I would agree, but he has played like it for many stretches. It comes down to Ryan improving his consistency and the coaching staff putting him in a good position to play up to his caliber.
My younger brother is a Steelers fan and he always says Tannehill reminds him of Alex Smith. That comparison seems to be popular, and it makes sense.
Tannehill definitely used his legs much more earlier in his career, and he was effective. I think it was 3Pmi in the club who had a good detailed post about it. I think coaching has a lot to do with it, but I also think some of that is on Ryan himself. Though I do think he used his legs much more later last year after Lazor was fired.
I'm an Alex Smith fan and agree. He's not at Smiths level yet, but if he gets there he'd be pretty good.
I just think he should have it by now. I mean he played QB in high school, some in college, and now 4 years in the pros. He shoulda learned or picked up something by now.
Oh I'm not that surprised he hasn't. Not sure what you're most familiar with, but I can tell you that in science people can go a long time without ever learning how to do certain things that they "do" on a regular basis as part of their job. For example, many researchers apply statistical analysis to their data, but because all they do is just plug numbers into a computer program that's for them a "black box" that they don't really understand, they never learn the underlying math or how to properly interpret the results. Whether someone learns that or not has a lot to do with the training they had, their own desire to investigate things (many people have a fear of math), and of course the reviewers of any research paper they send in for publication. If the reviewers don't accept the paper, that might over time force the issue and a person might decide they simply have to learn the stuff, or often what they do instead is just add another author to the resubmitted paper who does understand the stuff and they never learn it on their own. So I'm not surprised a person can be a professional in a field and not really be capable of what you'd think they'd pick up after enough time. Often, people just do enough to get by (obviously not the attitude you want in a franchise QB!).
No it doesn't. It contains warping logic around an irrational dislike of a QB. You know, its what's been happening on this board for years now.
10 years in the league and Smith has accomplished nothing. You know you've fallen on hard times when your hoping we get our own version of Alex Smith (though we're already half way there). This water tastes like ****, but if it just tasted like piss we'd be alright!!
The funny thing is, that if we'd had decent play from other units, or not dumpster fires for coaches, we'd probably have been in the playoffs in one of the past four seasons, or at least had a better record, even with Tannehill's supposed subpar play. Again, I understand that Tannehill has stuff to work on, but people are still acting like he was the weakest part of the team. He wasn't.
He's been to the playoff three times and posted a good performance in 4 out of 5 games played with 1 meh game. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SmitAl03/gamelog/post/ Andrew Luck on the other hand has also been to the playoffs 3 times, has played 2 good games out of 6. Has had 1 meh game one and 3 bad games, one of which was a total dumpster fire. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/L/LuckAn00/gamelog/post/ Alex Smith's career was also going nowhere until his new coach Jim Harbaugh changed his scheme to suit what Alex Smith does best. Jim Harbaugh then changed his scheme again to suit what Colin Kapaernick does best. And if you ask SF fans whether the decision to keep Kapaernick and trade Smith was the right decision you'll have trouble finding many who'll say it was the right long term choice.
huh? they dont compare at all imo, one has a very strong arm the other doesn't, one works strictly from the pocket the other scrambles and runs almost every drive..I see no similarities quite frankly.
I think we can dream bigger than merely getting to the playoffs 3 times in 10 years. And San Fran fans are idiots. Many of them wanted rid of Harbaugh.
You hit it. Philbin and Lazor didn't seem to want Ryan taking off running. I noticed they put the kobash on it after he flashed some ability there early on. There were a few games over his career when he just did it anyway and he did pick it up again more when Campbell took over and was very successful. I think he's got the instinct for this aspect of the game. I like the different perspectives on this. Is he ignorant and can't move around? Or has he been told to stand there in the pocket and take those hits hoping that he can connect with a receiver up until the last possible chance? Hopefully the reigns are coming off and we will finally know for sure this year what we have with Ryan Tannehill.
I think I would be lets get the first down no matter what. I can see wanting you QB to let plays develop before taking off every time, but you do on occasions need to take off.
I think we can dream bigger of wasting the first 5 years of a QBs career with bad coaches and then trading him away and keeping a worse QB too.
