exactly, thats what I was trying to say, something like that or some combination of James and landry..idk.lol
The easiest answer is Ryan Tannehill. Miami is averaging 6.6 yards per pass attempt, period (4th worst). This is the type of offense we run and, if you take that into consideration, Jarvis Landry leads the team with 7.3 yards/target: Wallace (6.92), Hartline (6.18), Gibson (5.5), Matthews (6.83), and even Lamar Miller (4.6), who is catching similarly low YATC passes. He's making the best out of what he's given. Ultimately, it's a question of slot reciever vs. big play target, and what the staff wanted for this team. It would be awesome to have a giant Mike Evans, Kelvin Benjamin, or Allen Robinson, but they are averaging 76 targets each, and have caught a combined 57% of their targets. Could the Dolphins offense afford another ~five incompletions a game? Not when they're averaging 6.6 yards/pass attempt. We needed a slot. Gibson was coming off an injury and Matthews was in the dog house, and both were already out of position, originally outside players that the coaches switched inside. I shudder to think where we would be if Ryan didn't have Landry as a safety valve. It's easy to say we want the big plays - or that one big play pass play is worth a few more incompletions - but there is no evidence that giving a deep threat to a the worst deep-ball throwing quarterback in the NFL would reap the more beneficial rewards. Allen Robinson really is the only name we a shot at drafting, but I don't know if we would be in a better situation with him instead of Landry. In fact, Robinson's 6.78 yards/target is worse than Jarvis'.
Cooks and Mathews have now passed him on Football Outsiders wide receiver list, and as soon as Beckham qualifies he will pass him too. In fact, Beckham will likely slide right into the top 15. This is not really a knock on Landry as much as a testament to how great that class was, last year there were only 2 rookie WRs in the top 30, this year there could be 4 or more. The returns do count towards OROTY as Patterson was listed as WR/returner so that could help, but he'll likely need a TD or two. Anyway, just getting on the top 5 list would be a big win for Hickey.
I would say Jarvis Landry has made more big plays then any of the other rookie receivers.. Big plays aren't always long Tds..
This theory of having a legitimate big play deep that would be wasted is just that...a theory. And a pretty nonsensical one, if you ask me. Tannehill's deep numbers to everyone not named Wallace are good. Chances are, if he had a Watkins/Benjamin/Johnson style receiver, no one would be whining about his deep ball.
That is simply just not true, both Kelvin Benjammin and Odell Beckham have made a much higher amount of bigger plays than Landry has this year. Again....Thats not a knock on Landry, but more of a nod to how spectacular both Benjammin and Beckham have been. Lets not forget Cooks, and of course Watkins (who I think will be the best of the best someday). As of right now though, I think Landry is the best "football" player out of the entire group, just not the best receiver. We'll see...I'm trying to look at the bigger picture here and what can happen long term.
Unfortunately it seems as though the Giants are on my TV screen every Sunday...Maybe it just seems as though Beckham has made a lot of plays "shrugs".
P Once again these are 1 st round picks your talking about, Jarvis has got some juice you can't put a price tag on at this point..pretty valuable player for this franchise.
I felt like Landry would be the most pro ready of the group and if he was ever gonna be the best it would be in year one, plus he plays in the area where Tannehill is at his best, which is why I thought he had a decent shot at getting oroty.
Since the day we drafted him, I've said his best comparison player is Hines Ward. I'm sticking with that.
No it's not. From Bleacher Report last year... Ryan Tannehill Accuracy on 20-Plus Yard Throws 2012-13 RECEIVER CATCHES DROPS ATTEMPTS ACCURACY % Mike Wallace 3 1 17 23.5 Brian Hartline 15 1 33 48.5 Everyone Else 11 3 35 40.0 Pro Football Focus As you can see from the above data, Tannehill seems to be much more accurate when throwing deep to Brian Hartline as opposed to Wallace. He is also much more accurate with his deep passes thrown toward the likes of Davone Bess, Charles Clay, Rishard Matthews, Brandon Gibson, etc. In fact, going back to the group of passers isolated above, if one were to tally only Tannehill’s accuracy statistics from players not named Wallace, the resulting percentage (44.1 percent) would rank sixth in the group of 31 quarterbacks.
Yes, I know you wrote the article. I should thank you daily for it. It's a wealth of information, and pretty much dismisses some of the recurring arguments about Tannehill. Too bad that the same arguments get brought up weekly around here. It's like, why bother looking at the information, when I can just say whatever pops into my head. Wallace isn't getting hit deep, it MUST be Tannehill's fault. And because Tannehill can't hit Wallace deep, he MUST suck at the deep ball, and MUST be worse than every other QB in the league at throwing the deep ball.
