The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

I saw a stat today that said that we're 7 and 1 when Albert, Pouncey, and James start and finish a game.

That's pretty crazy. 

But just looking at the eye test, when we block, we run plays, everyone is better.  The passing and running game looked great, and as Gase said, the defense looks a lot better when they play 51 minutes instead of 77.

How good of a team can we be if these guys (and Tunsil) can stay healthy?

It was nice to see they commuted to the run. And it wasn't just because they were winning. Whenever the game plan is throw first, it goes to shit. Running takes pressure off the line and Tannehill.

I think it is wasted discussion personally. As the stat says, Miami is 7-1 when these guys all start and finish a game. There have been 38 games so far that these guys have been on a roster together. Talking about having them all injury free is like asking about having Dan Marino take an ageless pill.

No kidding.  And when your team is hinging on the health of three guys simultaneously, it suggests that there aren't other components of the team that can overcome the adversity associated with injury.

During the same period of time that 7-1 record was compiled (the past several years), what do you suppose the team records are for New England, Seattle, Carolina, and Denver, when one or more of their three best offensive linemen don't play for some reason?

In other words, if you want to be a Super Bowl contender, I suspect you probably need to overcome this sort of adversity, rather than being overcome by it.

If the health of three of your offensive linemen is making that much of a "difference" (as the title of the thread indicates), it suggests the rest of your team is probably fairly inadequate.

It's one thing to say that it's not a realistic expectation to have your current offensive line healthy.
It's quite another to say that the performance of the line is not that big of a deal, as you have been for many weeks.

See, if we can agree that having a competent line DOES make a big difference, then it would seem to make sense for the Dolphins to invest resources in fixing that problem, instead of throwing away money and picks on other positions while the line continues to flounder.

Or does it make more sense to invest resources in areas of the team that can overcome the absence of one or more of the three linemen?

The study to be done here is on whether good teams can overcome the absence of one or more of their three best linemen, and if so, how they do it.

I just watched the Cowboys run roughshod over Green Bay at Lambeau Field yesterday without La'el Collins, for example.  How did they do that?

LOL, because the other olineman are even better than Collins?  That was a luxury pick for the Cowboys that year, they didn't desperately need oline help, unlike the Dolphins that are one or two players away from a crappy oline if any of the starters get hurt.

Well that's only 1 offensive lineman when the Cowboys have 5 good ones. Plus they have Zeke, Dak, Jason and Beasley. In other words they have several good offensive players, not simply a couple they rely on. Losing 1 good player out of 8 or 9 is not as big of an impact as losing 1 out of 3 or 4.

And that's the point I'm making (the bolded portion).

Actually I think that was the point that I was making when you were talking about Tannehill's contract next year. Tony Romo's salary cap hit is $20 M this year and he hasn't played a game, so apparently it IS possible to pay $20 M to your QB and STILL be able to put together a team around him.

Because, as mentioned, they have 4 other good offensive linemen.

Again: you've been claiming for weeks that the quality of the line is an overrated factor, and that instead of trying to fix the clearly broken line, Miami should focus on churning other (skill position) players.  So why does the offense play so much better with their best offensive linemen?

When your QB plays like Romo, you don't need as much talent around him, and so the $20M cap hit for the QB has more relative value.

I'd suggest you take a look at the resources the Cowboys have put into their starting offensive linemen, and compare them to the resources the Dolphins have invested in their starting linemen.  You may be surprised.

The point is that DAL has been able to build a competent surrounding cast while getting exactly zero production from their $20M QB.

What data do we have that tell us the offense plays better with its best offensive linemen, and by how much?

And what kind of production, exactly, are they getting from the QB position?

Well, it would appear that when you have the best offensive line in the league, you can throw in a rookie QB and rookie RB, and they both can do quite well!
Almost exactly how like Miami's offense seems completely different when a competent line is in place.

How do we know those players aren't simply good in their own right?


Did you use the word "seems" because we have no real data in that regard?

The problem with this line of thinking is that it's based on an untested philosophy:  that the offensive line has a unidirectional cause-and-effect relationship with the rest of an NFL offense.

Many people have spent the last four-plus years believing that Ryan Tannehill has been limited in his play by the quality of his offensive line play, which has in turn created the above philosophy.

It's entirely possible, on the other hand, that no such relationship exists, or that the direction of the relationship in reality is actually reversed, that QB play has more of an effect on offensive line play than offensive line play has on QB play.

Again, there is no reason to believe this untested philosophy has any merit.  Certainly we shouldn't believe it has merit simply because we'd like to believe that Ryan Tannehill is merely a certain degree of offensive line play away from being what we all want him to be.

Certainly the functioning of the NFL as a whole in reality isn't determined by what one set of fans would like to believe.

Before we proceed any further, can you please clarify which of the following you are arguing:

1) the performance of the offensive line is not that important
2) it is unrealistic to expect Miami's current offensive line to remain healthy

They are two very different arguments, and you have jumped back and forth from one to the other.

That's your job Dolfanalyst, however, it's football 101 that the game is won in the trenches...who plays in the trenches?  The OL.  Thus, offenses play better when their best offensive linemen are on the field.  I don't need a mountain of statistics to tell me that.