Because Cbrad was a little unsure about the correlation between team QB rating and win% I have gone and put some more years into my spreadsheet. Now I have 2006 to 2015 (10 seasons) Big picture. Correlation of team passer rating to win%: 0.667 (passer rating adjusted to 2015 base average) Correlation team passer rating to win%: .644 (unadjusted for rising passer ratings) Adjusted average passer rating 2006-2015: 90.15 Standard deviation: 12.11 Year by year correlations 2015: 0.461 2014: 0.667 2013: 0.694 2012: 0.698 2011: 0.803 2010: 0.684 2009: 0.814 2008: 0.544 2007: 0.720 2006: 0.575 Using 2015 passer ratings as a base 100 rating - 12 wins on average 90 rating - 8 wins on average 80 rating - 4 wins on average 2 teams had a below 80 rating and a winning record 3 teams had an above 100 rating and a losing record 2015 had one team with a sub 80 rating and a winning record (Denver) and one team with a over 100 rating and a losing record (New Orleans) which helps explain 2015 much lower than normal correlation. Team passer rating correlates better to team win% than QB ratings that have been previously published. Some possible explanations. 1) Previous articles were comparing raw passer rating (unadjusted for year) against more modern stats like DVOA and QBR which are adjusted for year. There is an unconscious bias in favor of the modern stats so analysts forgot to adjust passer rating for year. 2) The other articles I have read have truncated the QB list to starters with 14+ starts in a season. Truncating the data tends to lower correlations, especially as truncating the data removes bad QBs with poor records. 3) QBs get credited for partial games which may have an effect 4) Non QB passing. My perception is that successful non-QB passing can make a critical difference in wins, so adding this data back in can help explain a higher win% than QB passing alone (example Ronnie Brown passing for a couple of TDs in the wildcat heyday)
As a follow up to my last post. The trendline, based on 2015 base, goes from: 0 expected wins at 70 rating to 16 expected wins at 110 rating. Almost all teams are within one and a half standard deviations (18 passer rating points) of the trendline, and there are by my count only 6 teams with a passer rating more than 2 standard deviations (25 passer rating points) away from the trendline
What this shows is that the underlying relation can't be linear because obviously you can have passer rating below 70 as well as above 110 and you've already hit the minimum of 0 wins and the maximum of 16 wins at those points while the line continues further in both directions. Correlations assume the underlying relationship is linear so basically what you've showed is that correlations aren't the right statistical tool to use to capture the relationship between passer rating and wins when passer rating gets too low or too high.
Having a closer look at some of the outliers where teams have a higher or lower win% than their passer rating would suggest. There seems to be a secondary group in the data spread along a similar slope to the NFL average, but their trendlne starts at around 55 for 0 wins and 95 for 16 wins. This groups comprises teams that have poor QB play but exceptional defenses such as the 2015 Broncos or Rex Ryan's Jets. If I look hard there appears to be another cluster spread out on a similar slope to the average, but with a trendling starting at about 85 for 0 wins and ending at 125 for 16 wins. These teams are like the 2015 NO saints and 2008 San Diego Chargers) So perhaps there are 3 groups spread along 3 different trendlines. Group 1 "Normal teams" on the 70-110 trend line. Group 2. Great D, poor QB teams on a 55-95 trend line Group 3. Poor D, great QB on a 85-125 trend line.
It looks like #2 is the big culprit. You showed a tiny difference for #1. Going through the different years, the correlation between games started and passer rating ranges from 0.25 to 0.45, but that correlation hovers around zero when you restrict it to at least 14 games started. Excluding all QB's that didn't start 14+ games excludes generally more than twice as many QB's as you have with 14+ starts, and the average number of starts for that group is around 4 per season, meaning that their total effect is almost half that of the 14+ starts QB's (it's as if they started 8+ games if it was the same number of QB's). Couple that with a decent correlation between games started and wins, and yeah you could (probably, without doing all the work to prove this) get the difference between the generally reported correlation between passer rating and wins, 0.53, and your stated 0.67. I never realized excluding QB's with less than 14 starts would have such a huge effect. The effect of #3 and #4 seem tiny in comparison when you look at their attempts (often non-QB's have exactly 1 passing attempt the entire season haha!). So it looks like the main culprit here is #2.
I think number 1 only becomes more relevant with longer data series. For the initial 6 year period the difference between raw and unadjusted was 0.014 When you extend it to 10 years the difference is .021 In terms of maths its insignificant, but when people compare different QB rating systems the difference between 0.67 and 0.64 might cause a reviewer to drop it a couple of spots in their rankings. I agree #2 is the guy standing beside the body with the smoking gun in his hand. I mentioned #3 because I noticed it sometimes got screwy trying to account for QB win%s when you had multiple QBs starting Ina season. From what I recall that's the main reason given for restricting the field to QBs with 14+ starts. I mentioned #4 because when you do see a non QB passing for a TD in the highlights of a game it always seems to be the critical TD in deciding the game. You are probably right in saying it won't have a significant impact on the numbers, but it might explain a 0.02 or so of difference.