Tannehill needs to take ownership of his struggles with Mike Wallace on the deep ball. But Wallace needs to own a lot of that too. And it needs to be kept in mind that Tannehill's numbers on deep balls to guys other than Wallace compare well with the deep ball numbers of other quarterbacks around the league. It's not a simple issue one way or another. But evaluating players usually isn't simple. Knowing all the information, seeing the tape each week, I'd say that Tannehill is mediocre at throwing the deep ball and it just so happens he's married to a receiver who is very deep ball oriented and so this mediocrity gets exposed more frequently than other quarterbacks that people don't realize are mediocre or even sub-mediocre at the deep ball despite their being well reputed.
I regret derailing this thread into a Tannehill deep ball topic, but here's my two cents: Those are great numbers, but they are misleading in terms of the point I wanted to make. (First, I'm just going to assume that those numbers are reflecting how far the pass travels in the air, and don't include short route with YAC.) 20 yard passes are not deep balls. I would say Tannehill throws one of the best 20-yard passes in the NFL. He's got that laser that makes his intermediate routes really something special; I'd dare say I expected his numbers from 15-25 yard-passes to be even better than they are. But when - perhaps colloquially - some of us say "deep passes" we mean the type of big play catch that Calvin Johnson scored with - the type that Tannehill couldn't connect with Wallace on this past week. So if youre calling 20 yard passes "deep", then I don't think we do need an Allen Robinson or a Kelvin Benjamin, because Jarvis Landry can run those routes just fine, especially on third down. Don't forget that Landry had more 25+ yard plays on third down than any other WR in college last year. Now, if you're talking, deep balls traveling 30 or 40 yards down the field -then yes, I have to agree with the original statement that it's Tannehill's hugest, glaring, unignorable weakness. This year, he only has ONE completion over 30 yards so far, a 50-yarder to Wallace that didn't even score a touchdown. That's ONE out of ELEVEN. In fact, he's so bad at them that Lazor basically removed them from the playbook, which one may conjecture is the best thing that could have happened to his stats. In his career so far, he has completed only FOUR passes beyond 40 yards (4/17), including ZERO during his year without Wallace. (I think I remember Wallace catching three of the four.) He is 12/52 in career passes over 30 yards, and has SIX interceptions to THREE touchdowns. You can see it with your eyes. He's not good at it. He wasn't good at it in college, not as a rookie, not with or without Wallace, and he won't be good at it next year throwing to whomever you want us to draft.
Well, to be fair... we wouldn't have had to trade up for Allen Robinson b/c was on the board for us in the 2nd round. Twice.
Kinda OT question CK... do you use that yards per target stat to actually evaluate the WR? Or are you only looking at that as a way to add context to his other stats like YAC, etc? If you're using that stat to actually evaluate the WR... what info does yards per target give you in terms of evaluation?
Here's a question: Can Jarvis Landry be as good as Wes Welker? Did Wes Welker make the Patriots better?
The better question is what is the league average on balls traveling 40+ yards in the air? CK would be probably much more knowledgeable on this subject than I am. I also have a hard time comparing what Calvin Johnson is able to catch to what Wallace is able to. Physically, Johnson possesses much more ability to get to a ball, and presents a much larger target. In other words, when throwing to Johnson, you're not trying to land the football in a 2 foot square 50 yards downfield. Johnson also catches with his hands, something Wallace does not. I could be wrong, but from watching Tannehill/Wallace, and watching other QBs throw to other receivers, I do believe that if Tannehill had a receiver like Johnson, many of the deep balls would have been completed, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. A ball being thrown 40+ yards in the air is not a throw that you should have to finesse into a two foot square, yet that is what you expect Tannehill to do everytime he throws deep to Wallace.
Here's a comparison from Football Outsiders: Ryan Tannehill Year Team Pos G GS YAC Rank Short Mid Deep Bomb 2013 MIA QB 16 16 4.4 41 41% 42% 10% 7% Andrew Luck Year Team Pos G GS YAC Rank Short Mid Deep Bomb 2013 IND QB 16 16 5.6 15 49% 30% 13% 7% So last year, with as bad as everyone believed Tannehill to be, he really matched up favorably with Andrew Luck.
