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Just how important is "clutch", really?

Discussion in 'Miami Dolphins Forum' started by Pauly, May 30, 2016.

  1. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    The guy played 20 NHL seasons and seems to be characterized by everyone as a good player. Bad players don't typically last for 20 seasons.

    I'm combining all of his other playoffs into a group of 197 games. That's a healthy sample size and much more reliable than the small sample size comprised of his two outliers. In that 197 game set, he scored goals at a lower rate than in the regular season. If he was truly clutch, why would that have happened? If he had this innate, God-given clutchness, why was he arguably worse (in terms of goal scoring) overall over 16 of his 18 playoffs than he was in the regular season?
     
  2. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    Now you're trying to put players into two groups, either they are good or bad, attempting, as is your wont, to minimalize subjects or stats that you are arguing against.

    Then you want to cherry pick his best seasons out, again minimalizing, and cite things like "in the rest of his career he scores less than regular season", but only after the cherry picking, because if we take his career as is, he scored more than he did in the regular season, and just like all sports, everyones scoring goes down in the playoffs because you are playing vs better teams.

    Your argument vs clutch is just basically contrarian imo.
     
  3. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    The 2 outliers claim takes sample size into account. That is, you can calculate the probability of at least 4 goals scored in 7 games just as easily as 13 in 17, given his regular season scoring rate. Scoring at least 4 in 7 occurs 14.2% of the time, while scoring at least 13 in 17 occurs 0.003% of the time (by "time" I mean "seasons").

    So yes there are two outliers in his postseason record given his regular season record, but that doesn't mean you're wrong when you say he was better in the postseason. What the stats are suggesting is that it's primarily because of two years that you can make that case, at least using goals vs. games stats. Maybe there are other stats we should look at?
     
  4. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    Theoretically speaking, wouldn't you have to then exclude his worst seasons?

    Other outliers in his career are after his first retirement at 34, then he came back for 2 seasons at 36 and 37, then retired again and came back at 43.

    Those 3 seasons are the only seasons he didn't score a goal, it is more than fair to say he was no longer the same player, so lets eliminate those 13 games, then it's 53 goals in 183 games, with 12 GWGs, and thats with eliminating 37 of his good games, so perhaps if we are eliminating 37 of his good games we should eliminate 37 of his bad games just to be fair?

    Or we could flip flop, and just take out his last 3 seasons, which are the real outliers, he was clearly not the same player, then he scored 80 goals and 19 GWG in 221 games, which in fact is true, since he did not score in those 3 seasons, then his numbers are even better, he scored a goal every 2.7 games up to that point.

    Lets look at some seasons;

    His first playoff season in 86, he scored 10 goals in 20 games with 4 GWG.
    In 91 he scored 4 goals in 7 games with 1 GWG.
    In 92 he scored 4 goals in 7 games.
    94 he scored 7 goals in 20 games with 2 GWG.
    95 he scored 13 goals in 20 games with 3 GWG.
    97 he scored 13 goals in 17 games with 4 GWG.
    98 he scored 3 goals in 7 games with 1 GWG.

    (GWG are extremely important in this discussion as well, The Great One, Wayne Gretzky, who is by and large considered the greatest hockey player ever, played in 208 playoff games, has the most goals with 122, and the most GWG with 24, and he scored 894 goals in 1487 games in his career, only has 5 more post season GWG than Claude, and only 42 more post season goals, and Gretzky led the league in goals 5 times, and in total points 11 times.)

    There's 7 seasons with Claude scoring at a higher rate than he did in the regular season, with 15 GWG, thats half his playoff career, if we leave off the post retirement years, which I think is more than enough evidence that he was a playoff performer.

    I know you aren't saying he wasn't, I'm just trying to put this to bed so to speak, you can look at any hockey players career and see large variances in their scoring, it goes with the territory, even with goal scorers, which he wasn't, but those 7 season prove that it was not just 2 outlying years.
     
  5. roy_miami

    roy_miami Well-Known Member

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    This one seems to be winding down, now I can't wait for the debate as to whether or not leadership exists.
     
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  6. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    It all depends on how you define leadership, now doesn't it?

    Some think leadership involves fiery displays of emotion, grabbing people's face facemasks in the huddle, and yelling like a maniac.

    *troll bait taken*
     
  7. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    Lol, that was funny, thanks :yes:
     
  8. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Absolutely. The only one that is truly a statistical outlier is the 2002-2003 playoff season with 0 goals out of 7 games. That has a probability of 0.07% occurring. The 0 out of 5 in the year before is 0.55% and to be expected with enough seasons.

    The point here is this though: each of these statistical outliers is somehow corresponding to what you'd intuitively think was due to abnormally high level of play, or a condition where you'd rather not include it because the player wasn't the same player as before. So the tests are serving as an objective measure for something you're essentially saying while still putting brakes on arguing clutch over his entire career.

    Yeah, I guess depending on what Fineas argues we'll look at that more in depth haha! More research required to see how unusual it is statistically speaking, but yeah that's a possible clutch stat.
     
  9. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    I assume you're using his regular season stats to come up with these probabilities?
     
  10. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yup
     
  11. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    If he was in the playoffs 18 times and only scored at a higher rate 7 times, then he scored at the same rate or less 11 times. Even if we exclude those 3 late years that you want to exclude, it's still 7 years higher scoring and 8 years lower scoring. And that's about what I'd expect. If "clutch" means some kind of innate ability to elevate one's play in the playoffs or other pressure situations, then we would expect to see consistency in clutchness. But we don't. Ever, really. I mean we are looking at the one player among thousands and thousands across sports you (I think it was you) identified as the shining beacon of clutchness and in 11 of his 18 playoffs he was actually less productive as a scorer than in the regular seasons. Where was that innate "clutchness" in those 11 playoff appearances? And of the 7 when he was above his regular season average, only 3 were markedly above it. The 3-4 goals in 7 games seasons are very small sample sizes. A guy who averages a goal in 31% of his regular season games across his career would be expected to score 2.2 goals in a 7 game series. But since you can't score a fraction of a goal, one would expect 2-3 goals in a 7 game series and a 4 goal series is hardly that special or unique.
     