I went back to the HoF QB issue because some comments were made about the sample size of win% in 0=7 point games. So I went and looked at the top 70 QBs according to number of games started (cut off 115 starts) All QBs combined: 52.3 win% Std Dev 6.75 Hof QBs 56.6 win% Std Dev 5.24 All Non-Hof QBs (Including Tom Brady's 69.1 win%) 50.4 win% Std Dev 6.43 Treating Tom Brady as HoF QB, as I treated Favre and P Manning in my original analysis, changes the numbers Hof QBs (+P Manning, Favre and Brady) 57.1 win% All Non-HoF QB (excluding P Manning, Favre and Brady) 50.0 win% Currently active QBs with 100+ starts and a better than 55% win ratio in 0-7 point games Tom Brady: 69.1% Ben Roethlisberger: 55.8% Matt Ryan: 59.4% Jay Cutler: 55.4% Matt Hasselback*: 58.9% Hassleback is, of course, a backup now.
A simple illustration of why \i think it is important to look at whole of career numbers. Eli Manning has a career record in 0-7 games of 37-37. He has been in the league for 12 years. If we break his career into 4 periods. First 4 years: 12-10; 54% wins Middle 4 years: 16-9: 64% wins Last 4 years: 9-18 33% wins. If you want to try to explain the difference in terms of getting and losing clutch you will tie yourself in knots, especially as his 2 superbowl wins occur outside of the time he was 'super clutch' in the league. A much more reasonable explanation from someone used to analysing stats would be that random distribution is not equal distribution so you expect 'hot streaks' and 'cold streaks' in smaller slices of the data. And that overall he is not good or bad in clutch situations, but he can get streaks.
Yeah, you have to quantify these probabilities using the binomial distribution (distribution of coin flips). Let's say one uses his overall record of 37-37 and asks what the probability is that he'd have a 16-9 or better record in 25 games, or 9-18 or worse record in 27 games, assuming his 0-7 game ability didn't change. You get probabilities of 11.5% and 6.1%, meaning you're a lot safer discarding that hypothesis and arguing the Giants' 0-7 game ability more likely did change over those periods, at least based purely on a statistical analysis of this data. How that fits in with the Giants' SB runs is another story.
Plenty of things can change. The pass rush in his first SB run for example. Coaching can change, especially OC for a QB can make a difference. Generally though players are called 'clutch' or not, and it's usually described as being an inherent trait. As far as QBs in the NFL are concerned I have become a believer that 'clutch'does exist, as shown by the HoF to non HoF comparisons. The best indicator I have found is 4th quarter passer rating. But I do think it relates more to game management decisions more than execution of physical skills. I'm not sure how to measure it but I think it has a lot to do with management of time, not just gaining yards. I remember reading an article that explained how, statistically, it's perfectly logical and natural for an otherwise normal hitter such as Roger Maris to go on a run where he ends up with the season home run record (complete with asterisk).
My bias is that some form of "clutch" probably exists in professional sports because of the well-known relationship between pressure/stress and performance for a multitude of tasks/contexts in the general population. In general, performance goes up with greater stress up to a point, after which it decreases. Too much stress and you can't perform well anymore. I'd be surprised if such an effect didn't exist with professionals, though the magnitude of the decrease might be less than with those who aren't pro's. One thing I will say though is that if "clutch" exists, then it's not necessarily something that doesn't improve (or get worse) over time. Flacco is a great example if you're looking for QB's. Take a look at how he did in the playoffs early in his career (absolutely terrible with ratings in the 40-50 range, and then how he kept getting better with ratings in the 90 to 120 range): http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/F/FlacJo00.htm Importantly, his playoff ratings went steadily from way below his regular season ratings to way above them. Well who knows.. as you point out these are team stats anyway, though the QB definitely influences passer rating a lot. Like I said, for me the primary reason I'm biased towards thinking at least some QB's have "clutch" is that general stress-to-performance relationship. Would be odd if somehow all QB's just happened to be operating at the peak of that curve.
My bias is that I now work as a chef. When someone melts down in the kitchen it isn't because they screw up the physical side of their job, although that does happen, it's because they screw up the mental side of the job, they lose track of an order, they mess up the timing of something, they forget their meal has to be co-ordinated with another. Being a chef requires a lot of situational awareness, not just about your tasks, but the tasks and timings of everyone else in the kitchen. Also the best chefs in he industry aren't the best because of their physical tools. Joel Robuchon is famously slow with his hands. The best chefs are the ones that can control the kitchen and get everyone working well together and keep up with the orders at the same time. It's why the first thing Gordon Ramsay does in his Kitchen Nightmares series is to put the kitchen into a full blown stress test. I totally agree that physical skills deteriorate under stress, and that has some effect on QBs. But because decision making is such a critical aspect of the QBs job description, and I see on a daily basis that decision making under pressure is more important than physical execution of skills under pressure in my job, I'm biased to think that 'clutch' is more decision making than execution of physical skills. I hadn't turned my mind to 'clutch' being a learnable skill, but that definitely is true whether you believe it is mainly a physical process or mainly a mental process. Also it can explain players losing 'clutch' through injury, change of scheme, change of team mates etc.