I say yes, but i think he is a different type of player. We'll see more tough catches, missed tackles, and acrobatics with Landry, vs Welker being good by getting open all the time with his routes. I don't recall too many really WOW plays with welker, just consistently catches the ball (well, drops lately)
It's an efficiency of production statistic. Quarterbacks are commonly evaluated based on net yards per attempt. Running backs are commonly evaluated based on yards per carry. This is no different. Sometimes people like to tout catch percentages as in this guy caught 75% of the balls that went his direction. That's a crap stat because the primary independent variable for that stat is not the receiver skill or even the quarterback's accuracy but rather the depth at which the receiver most commonly catches his passes. Slot receivers naturally have much higher catch percentages than perimeter receivers. The yards per target stat will correct for this because even if you catch the football fewer times as a percentage of throws in your direction, if you're making bigger plays then you make up for that. In my experience there isn't really a significant bias toward or against slot receivers or perimeter receivers when it comes to yards per attempt. Guys who catch the ball at shorter distances should be supplementing their yards per target with their RAC ability. Which Landry is doing. What a low yards per attempt statistic will tell you on a guy that catches a high percentage of the balls thrown his way is that the guy is padding his total catch and yardage statistics with a bunch of short routes (averaging only 2.8 yards beyond the line of scrimmage). Routes of that distance often aren't even covered by the defense. They're freebies, more to the credit of the quarterback and the offensive line than to the receiver who got "open". Not every Landry catch is described that way, but a high number of them are, and that's why his YPA is so low despite his higher YAC average. What I would like to see is Landry create more big plays...like a real wide receiver. That's what wide receivers do. They make big plays in the passing game.
I love that site and this is the first time I've seen them breakdown QBs like that, can you provide a link to that?
If you go to the basic stat page for any QB, that information is about halfway down the page under Game Charting. http://www.footballoutsiders.com/player/29717/Ryan-Tannehill
I'm one of those people who find the Catch% valuable. Perhaps if we're debating 62% versus 65%, then I would find that unimportant. However, Jarvis Landry's 74% is ELITE; only two WRs are performing better (S.Johnson 78%, B.Cooks 77%). That is significant. You can complain it's because he's playing the slot, but it's significant that he's catching better than almost every other slot in football. You may say it's all a result of YAC, but it's significant that he's one of the best WRs in football at YAC. Someone might discount him because it's quaterback-based, but the rest of the Dolphins are only catching 56% of their passes. Significant, again. Now, if you are ignoring that, PLUS his impact on Special Teams, which is also ELITE, then I can understand why you don't value him. As for yards/target, I think his 7.3 is nothing to scoff at. It's the highest on our team this year; it's better than Gibson/Matthews' 7.04 y/t (71/110/774) and 64.5% in the slot last year. He is outperforming Peyton and Brady's counterparts: Wes Welker's 6.38 y/t (26/37/236 1td) and Julien Edelman's 7.03 y/t (54/79/556 2td), and if you want to add in last year's WR-du-jour, Tavon Austin's 6.06 y/t (40/69/418 4tds) for his rookie season (this season is at 7.0 y/t). I don't see how replacing Jarvis with a deep ball catcher who is catching just over half his passes to a unit otherwise only catching 56% would help. Look at Mike Wallace, who was one of the best deep threats in the NFL, and now he is averaging 6.92 y/t (40/75/519) here. Perhaps you think Allen Robinson would head and shoulders outperform Wallace, but I don't. By singling out slot recievers as being apples to oranges, then we have to realize that Jarvis is becoming one of the best oranges in the game. And he's getting better, catching over 80% of passes in the last six weeks. It's significant and it is valuable.
I don't think Landry has a chance at rookie of the year, even though all of us would gladly crown him today. He is simply awesome and his will to succeed is the intangible that can't be measured in statistics. Let's see how the year plays out though; if he finally breaks a punt/kickoff for a TD and finds a few other ways to score, he could be right back in the race.
Well i don't think he wins it but his targets and production have been incresing. Right now his offensive numbers are a bit misleading because ge didn't really do too much early on.
his special team value needs to be factored in, giving us the best field position is important, and i believe tonite he explodes on to the national scene.. i def undervalued him coming out of the draft..had him as a third..that was wrong, he's better than that all day.
That's the thing; he started the season essentially as a 3rd stringer and kept making big plays on 1-2 opportunities per game. Nothing about him was taken for granted and he's earned every touch he's had so far. His production as a return man SHOULD BE what puts him over the top in voting as well, but it will likely be overlooked in favor of pure catches/yards/TD's. The statistics clearly show that he's the best rookie WR in the league, but it's the cookie-cutter stats that usually win out.
