Half Way Thru....who's your pleasant surprise and your most disappointing players...

Probably should post this in the right thread.

I can't believe people believe Ryan is a disappointment. He's 10th in yards, 13th in TD's 19th in rating and completion % and unfortunately 5th in interceptions. We have a quarterback who in his second year is a middle of the pack QB. Hell we've been begging for middle of the pack with what we've had the last few years. The only way he can be a disappointment is if you really expected Dan Marino's 2nd year. Here are a few of his numbers through 8 games last year and this year. Granted he was hurt in the one Jets game so that affects his numbers a bit.

Year 1
Yards: 1,977
TD: 11
Int: 9
Comp %: 60.6



Year 2
Yards: 1,762
TD's: 5
Int: 7
Comp%: 50%

Also in Dolphins History he is 6th in passing yards 7th in TD's and 8th in rating. If he hits ESPN's projections then he could very well move up to 4th in Yards tied for 5th in TD's and his rating would stay the same. He is the best quarterback we've had since Marino and Pennington's one great year, and he is improving and progressing. I sure as hell haven't been disappointed yet.

 

Positives would be defensive front for the most part. Grimes/Patterson. Clay. Tannehill audibling and going through his reads either last game or the game before shows me growth as a QB. Miller. Hartline. Wake. Odrick. Soliai. Starks.

Disappointed include offensive line and time given to Tannehill in the pocket and that pocket collapsing - and run blocking as well for the most part save the Bengals game where we used the power O, safety positions, Wallace, and just the losses we've accumulated and how they have happened.

 

Surprise - Charles Clay

Disappointing - Reshad Jones

 

Hey MrClean,
I just tied your ignore list with 8.

 

Good surprises:
Brandon Gibson has played better than he has in St. Louis, and overcame a lot of problems on his Rams film.
Dimitri Patterson does very well when he's on the field.
The coaches finally realized Jared Odrick is a DT. Frankly, he solves the Soliai/Starks dilemma. Pay one, let the other walk, put Odrick next to him, plug in Jordan next to Wake.


Bad surprises:
Tyson Clabo. What in the hell?
Daniel Thomas is still being used as if he is a legitimate NFL running back.
The third overall pick barely plays.


Disappointments:
This entire season.

 

Its hard to say....given the kind of up and down we have seen.

Suprise or Positive. Clay, Grimes, Patterson.

Negatives. Our entire OL. Not a chance I thought we would be as bad as we have been there. There was reason to worry...but...historically bad?

 

Lol...hes been getting killed..and he has a plus 80 rating. Tannehill needs work....but...there is nothing there I cant see that he cant fix. Everything is there for him to be a Super Star QB. Well..except an OL

 

Pleasant:
Odrick
Dmitri Patterson
McKinnie
Dion Jordan

Disappointing
Clabo
Reshad Jones
Martin
Tannehill pocket presence development
Coaching(QB pocket presence development, bye week preparation, 2nd half breakdowns last 3 weeks)

 

I think Tannehill has been getting the crap beat out of him but I dont see super star there… I see a guy that could win a superbowl with a really good team around him. IUMO, he doesnt see the field very well.

 

Hey Todd, 7 and counting...

 

most pleasant surprises are patterson and gibson. biggest turds are everyone else not named cameron wake, including the coaches.

 

Thats the weird thing though, he seems to get a lot of praise whenever I see an analyst in TV talking about him but if you read these boards you'd think he was Ryan Leaf. Honestly its just silly at this point.

 

Surprise: to me would be Grimes this guy is a small package of a fighting playmaker.

Disapointment: Clabo no explaining needed.

 

TEs are pleasant surprise.

Disappointment: $100 mil spent on receivers, production we could've gotten for 10% of that. Add to that the linebackers and another weak draft: Ireland, you are fired!

 

Surprises: Egnew in the FB role. He's done pretty well there. Gibson had produced. Patterson, if he could get/stay healthy still 4 picks in like 3 games played.

Disappointment: Wallace, don't know if we blame him or the other problem the O Line. I think this off-season Tannehill and Wallace get together and get good.

Terrible: Our draft class thus far, Jordan has made a couple really big plays but then the other problem is the coaching staff. Terrible play calling and a big reluctance to play rookies.

 

Clay is most pleasant surprise, I did not anticipate his rise.

Most disappointing is Ellerbe/Wheeler. I really thought these guys would be more impactful than they have been...

I know most will say OL, but I feel as if we knew that coming in. Many say Wallace, but I think we have been too hard on him. He could have more yards if it wasn't for some inaccurate throws, and PI, and I think he has opened up run game and underneath routes. Not too mention with Tannehill having to get rid of ball so quickly, tough for his routes to develop deep.

 

Cant tell if serious. Youd be able to retain hartline and sign 2 good WRs and a good TE for 10% of what we spent? All of which were arguably the best FAs available and CLEAR upgrades. How the heck arent u a gm of an nfl team with such brilliant insight like this?

 

I'm thinking of writing to Ross an application for GM position.