By how much?

And you may not care, but if you were running an NFL team and deciding where to allocate limited resources, obviously you'd do your job better with that knowledge.  Hopefully the folks running the Dolphins are investigating these issues with real data and not just personal beliefs.

Actually my point has been steady all along, that the fact that the Miami Dolphins have been 7-1 when a certain three offensive linemen have played full games says nothing about the importance of the offensive line in the NFL, or about how resources should be allocated to the offensive line versus other areas of a team.

Again, like I said early on, the study to be done here is on whether the best teams in the league, over the same several years, show the same sort of difference in play on the basis of whether offensive linemen are present or absent.  That, and not something only Miami Dolphins-specific, would provide the definitive information about the issue.

You're right, I don't care, and if I were running an NFL team, I'd have guys like you to find that info out for me.  Thing is, I don't run an NFL franchise.

Because I've watching football my entire life, and played the game, I can tell you it makes a difference.  If you want to quantify it, then by all means, have at it, but to me that's like quantifying how much salt is in a glass of ocean water, when all I care about is that fact it is salt water.

So have at it man.  The consensus here is that it does make a difference, yet you seem to be the only one questioning that statement.  If you want to prove something, then prove it.

My contribution here is merely to suggest that the best teams in the league probably don't have the equivalent of just a 5-11 regular season record when one or more of three of their offensive linemen don't play a whole game.

Unfortunately that's what the Dolphins have done over the past two-plus years, however.

So, does that tell you something about the importance of offensive lines throughout the league, or something about how poorly the Dolphins are constructed elsewhere on their roster?

If anything it signifies an over-reliance on offensive line personnel, and an over-investment in the offensive line, at the expense of the acquisition of quality talent elsewhere.

Except that the $20M cap hit is for a guy that is currently NOT PLAYING, so they have a BACKUP that is doing a fine job managing the team even with paying another QB $20M, so what is your point? That Tannehill isn't worth $20M or that he's no Tony Romo because if it's the latter actually Tannehill is FAR EXCEEDING what Tony Romo brings to the Cowboys which currently is nothing.  If the Cowboys can pay Romo $20M for riding the bench, I think the Dolphins can pay Tannehill $20M to do what he did this passed weekend.

You try to argue one thing, but you are clueless.  Dak is not managing the team, he is leading the team, and performing leaps and bounds better than Tannehill.  So yes, the dolphins can compete if they can find a player who performs like that while being paid minimal. Whether the cowboys pay romo 20 mil and Dak nil, or Dak 20mil and Romo nil, as long as they are getting performance like they are they will be fine. 

Calm down Cowgirls fan, I wasn't trying to slight Dak. He's playing great, but he also is getting a TON of help from everyone on the team including his defense which is playing light years better than anyone thought they would. Dak has all day to find receivers as no one is getting close to him. It's easy to play QB when all you have to do is stand there and wait till someone gets open and then thrown him the ball. That's what Dak is doing right now and if no one does get open, he just runs for a 3 yard gain and 1st down because it's always 2nd and 2 or 3rd and 1 with Zeke running the ball. C'mon man T'Hill would be doing just as good as Dak if he were playing behind a stone wall offensive line, have someone who's averaging 5 yards a carry to hand the ball off too and the defense was playing lights out, wait a minute I think I just described this weekend's game against Pittsburgh and T'hill did look great! He could have had a couple TD's if not for Parker's hands and a questionable formation call. Doesn't make T'hill an elite QB, that just means he's doing his job rather than trying to be the entire offense which is what people were expecting from him the first 5 games of the season.

No Tannehill would be doing shit, like he always has.  It is always somebody elses fault with Tannehill. People drop passes, defenders make good moves on the offensive line. He deals like shit with that.

How exactly do we know when to make one of the following conclusions:

1) The QB is playing well (or poorly) because of those around him.
2) The QB is playing well (or poorly) because of his own ability (or the lack thereof).
3) Those around the QB are playing well (or poorly) because of the QB.

Any one of those three could be true, but it seems that the beliefs and philosophies surrounding the Ryan Tannehill era for Miami Dolphins fans have made the second and third one impossible.

Instead, the quarterback is viewed as some hapless victim or beneficiary of those around him, unable to exert any meaningful influence on the game via his own ability, and unable to influence the play of his teammates.

All of the arrows of causality point from the other players to the QB, and there are no arrows going the other direction.

There are answers to these questions.

MIA's offensive line grades out poorly in almost every pass protection metric.  You can complain all you like about a QB not "feeling pressure," but an OLineman's job is not to get bowled over in the first 3 seconds; if he's not making his block, he's not doing his job.

Similarly, if a QB is getting drops and/or interceptions because of poorly placed throws, it's fair to blame that on him and not his receivers.  But when he is putting the football where it needs to be and his receiver is just dropping it, or when (according to the coaching staff that calls the plays) the receiver runs the wrong route, this is not the fault of the QB.

