The short, quick passing attack hasn't seemed to lower the sack/pressure numbers for the Dolphins. LOL
We haven't had a dominant DT since Tim Bowens manned the middle, and Suh is more dominant than even he ever was. I'm excited to see how all this plays out. Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk
It might not be a good impact though. It might cause them to nickel and dime us all day long. Teams have had success with that in the past.
Sure it has. If we were throwing downfield much more and Tannehill was holding the ball longer the sacks allowed would have been even greater.
So you are saying that giving teams more time to pass is good impact? You are trying to have it both ways.
No, I'm saying that opposing teams will adjust to address who we have and what we are doing. Those adjustments may be good for us or they may be bad for us. Suh will be good and he will make plays. This discussion is whether his presence makes those around him better and/or makes them more able to make plays. If opposing teams go to more short, quick passing, the players around him may be less likely to make plays, including big plays. Those are safe passes are result in fewer INTs. It could mean fewer sacks and fewer QB fumbles. If it happens, Suh would be having an impact on the field, but not making those around him more productive.
That is a big impact. When a player forces a team to have to adjust their offense, that is a big impact. You are paying way to much attention to "stats".
I think you are losing sight of what out "argument" is about. I never said Suh won't have an impact -- he will because he is a great player. He will get sacks, pressures, QB hits, tackles, etc. I said he won't have a huge impact on the players or production of the players around him on defense. If opposing teams do go to more short, quick passing it will likely result in fewer sacks, fumbles forced, tackles for loss, hurries, QB hits and INTs for the players around him. And it's not just about stats, although that is how we typically measure impact and productivity. Those surrounding players would have less opportunity to make impact plays.
Ultimately, all this is an empirical question and we'll just have to see what happens. However, one reason the short, quick passing game hurt us in the past is because there was the threat of a play that required the QB to have more time to throw. Take away that extra time, take away the need to use LB's and CB's to blitz, and you have extra defenders. Also, make the opposing offense easier to predict and you'll have more success. So you can't just use our (bad) record against the short, quick passing game to conclude that will hurt us as much in the future. Also, not every offense can execute that like Brady does. Some just won't be able to adapt to a Suh-led offense (if things work like some of us think) very well.
I'm not saying it will necessarily make the defense worse at all. It may very well help. But if it helps in that way it is unlikely to be because it is making the players around Suh better or more productive. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Well.. that's kind of a tricky issue because of how you measure "productivity" of individual players. If it helps the defense (say, the way I described), then it's going to help other players' stats, and to the degree those stats are measuring productivity of a player, it will help surrounding players be more productive. I do agree it's not suddenly going to make surrounding players inherently better, if that's what you meant.
If you know the short passing game is coming, then you can play those routes, jump the short stuff at times, and play to get turnovers. The QB won't be looking to go deep, or simply won't have time to do so. Who cares if sacks go down if INTs go up? One is a MUCH better indicator of your chance at winning a football game. The opportunity to make impact plays just switches from the DL to the LBs and Secondary. Frankly, I'm still more worried about Philbin costing us a game or two with bad coaching than Suh lacking a meaningful impact on the rest of the defense.
Then we are pretty much in agreement. If it does help in the way you describe, the likely increase in stats will be for LBs and safeties with regard to tackles 5+ yards downfield. I guess that's a "help" but not one that will cause that much joy in Dolfandom.
Yeah, I'm really not interested in most stats (including sacks) on the defensive side this coming season, at least with respect to Suh's impact (unless something phenomenal occurs of course). The two most important ones for me are how well the run defense is across all 4 quarters, and of course points allowed. If those two stats are much better than last year, then for me Suh was worth it. Our LB issue is troubling regardless of how you see it. Just gotta hope a great DL can reduce the weakness there.
Those short passes don't result in many INTs. For example, Tom Brady threw just 2 INTs in 387 pass attempts thrown less than 10 yards past the LOS. Brees threw 4 in 428 attempts. Tannehill threw 6 INTs in 377 attempts thrown less than 10 yards past the LOS. Etc. If that's what we see, I don't expect a lot of INTs.
Are you going to be measuring those stats compared to all 16 games last season or just the first 9-10? Because the defense was really good the first part of the season. If measuring all 16 games last year, I guess we'd need to wait until the season is over to judge Suh's impact. Of course, improvement/regression may be due to factors wholly unrelated to Suh -- new players, emergence of young guys from last year, etc.
One of the things that's still unsolved in statistics is a principled way of determining whether something is an outlier or not (whether you are "allowed" to remove a data point). No one has solved that, so in general you don't remove data points. The only justification for removing data points is if you as an external observer can demonstrate the conditions under which one subset of the data was obtained is different than the rest. If you can do that, then by all means remove it. Can one do it in this case? I think there are too many moving parts (too many possible causes for the observed effect) to do that. So I'd do it for the entire season.
Fair enough, although I think it means you'll need to wait until the end of the season to make the comparison and, like it or not, you'll still need to account for those kinds of variables. Suh isn't the only thing different about this defense. A lot has changed.
Yeah, a lot has changed, but I'm assuming (and it's an assumption only of course) that Suh is the biggest change in terms of influence on how good our defense is, so the differences in run D and points allowed should correlate most with whatever the true value of Suh's impact is (relative to other players). And while we'll technically have to wait till the end of the season, the more games are played the less likely the final stats will deviate from them. So, I'll be forming (ever more confident) conclusions along the way
Re: the first part, that may depend some on Phillips. If he's a legit very good player than his impact could be quite big. There'd likely be some connection there because he'd be the true logical beneficiary of Suh's presence as he likely will rarely be double-teamed (unless he proves even more dangerous than Suh). The second part is usually true, but last year shows that things can change dramatically from one half of the season to the next. I'm not completely sure which part of last season was the aberration. I tend to think it was the second half and the first half showed more what the defense really was (when healthy). If that is the case, then a top 3 defense over the first 9 games won't really be any indication of improvement.
Even the first part of the season, the defense wasn't as good as people said. Statistically, they looked good...But they played some bad offenses, and they had problems stopping third downs, and fourth quarters. I talked about this a ton the first part of the season.
Miami should be better on 3rd down because Jimmy Wilson is no longer on the team. Addition by subtraction.
We play a lot of really bad offenses the first half of this year too. In fact with the exception of the Pats in week 8, we pretty much exclusively play bad offenses the first half of the season.
Yeah, I'm just pointing out, I thought the Dolphins defense was incredibly overrated for most of the year, and said so, even when they were winning.
Also note that while we were one of the top offenses between the 20s we were one of the worst inside the red zone...
That really confused me last year how that happened. In 2013 I believe we were one of the very best in the redzone. I imagine Moreno staying healthy would have helped immensely.
Schlereth made an interesting point about the Dolphins customary late season collapses. Basically said that simply practicing in the sweltering Miami sun/heat/humidity/overall climate has a draining effect on the NFL body over the course of the long season. Compares it to the somewhat more hospitable weather in opposing cities.
I wouldn't say Barfalo is a bad offense, especially since they're going with Taylor at QB, but I'd certainly agree with the rest, and you won't catch me complaining about the schedule for the first 8 games. We lose a home game to London, but we're VERY well represented over there, so meh.
Agree. You cant be terrible on 3rd downs and the 4th quarter and be good enough to make the playoffs. Kind of critical circumstances.
That comparison has been made for 25 years, its a factor sure...butbim sick of excuses for players just because they are Miami Dolphins. STFU and get better.