 

We already have a clearcut upgrade in place. Goodluck

 

Sticking with guys that are legitimately better than I thought they would be:

Brandon Gibson - He's been a lot better than I thought he would be as a slot receiver. The Dolphins showed unusual foresight by believing he would be better at that position than his own coaching staff in St. Louis believed he could be. The approximate difference between what I thought he would be and what he has been were the plays he made in the end zone. Getting open on the scramble drill for Tannehill showed mental awareness he did not often show in St. Louis. That helicopter play into the end zone was also pretty cute. He dropped some balls, which I figured would happen. There were a couple of interceptions and incomplete passes that came about because of poor routes, which I expected. He's not been great in run after catch, though he's been better than I thought he'd be. But the awareness and play-making on those touchdowns were pretty good.

Dimitri Patterson - The guy is playing the best football I've ever seen him play, and I've been watching him since his Philadelphia days. There's still a sense that another shoe could drop with respect to his defense of the deep ball. That was always the issue with him on the perimeter in Philly and in Cleveland. But he's played about three full games' worth of snaps and has four picks. Pretty good ones, too. Not necessarily all what I would call gift-wrapped interceptions. And he's given his body up defending screen passes (and paid the price for it). Even when he was somewhat screwing up against NE, it looked like how Grimes looked against Torrey Smith...letting up the catch but being in the hip pocket and demanding an awesome throw to beat him. The unfortunate thing is the injuries. He was injured a lot in Cleveland last year. He got to Miami and played one full game, then got injured and missed the rest of his second and final game only a few snaps into it. He came into Week 1 battling an ankle problem, and left with a groin problem. That groin problem turned into a four-game deal because he suffered a setback while trying to come back from it. He gets back and has to be a part time player against Buffalo so that he doesn't suffer another setback. The next week he suffers a nasty hit defending a screen against NE, misses some plays. The next week against Cincinnati he misses more plays because of a shoulder issue while defending another screen. You don't need a crystal ball to say this guy is probably going to find his way onto injured reserve. But the play on the field has been stupendous and you'd be hard-pressed to make a case that Brent Grimes, for all the hype he's gotten, has actually been better.

Charles Clay - He's really stepped up and been more of a physical mismatch player than I imagined him to be. He's still got that two steps forward, one step back thing that I think we all imagined. There are protection issues that I have a feeling might be attributable to his mental lapses. He's not a good run blocker, which we knew. He drops the football, which we knew. But what I think we're finding out is that you can line him up against multiple types of players and he WILL actually be a mismatch against them. That's really, really important for the position. What I also love that we're finding out is the guy can carry the football. The Dolphins NEED to explore that more. One of the things that made Aaron Hernandez so incredibly hard to defend in NE was the fact that he could work out of the backfield from roles you might normally associate with the tailback position.

Bryant McKinnie - I think it's a testament to how poor the previous tackles were playing that McKinnie, who was clearly not good enough in Baltimore, got to Miami and looked head and shoulders better than his predecessor. But he really has been very good so far, first shutting down Chandler Jones in pass rush, and now Michael Johnson. At this point, the angle from people that are inclined to criticize the Dolphins' decision-making is focused on why the team didn't trade for McKinnie sooner, when he could have made a difference in the Buffalo game. That's a testament to how well McKinnie is playing.

Other guys who are playing well that I expected to play well include Jared Odrick, Randy Starks, Paul Soliai, Mike Pouncey, Brent Grimes and Lamar Miller.

As for the list of disappointments...it's an extensive list and during the four-game losing streak I believe we all talked about most of them.

I think Ryan Tannehill has been a little bit of a disappointment to me. The consistency is not there. The decision-making has been poor at times. He's taken some sacks specifically in situations where he's got to know he can't take a sack, and that's an area of the whole sack controversy where I will actually kill him.

I did not expect Tyson Clabo to be as bad in pass protection as he's been.

Philip Wheeler has been a worse tackler than I expected. He missed a bunch of tackles against Cincinnati and that took him from mediocre tackle efficiency to poor tackle efficiency, among 4-3 outside linebackers. Most of what he's been, good and bad, could have been predicted based on previous tape. But he's never been one to miss tackles. From 2009 to 2012 he missed only 23 tackles versus 271 successful tackles. In Miami he's missed 13 tackles in only 8 games, versus 58 successful tackles. That's like 2.5x more missed tackles than you'd expect from him.

I honestly expected more out of Koa Misi based on what he showed a year ago. I'm not sure why he's not making much of an impact. It could be a lack of chemistry because the Dolphins swapped out two familiar guys in Dansby and Burnett for two unfamiliar guys in Ellerbe and Wheeler.

And there is no doubt that Reshad Jones has been an immense disappointment relative to how he played a year ago.

Another guy who is playing worse football than I imagined is Derrick Shelby. He's not played an important role necessarily nor is he a huge disappointment, but I did expect better than what we're seeing.

As for some other guys that are not playing well, I kind of expected it. Mike Wallace is a good example of that. Daniel Thomas is playing as expected, averaging the same 3.6 yards per carry as always and being poor in short yardage situations. I actually expected him to be better in pass protection than he's been, which is saying something because I'm among those that always maintained that his pass protection prowess has been severely overstated due to it being the only somewhat decent aspect of his game. Color me unsurprised that the rookie class aside from Dion Jordan has struggled. Same with guys like Jonathan Martin and John Jerry. No surprise that Dannell Ellerbe hasn't been worth the money he got. No surprises on Jimmy Wilson.

 

Surprises:
Clay
Simms, sort of
Hopes for Matthews

Disappointments:

Coaching
Clabo
Martin