Fundamentally, your position is contradictory; you swiftly and repeatedly come to conclusive evaluations of the QB, yet for virtually any other position you insist evaluation is impossible because we can't know how much we should attribute unacceptable performance to that individual person's play.  If we can't grade an OLine as bad because we don't know how much the QB is contributing to their play, how can we possibly grade the QB in the reverse?

Good question (the bolded portion).  Because there are statistics available 1) that distinguish good from bad QBs, which gives them validity as measures of QB play, and 2) that don't correlate strongly with any known measures of offensive line play, other offensive play (running game), or defensive play.

[re: how can we rate QBs but not OLines?]

It appears that you just said that we can rate good and bad QBs because there are statistics that distinguish good from bad QBs, which gives said statistics validity.
That is circular reasoning.

If we cannot evaluate and grade OLines because their (poor) performance might be influenced by other factors, it is contradictory to say that we can isolate and evaluate QB play, when QBs objectively have many more factors contributing to the quality of their play than OLinemen do.  Again, when the OL is being bowled over instantly or allows a defender to run right past them, the QB play is irrelevant to that player's performance.

The statistics themselves don't determine the good and bad QBs.  That's based on consensus, rather.  This is no different from saying a thermometer is a valid measurement of temperature because it shows a higher reading when something is warm to the touch than it does when something is cool to the touch.


Again we can isolate QB play because the statistics that measure QB play correlate weakly with all other known measures of NFL play.

So yes, we can attribute pressure and/or a sack caused by the situation you mentioned to the offensive line, for example, but QB statistics don't correlate strongly with pressure and sacks.

Unless you can provide a measure of line play, you cannot make the above claim. What you are measuring by your QB statistic is then at best QB+Line.

In fact, there are many factors that contribute to the QB metrics you like to use and there just isn't enough data available, at least that I've seen, to really get a good separation of contributions.

Take Yards After Catch, as an example. The Dolphins have had sensationally poor YAC production from their receiving corps since even before Tannehill got here. Now, is YAC more a product of the receiver or of the quarterback? Logically, you could argue it either way and even looking (at least superficially) at the statistics it is muddled (one problem is that league average YAC varies significantly dependent on the receiver route, but no publicly available source of YAC lists ANY accompanying data). If quarterback were the main component in YAC (argument being ball placement and timing), then new receivers shouldn't change much. However, when Jarvis Landry joined the Dolphins, he immediately started racking up serious YAC. The majority of the top 10 YAC producers over the past decade have been running backs and tight ends (8 out of the 10 top spots for 2016 so far), however Miami has not had a RB or TE crack the top 40 during Tannehill's tenure. The result being that even with Landry's YAC production, Miami is still (for whatever reason) getting a total YAC contribution that is significantly below league average.

When looking at sacks, and I've stated this before, there's a significant difference between sacks that happen within the first 2.4 seconds and sacks that take a long time. Those quick sacks are pretty exclusively on the offensive line (for a given play call). The only data we have on this, which covers less than one full season, point to the Dolphins having a ridiculous number of these quick sacks compared to other teams and a relatively low number of slow sacks (second fewest slow sacks, third highest short sacks, among players who played at least 50% of games).

There are other aspects that have to average out over a full season for the statistics to actually be significant. However, that assumption is not valid for the low numbers and high variances that underpin many (if not most) of the metrics we use. The number of passes dropped, for instance, does not average out over a season (and appears to be very dependent on receiver as opposed to quarterback). Even more so for dropped touchdown passes (like the two this Sunday), or indeed any other sub-catagory of dropped passes. Receivers running wrong routes is something one would expect to occur more often, on average, with new coaching staff and new receivers, and would contribute both to interceptions and lower production in other passing metrics.


So in Tannehill, specifically, we have:

1. A quarterback who, on average, has produced an average to somewhat below average overall performance.
2. A quarterback who has elite production when out of the pocket, both on designed rollouts and on scrambles.
3. A quarterback who has an offensive line that has consistently been ranked among the worst in the league, e.g. by PFF (and supported by the objective, if very limited short sack stats).
4. A quarterback who has seen significantly below average YAC production from those catching his passes, even with Jarvis Landry.
5. A quarterback who has had a significantly higher number of changes in coaching staff than average.

How do you evaluate such a quarterback?

He might be just an average quarterback -- and I really do believe the combined evidence makes it very unlikely he is below that -- or he could be significantly better. How do we tell where in this range his actual ability falls?

It isn't easy. :)

But let me ask you this:  if someone held a gun to your head (heaven forbid) and said, "put everything you own on what you believe to be the most accurate appraisal of Ryan Tannehill's individual ability as an NFL QB, or I'll pull the trigger," and you knew some omniscient being would then provide the correct appraisal, thus determining what you would win or lose, what would you do?

I can tell you what I'd do, personally, for what it's worth.  I'd go look at the statistics that are best associated with consensus appraisals of QBs' ability, and that correlate least with other measures of NFL play, and use those in my answer.

Now, if I wanted to be extra thorough, I'd also take a look at all the sorts of potential moderating variables you mentioned, and determine the percentage of truly great QBs in NFL history who suffered through four-plus years of such moderation of their individual ability, only to blossom to their significantly higher level of individual play later on.

