Even if that were true, the problem would still remain that there would be no way of knowing when the forum was right and when it was wrong, and so no certainty could be attached to those judgments.
Yeah, that's tough to do, for the same reason it's tough to measure the relative contributions of different players on the outcome of a single play. Nevertheless, I think we'd all agree football fans are probably way better than random at deciding which of the players on the field were the most influential in determining the outcome of that play. So, one can have confidence in the direction of the bias, even without being able to quantify it.
Very true. Miller Huggins did not have the sense to start Lou Gehrig until Wally Pipp asked to sit out one game due to a headache.
Again, you're making a comment about judgments in general, in areas in which there is likely to be little or no bias, rather than focusing on the fact that the bias in this case is about the particular issue being judged. While people may be good at determining the relative contributions of players on other teams (how much Tony Romo helped the Cowboys win one day, for example), when it comes to one's "own" team, if one has a strong desire to see Chad Henne (or Ryan Tannehill) succeed, for example, one is likely to attribute his successes to him and his failures to his surroundings. Likewise, when it comes to the head coach of one's "own" team, if one's personal theory is that the team is a "Jim Harbaugh" away from being highly competitive, the same phenomenon is likely to occur in the opposite direction (the team's failures are attributed to Philbin, while its successes are attributed to other factors). Come visit the forum one day after a loss, and you'll see many people here attributing the bulk of the loss to his own pet theory of its deficiencies, when there is no way of confirming that objectively. Likewise for wins, with some other pet theory. "The theory determines what you see." People are indeed good at making judgments, but not when the thing being judged carries a heavy emotional investment, and there is lots of ambiguity involved. Then pet theories run wild absent any objective confirmation. The team in this area (i.e., relative contributions of various causal factors) is in essence an "inkblot," and one's emotional investment in seeing one thing versus another creates a great deal of confirmation bias. Then we come here and get "validation" of it. Before we know it, Joe Philbin is public enemy number-one, and that's treated as the gospel truth simply because it's been repeated ad nauseam on a message board, when in reality no one has any idea whether that's accurate.
I really really am beginning to dislike Cautious Coach Joe, if this were the rant forum there would be several F bombs being dropped at my level of displeasure with that weak, prima donna sob. "I do not want to coach talented but eccentric players, that is to difficult" If Belicheat can and could handle Randy Moss, why cannot our lil snow flake of a head coach manage a Marshall or a Wallace.
I totally disagree. First of all, Philbin is thought of as a well below average coach by a lot of commentators, not just Dolphins fans, so how do you deal with that? Second of all, a lot of Philbin's problems are directly attributable to him, like game management, or otherwise to a great degree attributable to him (starting a player, helping to get rid of one, deciding how to use a player, etc..). You don't have to randomly assign attribution there.. it's clear the uncertainty in within a smaller subset of possibilities. None of that has anything to do with being a Dolphins fan. And not that you might believe this, but I can't see why from a purely emotional point of view I would look down on the head coach. I actually liked the hire initially, though that was obviously based on information from him being an OC. Basically, you're creating a "just-so" story to suggest that because we don't know everything, we don't know anything.
He's also regarded like this: http://espn.go.com/blog/miami-dolph...n-hes-one-of-the-better-coaches-in-the-league So how do we know what's real and what isn't, and how much weight to give one thing versus another? How do we know things wouldn't have turned out worse had he not made those decisions? What about the decisions he's made that resulted in good outcomes? Trying to determine Joe Philbin's input into the team's performance from this great a distance from the situation is impossible to do with any certainty.
Who's going to help Lamar Miller carry the load all season? The running game is key to end this 6 season playoff drought! Daniel Thomas is terribly inconsistent & fumbles a lot. Mike Gillislee has not done anything yet & Damien Williams showed some promise against the Bills last season.
Right, we don't know. But we don't know doesn't mean we don't know anything. Philbin is the HC and has head coaching duties. Just by that alone, we know his influence on the things I mentioned is greater than just randomly assigning it. The direction of the bias here should be clear.
But his influence on things could in fact be positive overall (i.e., creating a better outcome for the team than a worse head coach), and we'd never know it.
Yeah, people have different opinions sure, but given that humans tend to be pretty good at credit assignment, you shouldn't just dismiss such an opinion with "no way to know".
Well if there's no way to know whether the human is accurate in this case, there's really no way to know definitively. Hell, I could be coming into this thread and saying Philbin is the best thing since sliced bread. Instead, my tack is to say neither I nor anyone else can know for certain. I'd consider my approach the far more humble and limited one.
You can say "humble".. I'll say "far less useful". Why not just adopt the "no way to know" approach for everything in life that can't be quantified? Yup, that's right, you'd never do it. The cost is way too great if you did.
I appreciate the conversation that c-brad and Tannephins are having, yall bring a different approach to the board and I dig it..it helps me formulate my own evaluation thru information and opinions.
