Hits on Quarterback

When the stats are all done for this game I think we'll see that Chad Henne took at least 10 more hits today and yes I'm counting the 3 or 4 hits he took when he slid on his runs but slid so late that the defender hit him anyway. It got flagged once, but the other times it wasn't a flag, it was just a shot Henne took because he didn't get down quickly enough.

Bottom line is Chad Henne is still on pace to have taken triple the amount of hits that an average NFL quarterback takes in a year. Hell in three games he might have taken more hits than some QBs took all year last year.

He won't survive this.

 

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. If Chad Henne is injured against the Chargers for the rest of the year, for instance, how many backers would he have that look at his QB Ratings and stuff and say hey man this guy was genuinely turning into a franchise QB, it isn't his fault he got hurt, he was hit too much...if we just surround him with better weapons...etc.?

It'll happen. You know it'll happen. And if Bill Cowher is our guy, what if it's not a fluke how Cowher spent most of his career in Pittsburgh trying to win with guys like Tommy Maddox, Kordell Stewart, Neil O'Donnell, etc? What if he BUYS into that logic that says that Henne was on his way to being re-born as a genuine franchise QB and just got injured unluckily, needs to be surrounded with better weapons?

For that matter what if Jon Gruden does? He's notoriously not liked young quarterbacks in the NFL, although I think his segments doing the QB stuff with young guys for ESPN maybe might have given him a revelation that the best way to go about things is to take a young piece of clay and mold it into exactly what you want. But that's a maybe. Who really knows?

 

I tend to doubt it. Not with impressive results, anyway.

 

Just as an update on this, Chad Henne has taken anywhere from 34 to 42 shots from defensive players this year.

Going off the most conservative methodology which is what I used in the original table, I have 12 sacks, 18 hits, and 12 runs...which according to the formula, guesses at 34 hits.

That puts him on pace for 181 hits on QB this year...which is nearly 7 standard deviations (15) outside the 2010 NFL mean for hits on QB (75). I know that's stat geek terminology but if you know statistics, you know that's pretty damn significant.

 

Combination of all of the above.

However yes I do consider it another example of how when you coach Henne to help correct one problem, another problem pops up. Sort of like if you have a blanket that's too small and you pull it up over your right shoulder, your left leg gets exposed, then you pull it over to your left to cover your leg and shoulder, and your whole right side gets exposed. With Chad Henne, you fix a weird problem, more weird problems pop up. This is an example of that, IMO.

 

I see six guys I like and two or three guys outside of those six that I can imagine myself liking. The season's not even a third of the way done though so I don't see how I can wittle it down to only three yet.

I can tell you that Andrew Luck is and always has been the real deal which I've said since November 9th, 2009. I can tell you that behind him, right now the best pure quarterback talent is probably Brandon Weeden, but that doesn't mean he's the best prospect behind Luck because you MUST account for age, injury history, wear and tear, all that stuff...and he's got a professional pitcher's worth of wear and tear on that throwing shoulder including past injuries that forced him out of baseball. I can tell you that the best prospect I have behind Luck right now is Matt Barkley and any of those three players I am confident will play really well at the NFL level at some point, though with Weeden I'm just not sure how long he'll last.

After them, there's a fair amount to like about Landry Jones, though it make take me some time to warm on him (not unlike Mallett). Ryan Lindley I talk about a lot but he failed a test this weekend against Michigan and I'm a little disappointed there, he could be a 2nd round QB. Ryan Tannehill failed a test against Oklahoma State, and he could be right there with Lindley. I would probably group these three with one another in terms of talent but with Landry at the head of the pack.

Robert Griffin III is a total wildcard still as I've yet to do a significant amount of work on him this year. I'm very familiar with him and I've talked in the past about the 2012 Draft and how there always seems to be some guy that people didn't see coming that affixes himself firmly in the mix, with Cam Newton being an example, and how I expect Robert Griffin III could very well be that guy based on how he was doing before he took that huge injury that torpedoed a year of his. I've seen him play plenty before, but I didn't see IT...as in that pro NFL quarterback talent. That doesn't mean it's not there, that just means it wasn't, but now it might be.

Nick Foles is the guy that as a QB is doing a lot better this year than maybe I gave him credit for, and they're really opening up and allowing him to make every single throw now, and he's doing it. I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board on him.

Kellen Moore is still the guy that I won't dare put in the top group...but who could grow on me like T.J. Yates or Mike Kafka did in the past two drafts.

 

I don't think Tony is just BS'ing when he says that the problem isn't all the OL when it comes to Henne taking these hits.

1. Henne is bringing a lot of these hits onto himself
2. The scheme has been changed to not protect him anymore
3. Our extra pass protectors, when we do ask them to help protect, aren't that good at it.

Consider the latter two points. They've had 69 extra pass protectors into the game, on 135 pass snaps. Last year they had 549 in on 645 pass snaps. That's a significant reduction. Last year on those 549 extra blocks, they let up 6 sacks, 7 hits and 26 pressures. This year on the 69 blocks they've let up 1 sack, 2 hits and 3 pressures. I know that looks like a lot less but if you were to project it out to 549 blocks it would be 8 sacks, 16 hits and 24 pressures. That's twice as many hits on the QB that the extra protectors are allowing.

The main culprit? Who else? Reggie Bush. Bush has been called on to help protect Henne more than any other player. He's protected Henne 24 times, while Daniel Thomas and Anthony Fasano have protected Henne 16 times each. Reggie has allowed 1 sack, 2 hits and 1 pressure.

So there's really a number of things going on, plus something system-wide that is making everyone look worse at pass protection, including Jake Long, whom I'm not ready to believe quite yet is having his worst year as a pro simply because of that knee issue. Jake Long has allowed 4 sacks, 4 hits and 2 pressures on 135 pass snaps. That is so ridiculously far off his norm, it leads me to believe there has to be a lot of things going on that goes into this ridiculous hits on QB figure that is 7 standard deviations off the NFL mean.

 

One thing that is happening, that is contributing to all this, is the fact that 'pressures' of the past are turning into 'hits' or 'sacks' this year.

The Dolphins have allowed 61 pressures this year on 135 pass snaps. Last year they allowed 182 pressures on 645 pass snaps. That's a significant increase. But what's also interesting is that where about 1 in 3 of last year's pressures resulted in a hit or sack, about 1 in 2 are doing so this year.

That's a significant change. If only 1 in 3 of Henne's pressures were resulting in a hit or sack this year then he'd only have taken 24 instead of 34 hits. That would still make him one of the most hit QBs in the NFL, but it would be more comparable to guys like Jay Cutler and Mike Vick...more on par with them.

 

/thread

 

LOL. Ok. Be bitter. But I warned you this injury was coming. Chad Henne was getting hit too much, playing too loose and physical, and he was eventually going to take a bad tumble like this (with defenders' help).

Sorry if that makes me not your favorite person, but I'm only doing objective analysis on what is likely to happen.

 

Hopefully when Andrew Luck is a Miami Dolphin and we're into a decade of winning, we can look back on this year and completely not even remember it.

 

That's the truth. Hard to forget a year like this one, or 2004 or 2007.

 

The latter. Definitely the latter, IMO.