And that's really the missing piece here, isn't it.  We have this conceptual model of Tannehill's possible trajectory as a player, where he suffers for years in this way, victimized by his surroundings, only to have his surroundings improve and his tremendous individual ability eventually shine through.

But when has that happened for anyone?  Who is the model NFL quarterback(s) that makes such a player trajectory more than just a pipe dream for hopeful (and of course biased) fans of the Miami Dolphins (myself included)?

Or is Tannehill the first NFL quarterback ever for whom this is happening?

The trigger is about to be pulled.  What are you putting your money on? ;)

No, it isn't.


Probably shit myself ;)



I'd have to go with my combined impression, which includes all sorts of stats and analysis, plus tons of tape (although not nearly as much as a coach would have access to) and I'd call Tannehill an average starting quarterback with significant upside and little downside.

As for the QB career trajectories you reference, the problem here is really one of sample size (again). Assuming we need at least, say, 5 years to gauge a career, how many quarterbacks have actually been a starter for that long in the past 20 years? (Rule changes make me reluctant to go too far back.) With 32 teams that's a theoretical maximum of 128 careers over that span. The actual number is almost certainly significantly below 100. And now we have to look at career trajectories among those and find the set that most closely matches that of Tannehill and then project his future performance from their future performance?

Of those...

How many quarterbacks do you think have had four offensive coordinators in their first 5 years?
How many quarterbacks do you think have been sacked for even 150+ times (Tannehill 184) in their first four years?
How many quarterbacks do you think have thrown for 14000+ yards (Tannehill 15460) in the first four years?
How many quarterbacks do you think have an td/interception ration similar to Tannehill's (3:2)?
How many quarterbacks have a similar progression of quarterback rating? (Which appears the main stat people use when doing these projections)

Career projection with such a small population without taking individual situation into account is almost certainly going to be futile and completely without statistical significance.

For fun I tried to look at football outsider's "similarity scores" as provided on the player pages, for non-members, and it lists two players: a 2014 Peyton Manning for single season top similarity score and Andy Dalton for career.

Well it's not easy which is what people have to wrap their head around first off. But you start by looking at the tape and letting your eyes tell you what you see and not only evaluating the QB, but the play around him as well. Then you look at the stats to see trends and see how that meshes with what you see on tape and what conclusions you can make from that. Then you look at practice sessions and see if players make the same mistakes over and over or do they learn from mistakes and make adjustments and use what they are being taught. Then you talk with some others who have done the same things you have just done and see if their opinion is different from yours and if so, see if can determine why and come to a consensus.

What you DON'T do is consider things like salary or draft position which is a trap that many fall into when doing your evaluation. Now once you have done your evaluation then you can do things like consider if their salary is commensurate with their play and try to adjust that accordingly, but that's not part of the evaluation of the player.

What you also DON'T do is consider wins and losses which is another trap. Certainly QB play influences wins and losses, but there's so much more that goes into it that it's not fair to evaluate a player based on team performance.

In short you do what guys like Gase have already done. Now you can listen to what Gase has to say and you can poo-poo it if you want and come up with your own evaluation, but I think it's wiser to listen to him and listen to what he's saying and at least take his opinion into consideration. Gase has defended Tannehill and blasted some of the other players even cutting players. I think that should tell you a lot. You can ignore him if you want, but frankly I think that's unwise.

There's one other thing that I'd like to point out and I think what Gase has done with Tannehill is appropriate which is you MAKE him your general on the field. Unlike Philbin, Gase has given Tannehill all the tools and all the support he needs to let everyone on the field know that HE's the general. What he says goes, without question. If he's wrong on the field then he answer's to the coach, but the players aren't allowed to question Tannehill. The QB position DEMANDS that. He MUST have the respect of the players and they must believe in him. If they don't then his chances of leading them are severely diminished. I think that's been a problem in Miami and I think Gase is changing that attitude. I'm not saying that's what's been missing that everything will just fall into place now, Tannehill still has to go out and perform, but it's one thing that has been missing in Miami and has allowed this team to second guess their QB which is a really bad team dynamic. One thing that all good QB's have is the respect of their teammates and I think that has been lacking in Miami partly due to the coaching staff. Gase is changing that and it's for the better.

Turnabout is fair play:  if someone held a gun to your head (heaven forbid) and said, "put everything you own on what you believe to be the most accurate appraisal of the performance of the Dolphins' offensive line over the last 4 seasons, or I'll pull the trigger," and you knew some omniscient being would then provide the correct appraisal, thus determining what you would win or lose, what would you do?

Before we can even have a discussion about whether the line matters (which is supposed to be the topic of this thread), we have to first agree that evaluating the performance of the line is a thing that is possible.  After we have evaluated the line, if you want to say that you don't think the OL matters when evaluating how a QB has played, I'm happy to let that statement stand on its own merit.

So why can't we determine good and bad OLs based on "consensus"?

Thermometers simply provide factual measurements of temperature.  Warm/cool, like good/bad, are subjective assessments; you are effectively claiming that it's impossible to know whether a line is bad, but it's readily apparent whether a QB is bad.