Again, you're taking a far more generalized approach to this than I am. I'm talking about the inner workings of a football team that we, as outsiders, can't possibly know for certain, and you're talking about approaches to life in general. Excluding things that are impossible to know, such as who the Dolphins will select in the first round of the draft, do you think there's anything about the team we can't possibly know for certain?
You made that point with regard to judgments of relative responsibility for performance by people functioning within the organizations about which the judgments are made. We have none of that here. Again, we're outsiders. I find it incredible that fans of a football team, discussing that team on a message board, are unable to acknowledge their own limitations in knowing some things about the team. We're fans. Just because we love the team, watch every game, and come here and analyze and discuss the team a great deal, doesn't mean we have some greater degree of knowledge about the team than is humanly possible. We're still fans, we're still on the outside looking in, and there are still things we can't know with any certainty. The amount of discussion here generates the guise of "knowledge" in some cases, where there really isn't any. In some cases there is, and in some there isn't, and can't be.
Dude.. it's on this very page. Check out post #46. Philbin is a HC with HC responsibilities. It doesn't matter if you're within the organization or not. Some things, like game management, you can clearly assign him credit/blame for. Certainly better than random assignment of credit/blame!
Yeah it is.. Still not sure what my expectations for this team should be now after Suh. A trip to the AFC championship game in the next 3 years is where I stand right now. What about you?
Throughout the history of sports, coaches have been judged from their records. Since, IMO, we have more than enough sample size, that is more than enough for me. No need to guess how many angels can dance on the head of a pin to evaluate Philbin. No playoffs, no winning seasons, losing record.
According to some stats 2013 Ellerbe and Wheeler were quite a bit better than 2014 Jenkins, believe it nor not they were both top 5 players on the team in 2013 while Jenkins didn't even make the top ten in 2014, so thats a pretty bad example of miscasting the talent on the team. And how does Landry working his way into a starting role relatively quickly fit with your theory?
I still don't understand why we kept Philbin. If you're going to change the roster this much then they should've made a change at head coach.
Check out the first six years of this guy's head coaching tenure in the NFL: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/BeliBi0.htm What do you suppose was being said about him on his teams' message boards at the time?
Perhaps the people making the decisions know more about the team than we, and after they analyzed the situation -- from the inside -- they came to the conclusion that the absence of adequate talent, rather than deficiencies on the head coach's part, was responsible for the team's performance? You say you "can't understand why we kept Philbin." I can't understand how you can't understand that. My lord, it takes just an acknowledgement of our limitations in knowing things as fans, along with a simple, plausible explanation like the one I proposed above. Again, is it possible that there are things about the team we can't know for certain? Is it possible that our judgments are inaccurate? If your answer to either of those questions is "no," you're operating at quite a level of grandiosity in my opinion.
Well that's just the thing, and what I alluded to earlier in the thread. If your pet theory is that Philbin is at fault, and he can't develop young talent, then those sorts of examples are ignored or given less weight, while the ones that fit with your theory are heralded. Before you know it, you believe you're "right," and you have a ton of (cherry-picked) examples in tow to support your theory.
The idea that we don't have enough information is rather naive IMO. The labor markets for NFL coaches are open and extremely transparent. We don't need inside information on Joe Philbin, because the most important information regarding his performance is publicly available. The people making the decisions have made Joe Philbin the lowest paid coach in the league. That says everything about the "inside information" they possess. They have inherently acknowledged that Joe Philbin isn't a good coach.
Joe Philbin just received a contract extension this offseason. I'm not sure how Belichick's salary in 2000 is relevant to anything other than an example fhat labor markets aren't 100% efficient. Even then, there were multiple suitors for Belichick back in 2000, and I'm 99% certain he wasn't the lowest paid coach in the NFL. The reality is that if Joe Philbin were a good coach, he wouldn't have taken an extension from Miami for $3M/yr. Free markets don't lie.
Right, I did a little research and then edited the post. Again, however, what sort of salary do you think Belichick could command in 2000, after he'd been fired by the Browns after even more games than Philbin has coached? The point, of course, is that if the team doesn't have the talent to succeed, the people paying the coach can lowball him salary-wise, and there's nothing the coach can do about it.
Edited my post. Belichick had two teams trying to acquire him as a HC. With that type of demand, presumably he wasn't the lowest paid in the league. The coach can decline the offer, become a FA, and let his talents be bid on in an open and free market. If Miami thought highly of Philbin, they wouldn't take the risk of potentially losing him.
Don't waste my time with outliers. The vast majority of successful NFL coaches had more success than Philbin their first three seasons. There was some good research here on that awhile back....
Assuming the team: 1) wants to win, 2) believes head coaching is an important variable in that regard, and 3) believes there is a strong correlation between head coaches' salaries and their competence, the only reason there would be a benefit of having the cheapest head coach in the league is if the team believed he was outperforming his salary.
Well I'm all for evaluating good research. What I'm not for is determining Philbin to be at fault, and designating him as a bad head coach after his first three years, based on the sentiments of people on a message board.