I don't think it's worth trying to make a distinction between "mental" and "behavioral" when it comes to the stress responses because it always involves and affects both. The entire response begins in the brain - your sensory system detects something and the hypothalamus sends signals to release hormones etc.. - and affects both the brain and body. Of course some responses (targets of those hormones) are primarily physiological (sweaty palms might occur) while others are more cognitive (difficulty concentrating), but it always involves both so I'd just rather look at measurable differences in performance and not try to make distinctions we can't make well anyway.
100%, clutch is all mental, and in it's essence, it's all about how the mind deals with fear. Years ago, while vacationing in NC, I saw 2 girls in the ocean hanging out just beyond the break, a dolphin just started porpoising behind them, someone yells SHARK!!! I heard those girls scream like no scream I'd ever heard before, one of the girls just started swimming towards shore as fast as she could, the other girl was fairly transfixed, she was "trying" to swim towards shore, but couldn't stop looking at the dolphin-"shark", she was screaming bloody murder, a truly blood curdling scream. Had it really been what they thought it was, that screaming girl would have been food for the shark, one girl did what she had to, to get away, the other girl could not get her body to work through the fear. Buster Douglass was a quitter, every time he got into a tough fight, he'd quit, as physically talented as anyone out there, his mom dies just before the Tyson fight, and Douglass has the fight of his life, and when he is knocked down, he doesn't quit, but gets up and keeps on fighting, eventually shocking the world and beating Tyson. His next fight is vs Holyfield, Holyfield says before the fight, "Douglass is a quitter, I'm gonna make him quit", Holyfield knocks him down in the third, Douglass checks to see what color his snot is on his glove and makes no attempt at all to get up, because after all, he is a quitter. I play competitive pool in the APA, it is a fairly big stakes league, if you win your own "cities" tournament, you win a trip to Vegas to play for real money. There is the regular season, then the playoffs and then the "cities" Vegas qualifying tournament, and you see how pressure affects people through that process, from regular season games, to late season critical games, to playoff games, to the cities, and if you make it to Vegas, how they play there. The people who crumble are pretty much known, just as the "clutch" players are known, you can quite literally see people shaking while they are "trying" to play, and subsequently missing easy shots, no one really rags on anyone because everyone "feels" the pressure, it's just that everyone deals with it differently. The people who play professional sports are just that, PEOPLE, and are therefor subject to all things human, and they all deal with it differently, how many times do you see a guy dry up at the plate in the playoffs, carrying a 300+ batting avg, or like the Novotna-Graf Wimbledon match in 93, where Novotna was up 4-1 in the final set and fell apart, losing the set 6-4, and losing the championship, missing shots very badly. Pros are not immune, as the stakes go up, so does the pressure, and the more the spotlight is on you, the more the pressure is felt, and the QB almost always has the spotlight on him, which is why in the NFL, "clutch" is almost always associated with the QB, but there are plenty of bonehead plays by others in high pressure games, just as there are great plays or games by non QBs in high pressure games. It's all how the individual deals with it mentally.
Behavioral cannot be disconnected from mental though, because it is mental, you pretty much answer that equation in your own response, with the bolded part, every physiological response is a reaction to how the brain is dealing with the situation.
The response to pressure can be improved, though. The more you're in those pressure situations, the better your response is, as you become accustomed to them.
That's true to an extent, because it's no certainty, it can get better through experience, but many who suffer from nerves in those spots, always suffer, even if they do get a bit better at dealing with it, they still often times are effected. It can, and often does improve through experience, but to all different levels.
The response can also be degraded too. Take Chad Henne for example. Under Sparano he was punished for taking risky decisions and rewarded for playing safe. Pretty soon he was turned into Check-down Chad. Tim Couch is another example, all the years of bad blocking turned him hypersensitive to pressure to the point where he was getting spooked by phantom rushers. There is a shibbeloth that you learn more from your mistakes. The truth is you learn more from your successes. Essentially there are many ways to fail and only a few ways to succeed. If you fail you learn to avoid one of the many ways to lose, if you succeed you learn one of the few ways to succeed.
Late to this but clutch isn't a thing. You're either good or you're not. If you can control whether you are better at the end of a game than you are during the other parts then why wouldn't you just be that level good for the whole game? It's a media and fan narrative, in part because it's the last thing that happens and therefore it's the thing we remember best.