To complete your analogy, when in comes to OLs, you say, "How can any of us truly know what warm really is?", but when it comes to QBs, you say, "This guy is definitely extremely cold."

And I would actually agree with that, believe it or not.


The problem with that statistic, per se, is that 1) sacks don't correlate strongly with QBs' performance in the NFL, and 2) Tannehill's performance, specifically, doesn't correlate strongly with sacks on a game-by-game basis.  He's had a good number of better games in which he's been sacked comparatively more, and a good number of poorer games in which he's been sacked comparatively less.

I hear this thing about Tannehill's "sacks" mentioned all the time, however, even by the media, as though those correlations are strong, whereas in fact they aren't.


But in essence what you're saying here is that, in terms of the possibility that Tannehill's performance is being moderated by surrounding variables, he is experiencing a rare event.  And by definition a rare event is an unlikely event.

I would suggest you give that a try, via survey, and see if you get anywhere near the consensus you would if you were surveying people's impressions of QBs.  I suspect there would be so much variation in people's impressions of offensive line play from team to team that no consensus would be possible, whereas with QBs that wouldn't happen.

To put it back in the original language, too many people would call the same offensive lines both "cold" and "hot" (varying from person to person), that no consensus would be possible.  With QBs I don't suspect that would happen, however.

I would say it's average to non-significantly below average.  First, I don't think there is as much variation in offensive lines across the league as some appear to believe, and second, I don't think the Dolphins' line has been as poor in comparison to the average NFL offensive line as some have portrayed it to be.

Remember that offensive lines comprise the single biggest unit of players in football.  As you increase the number of players in a unit, the parity the league is driven by increases, and there is a greater chance for some players in the unit to compensate for the play of others.  If that's the case, then there will be comparatively little variation across lines in the NFL.

And if there is comparatively little variation across lines, it's impossible for any line to be a whole lot worse than any other.  All offensive lines would hover around a relatively narrow range of play.


It matters, but the question is, how much, and an additional question is, how much does the QB matter in evaluating the offensive line's play?

I'm beginning to question if you watch football or just crunch numbers based on a statement like this. I don't buy it for a minute that lineman have greater chances of compensating for another's play. They should already be engaged in their own assignments, how can they cover two? If anyone is expected to compensate for a lineman's mistake it is a running back or maybe a tight end.

What I mean is that, when you're evaluating the play of the line as a whole, there is likely to be variation in the abilities of the linemen, such that functioning of the line as a whole is enhanced by the better players on it, thus compensating for the poorer players.

In other words, nobody has five Dallas Thomases.  On any team, there is likely to be a Dallas Thomas type (the worst guy), as well as a Richmond Webb type (the best guy, who is much better than the worst guy).  So the line as a whole is unlikely to be either tremendously good or tremendously poor.

Salary cap and parity also play into that, whereby teams are unlikely to have neither the resources to have a tremendously good line, nor the lack of resources to have a tremendously poor line.

Again, the idea is that I suspect there is much smaller variation among the lines across the league than many people seem to believe.

And if that's true, and given the weak correlation between offensive line and QB play, one would expect only a meager improvement in Ryan Tannehill's performance if the Dolphins had even the best offensive line in the league, because theoretically there isn't much room between their current line and the best one.

Really this whole "offensive line" thing I suspect has gotten even the team off into a wild goose chase, where they've sunken too many resources into the line, at the expense of talent elsewhere, thinking it would improve Tannehill's performance.

You could easily end up in a situation here where lots of limited resources are shoved into the line, the rest of the team is therefore weak, and the improvement in the line generated by those resources creates only a meager improvement in Tannehill's performance.

Now you are just being silly. On both accounts, by the way. A rare event is not an unlikely event if the history is included, which is the case here. Rolling 10 6'es in a row with a die is a rare event, but if you've already rolled 9, the event is not unlikely.

However, in the case of quarterbacks and careers, what I'm saying is that ALL quarterbacks are in fairly unique positions and, given the extremely low population count, trying to derive much of anything with any reasonable statistical significance is folly.

I actually went back and looked up some stats... there are only 95 quarterbacks with 60+ career starts (less than 4  seasons) going all the way back to the 80s! So this dataset would include Warren Moon, Boomer Esiason, and Dave Krieg.

Out of curiosity, I did manage to find a number of quarterbacks who track Tannehill fairly well when looking at stats like completion %, sack rate, and passer rating. In every case, of course, I can point to a specific (and different) likely cause of a dip or spike in performance as measured by those metrics.

However, if you just want an example of a quarterback among those 95 that has started out truly bad and wound up delivering some pretty solid numbers Alex Smith springs to mind. I found a few others as well. One common trend among them was that they all started to perform significantly better around year 5 or 6 (of course there's a huge selection bias at work here, since I was looking for players who wound up good, but started out bad or average). A player like Drew Brees also had some really rough years in San Diego before some great numbers in New Orleans.

