trajectory towards greatness if they hope to remain in the playoff hunt deep into December.

It’s a challenge that Philbin believes his team is ready to embrace.

"We’re a better team today than we were October 1st, than we were in September," Philbin said. "The challenge every week is to find ways to improve and get better."

You can follow Jameson Olive on Twitter @JamesonCoop or email him at JamesonOlive@gmail.com.