It's interesting you mention Alex Smith, because I believe he's Tannehill's ceiling, personally, and Tannehill should be used the way Reid uses Smith if you want the most out of him.  The Pittsburgh game was a good example of that, where running and passing were balanced, the team rode the back of the running game, and Tannehill wasn't asked to take many shots down the field.  His good YPA that game (which again predicts winning) was driven mostly by his very good completion percentage (75%) and not his aggressiveness downfield.  Notice he had no INTs, as well, in a season in which he'd had an uncharacteristic percentage of them previously.

Drew Brees on the other hand had a great third year as a starter, after starting 27 of the 32 games the previous two seasons and zero games his rookie year.  With Tannehill we're working on four years of starting experience, and he has yet to show anything close to that level of play over a season.

Let's try to stay on the topic of the line, please.  If this becomes another thread entirely about Tannehill, it will be locked.

You have repeatedly emphasized that you are about statistical analysis, not subjective opinions.
Consensus of peoples' impressions (be it of an OL or a QB) are not "statistical analysis."  They are subjective opinions, and gathering more of them does not turn them into facts.

I have no problem with subjective opinions; everyone has their own impression of the various players on the team.  But don't try to disguise your personal distaste for specific players as objective statistical analysis, especially when you happily discard similar evaluations when inconvenient.

The same organizations that created metrics like DVOA have consistently rated the Dolphins' OL as poor (not "average to non-significantly below average") over Tannehill's tenure.  If you want to claim that the OL doesn't matter (or barely matters) in how the rest of the offense plays, that is your prerogative; I doubt many people will agree.  But you cannot, with any credibility, simply deny the poor evaluations of Miami's OL because there are too many outside factors and then cheerfully accept poor evaluations of other players you don't care for.

First, you don't have any idea about how much "cheer" I have.

Second, you don't have any idea how much "distaste" I have for anything, or which players I "don't care for."

To pass yourself off has having such knowledge about me is arrogant, condescending, and rude.  Stop.

Third, Football Outsiders' measure of offensive line play has a 0.28 correlation with QBs' DVOA across the league.

In other words, 92% of the variation in QBs' DVOA is not associated with Football Outsiders' measure of offensive line play.  If you gave the Dolphins the very best offensive line play in the league as measured by Football Outsiders, then because of that weak correlation, you should expect a correspondingly meager improvement in Tannehill's DVOA.

So, be careful when you make these "adjustments" based on other areas of the team (e.g., the offensive line).  Any objective "adjustment" hinges on the strength of the relationship (correlation) between the two areas of the team.

Finally, here's a great treatise on how measurements can begin with subjective impressions and ultimately result in objective measures:


http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Cronbach/construct.htm

Again, your validation of a measure of offensive line play would likely fail at "(b)" above, in that there would be poor interobserver agreement (i.e., consensus) about the quality of the offensive lines throughout the league.  I suspect that wouldn't happen for QBs, however.

analyst ... Spin it any way you want. Whenever Tannehill has protection he does very well. Give him a running game too and he almost always wins. I'll take that over any spin doctoring statistic. 

You're the one doing the spinning, and it's based on statements that aren't true.

Tannehill's performance correlates strongly neither with sacks, nor with running game variables.

He's played well in a good number of games in which he's sacked comparatively more, and poorly in a good number of games in which he's sacked comparatively less.

Likewise, he's played well in a good number of games in which the running game performs comparatively poorly, and poorly in a good number of games in which the running game performs comparatively well.

These correlations that people believe exist do not exist.  If your position is based on the belief that a weak correlation in reality is actually a strong one, then you're the one doing the spinning.

This is exactly what I mean.

You cannot hold up Football Outsiders' DVOA metric as golden because you think it supports your desired conclusion, and then dismiss Football Outsiders' offensive line ratings because they do not support your desired conclusion.  They are both subjective evaluations.  We've already discussed this (http://www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com/forums/index.php?topic=24018.msg331876;topicseen#msg331876).

And while we're on the subject of being arrogant, condescending, and rude: please don't act like we are unaware that you have been banned from several other Dolphins message boards specifically because of your single-minded devotion to bashing Tannehill at every turn.  I am aware of your history, and I'm still willing to have discussions about the QB when they are (at least tangentially) relevant, but I'm not willing to pretend that you are Just Making An Objective Analysis.

Any reasonably unbiased observer would either accept FootballOutsiders' metrics or dismiss them.  You simply dismiss the ones that say that maybe the problem is the line, not the QB... and not because you think they are inaccurate, but because you think there are too many variables to Truly Know The Answer, or something.  It's not even a credible objection.

In this case I'm not dismissing their offensive line statistic for the sake of argument.  I'm stating merely that it correlates weakly with QBs' DVOA, and so one should expect a meager improvement in Tannehill's DVOA even with the best offensive line as measured by Football Outsiders.

So, whether you believe their measure of offensive line play to be valid or not, realize that it doesn't do Tannehill any favors.


Yet, who is the one being arrogant, condescending, and rude in this discussion (and others here)?  Me, or you?

More regarding the difference a line makes:

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2016/quarterbacks-and-pressure-2015

Based on the data at the link in the post above this one, what I said here is confirmed:


The average line in the the league surrenders QB pressure on roughly 26% of its passing plays.

The average line deviates 4.6% from that figure.

The skewness of that distribution (0.28) isn't non-normal.

The negative kurtosis of the distribution (-0.66) indicates very light tails in the distribution.  In other words, most of the data is clustered around the average.

The frequency of pressure the Dolphins surrendered (28.1%) wasn't a standard deviation higher than the league average.  In other words, for all intents and purposes it was average.

So, the perception that the Dolphins' offensive line surrenders exceptionally frequent pressure is erroneous.

Again, your analysis completely ignores what actually happens on the field. If a team has a weak line, what do they do? They find other ways to compensate, at least to some extent, for it, even though those actions will have other (negative) consequences. Examples include shorter plays, keeping more tight ends and running backs in, using a fullback or extra tight end / lineman.

And theoretically that's true.  But do you have any evidence that the Dolphins have done that any more than any other team, and if so, how much?

Interesting article here that bears on this topic:

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/it-might-be-too-late-for-seahawks-to-fix-their-biggest-flaw-023707190.html


If you look at Wilson's performance this year, I submit it's a study in how a QB's performance can be diminished by lack of mobility (in this case due to injury) in the face of pressure.

Wilson last year averaged 34 rushing yards per game, and in 2014 53 yards per game.  This year, after injuring his knee in game one, he's averaging just 6 yards per game rushing.

His average QB rating previously in his career was 102.  This year it's just 91.5.

His offensive line has been widely believed to be suspect throughout his career, and although the above article points to its deficiencies this year, the fact remains that he's been sacked roughly half as often as he had been previously in his career.

So if you "reverse engineer" the above, you can determine what might be possible for Ryan Tannehill if he were to continue to show the pass rush awareness and evasion skills he showed in the Buffalo game last week.

Rather than being confined to the pocket and attempting to make plays solely from there, Tannehill could expand his game considerably by being aware of pressure and evading it, buying time for receivers to break free downfield and making plays similar to the clutch one he made with Jarvis Landry late in the game against Buffalo.

This is what Russell Wilson used to do aplenty previously in his career, and I think you can see what becoming more "Tannehill-esque" (again due to injury) has done to his numbers.

...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped.

King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, statman. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.

It is amazing (but no longer surprising) that you look at source after source describing QB problems and attributing them to an offensive line, ignore the offensive line part, and praise the rest.

I think there's a term for that practice.

I'm not surprised that's your summation, when you seemingly omit from your analysis of my post the parts of it that lead me to that conclusion.

Once again, Seattle's offensive line has been poor since Wilson arrived, and he's been sacked half as often this year as he has been during the rest of his career.

I'm certain, however, that if you continue to cherry-pick from my posts whatever it is that allows you to conclude that I'm biased, you'll continue to find "confirmation" of the bias you perceive me to have.

It takes but a simple, thorough reading to avoid that, however, yet you're unwilling to engage in one.  Agenda, perhaps?

My two cents: 1 is false the game is won and lost in the battle between the oline and dline.


2 is spot on.  It is not the team with the best 22 starters that wins the Super Bowl, nor the team with the least number of injuries, but the team that is capable of plugging in backups and still perform at a high level. 

And if that's true, is that a result of 1) the performance of the backups themselves, 2) the talent and performance of the other (uninjured) players who compensate for the presence of the backups, or 3) both?

LOL, good one.

You won't hear anyone with a decent counter-analysis or rebuttal, however.

When the point is obvious and unmistakable, one can only cherry-pick and caricature in response. ;)

Actually there has been plenty of decent counter-analysis and rebuttal; however at every turn you refuse to admit that the poor play of the offensive line has had anything to do with Tannehill sometimes having a poor performance.  Conversely you have even suggested that Tannehill is better off with poor offensive line play.  There's a term for this, but I can't use it without violating the terms of the site.

Actually what I've said is 1) that there is not a strong correlation between the percentage of pass dropbacks in which Tannehill has been sacked and the most important measures of his play on a game-by-game basis, and 2) that, ironically, on a season-by-season basis, there is actually a somewhat weak but positive correlation between the frequency of pressure he's experienced and the most important measures of his play, meaning that Tannehill, over his career, has played better the more he's been pressured.

This page gives probably the best information about the matter, however:

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2016/quarterbacks-and-pressure-2015

Notice the Dolphins' line wasn't significantly worse than the average one in the league in terms of the frequency of pressure it surrendered in 2015.  Also notice that the difference in Tannehill's performance with and without pressure wasn't significantly different from that of the average QB in the league.

All of the above but much more than just those two things.

4) Some GMs focus almost exclusively on the top of the roster, others will put considerable effort into making sure player 53 adds to the roster and if their is anybody not on roster that would be better than the current #53, signing that player.

5) Have the versatile non-starters.  A guy who can play multiple roles is more valuable than someone who can only play one position. 

6) Having a solid system and making sure the backups are learning it to the best of their ability.  Does the QB coach care only about the starter or is the backup getting the development he needs to be successful?  Do the backup linemen learn the lingo and tempo so they are ready to go when needed? 

7) Do you have backups in name only or do their strengths fit the system? 

8) If you have a backup whose skill set is different than the man he replaces does the coach adapt the system or are you asking the backup to do something he is incapable while ignoring his strengths? 

Basically it comes down to the GM and coaching staff.

That's all certainly logical and well thought out, but I suspect the most influential variable is simply luck, since injuries are largely random events.

When a team is victimized disproportionately by random events, it's simply unlucky.

So Don Shula was luckiest coach in NFL history, got it.

If I would've said luck was the most influential variable in winning period (and not just with regard to the effect of injuries on a team), your response would've been appropriate.

I did not address your analysis of how you reached your conclusion.

I simply pointed out that you are happy to lean on any external evaluation necessary to prove your point, except those that implicate the performance of the offensive line.  You have consistently ignored only that portion of the various analyses you have cited as supporting evidence.  I mean, you literally just cited an article whose primary point was that Wilson's play has deteriorated due to poor OL play, discarded the main argument of the author, then praised the rest (?!) of the article.

I leave it to the reader as to why it is only the evaluations of offensive lines that we should discard as irrelevant.

Did the author of the article consider and state that Wilson has been sacked half as often this year as he had been previously in his career?  Given that Wilson is far less mobile this year than usual, do you not consider that a glaring omission in his appraisal of Seattle's offensive line?

Just because someone publishes an article on the internet doesn't mean it's the unassailable gospel truth.

And there wasn't any aspect of the article that I "praised."  I included it simply for background information about the Seahawks, since we're on a Dolphins message board here.

Again, you seem to have a problem with cherry-picking from my posts, since now you're making not only errors of omission, but errors of commission! :D

Dolphanalyst ... can I ask you a question? Have you ever coached a sport in your life? I'm guessing no because if you had you wouldquickly realize that stats are only a part of the story. And for your story it's always you hating on Tannehill. That makes it really hard for anyone to take you seriously. You may want to lighten up on the Tannehill hate in every single conversation you have on here.

I think Tannehill is an average quarterback who would become significantly better than average if he makes what he did against Buffalo (being aware of and evading pressure) the norm for himself.

If that sounds like "hate" or something that shouldn't be taken seriously, then I submit that the bias lies with the individual who perceives it that way.

Yes, it must be everyone else on every Dolphins message board (including the ones you've already been banned from) that are biased.
You are the only one who can see The Truth.  You're just dispassionately analyzing stats, with no predetermined point to prove!

Consider that the problem may not rest with literally everyone else.

I just stated the point to prove, and you didn't respond to it.  Instead you're introducing unnecessary drama as a red herring.

Again Tannehill is an average QB who would be significantly better than average if he does normally what he did against Buffalo in the way of being aware of and evading pressure.

Now, would you like to respond and say you consider that "hate" or something that shouldn't be taken seriously, in which case we can have an actual discussion about whether it's you or me who's biased about the issue, or is your goal only to perpetuate unnecessary drama here?

"But, but, but...you...you...have a bad reputation!"

Is that what you've been reduced to? :D

I didn't respond to that point because I (along with many others) have already been responding to it since the day you signed up for this site.

Your interpretation of the data has already been thoroughly established.  At this time, I find your continued insistence that you have no anti-Tannehill bias - again, after you've been banned from multiple forums while being given that exact reason as the cause - to be the more interesting point.  Apparently, not only do you believe that your statements appear unbiased, but you are able to easily dismiss the multiple people who are (still!) pointing out to you the clear appearance of an anti-Tannehill vendetta in your posts.

To get back to the actual topic of the thread: looking through this thread, everyone but you seems to concur that the performance of the OL has a significant impact on the play of a QB.  Not only do you reject this notion, but you repeatedly steer the topic back to Tannehill; most recently, when you revived this thread to praise an article as "interesting" for tying QB performance to an OL, just so you can summarily dismiss the entire point of the article and use it as an excuse to snipe at Tannehill (by calling Wilson "Tannehill-esque").

Now you're admitting that placing me under a microscope and talking about me instead of the team is your interest! :D

Stop.  You're embarrassing yourself.

Well, yes: I will continue to point out when you are intentionally steering every thread you can into an attack on Tannehill.  That line of discussion is more interesting (or more accurately, less pointless) than trying to discuss your already-thoroughly-addressed dismissal of any culpability for the OL in the performance of a QB.

You know, the original point of this thread.

The least pointless and most interesting discussion in my opinion would consist of the exchange and analysis of objective data regarding the issue (Tannehill and the offensive line).

The problem you're having, I suspect, is that you've tried that and failed.  I've undermined the objective data you've presented in the past about this issue, and so you're left with nothing but some exaggerated, melodramatic focus on me and my behavior.

In other words, "if you can't attack the evidence, attack the witness."

You've attacked the evidence and failed, and so all you're left with is the witness, hence your approach here.

Realize, however, that every time you focus on me and my behavior, you're implicitly admitting that you've failed in your attempts to attack the evidence I've presented.

If you'd like to continue to embarrass yourself in that manner, be my guest. :)