  12. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    Go ahead and start the thread. This one is about clutch. Participation is entirely optional, so anyone not interested in the topic can simply ignore it.
     
  13. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    Yeah, I know, it was just a lucky streak.
     
  14. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    Not lucky, just the kind of variation one would expect in a large enough sample size. One would expect to see some "hot streaks." And that is exactly what one sees in CLemieux's regular seasons. In 91-92, he had a streak of 9 goals in 7 games and another streak of 6 goals in 4 games. In 95-96, he had a streak of 8 goals in 7 games, another streak of 6 goals in 6 games and another streak of 5 goals in 5 games. Etc. Those were just mid-season regular season games, so clutch isn't the answer or the cause. It seems pretty clear that he was prone to hot streaks. Some happened in the regular season and some happened in the post season.
     
  15. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    Then you could possibly provide examples of that?

    Hockey players playing above their regular season stats for such a large portion of their careers.

    I will say before you attempt that, if you attempt that, good luck.
     
  16. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    I did provide evidence of that for Lemieux. As we have discussed, his playoffs are unremarkable with the exception of 2-3 playoff runs. Looking at just 2 of his regular seasons, I listed 5 stretches when he was similarly hot. But we can expand that our if you want. His 3 big playoff runs were:

    1986 -- 10 goals in 20 games
    1995 -- 13 goals in 20 games
    1997 -- 13 goals in 17 games

    So I looked at 20 game stretches in the regular season in which he also had 10+ goals and here's what I found:

    87/88 -- 13 goals in 20 game stretch
    88/89 -- 11 goals in 20 game stretch
    90/91 -- 14 goals in 20 game stretch
    91/92 -- 17 goals in 20 game stretch and 11 goals in another 20 game stretch
    92/93 -- 13 goals in 20 game stretch
    95/96 -- 15 goals in 20 game stretch and 13 goals in another 20 game stretch

    So 20 game stretches with 10+ goals were actually quite common throughout his career. Indeed, they happened pretty much every year through the first decade of his career, with some seasons having 2 such 20 game stretches. It's actually funny because his best playoff years, in the 85/86 season, the 94/95 season and the 96/97 seasons, were the only full seasons in the first decade or so of his career (he only played about half a season in 89/90) when he didn't have such a 20 game stretch in the regular season. But he had it in the post-season. In a sense he was due for such a run.
     
  17. roy_miami

    roy_miami Well-Known Member

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    Clutch, leadership, football IQ or any other intangible would manifest itself through the win/loss record. Knowing that its pretty easy to see how any debate on the matter is going to play out.
     
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  18. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    I think its fair ground to debate whether those things exist and, if so, how much they manifest themselves in W/L record (or how do we know they do). This thread is about clutch. But I think there's plenty of room for other threads to discuss/debate those topics. I think leadership certainly exists and has an impact, but 90+% of what fans and commentators put out there about who is or isn't a good leader is mostly made up and not based on anything real. Also, different people respond to different types of leadership and different people can emerge as leaders under different circumstances. I don't think its as easy as saying Player X is a leader and Player Y isn't. But again, that's really a discussion for another thread.
     
  19. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    Regular season and playoffs don't equate.

    Show me other hockey players that have such a large part of their career where they scored at a higher rate in the playoffs than they did in the regular season, that is what we're talking about here.
     
  20. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    No, you are missing the point. Regular season and the playoffs do equate. Over a large enough sample size few, if any, players are notably better in the playoffs than in the regular season. And that includes CLemieux, who you touted as the single greatest example of clutch. Except his goal scoring rate was pretty much the same over his career (again using large sample sizes) in the playoffs and regular season. He averaged .342 goals per game in the playoffs and .312 goals per game in the regular season. That is less than a 10% difference. Such a small difference is pretty likely to happen by random chance.

    And no, Lemieux did not score at a higher rate in the playoffs than he did in the playoffs for a large part of his career. He had more playoffs where he scored at less than his career average than he did when he scored at greater than his career average. He really only had 3 notable playoffs out of 18 playoff appearances. And the 17-20 runs he had those seasons were exactly like the ones he had numerous times during the regular season. They happened once or twice every year for the first 10 or so years of his career. Some years his hot streak happened in the regular season. Other times it happened in the playoffs. Interestingly, the few years it happened in the playoffs it didn't happen in the regular season and in the years when it did happen in the regular season (sometimes more than once), it didn't happen in the playoffs.

    I keep asking the question and the "clutchies" never give an answer so I'll try again. If there exists some innate state of being of clutchness such that certain players can consistently elevate their play in pressure situations, why doesn't anyone do that consistently? Why do they all, CLemieux included, also have playoffs and pressure situations when they perform at their normal levels, or even far below their normal levels? What is the explanation for CLemieux's numerous playoff appearances when he was notably worse than in the regular season?

    86/87 -- .342 goals per game (gpg) in the regular season; .235 gpg in playoffs
    88/89 -- .420 gpg in regular season; .222 gpg in playoffs
    89/90 -- .200 gpg in regular season; .091 gpg in playoffs
    95/96 -- .494 gpg in regular season; .263 gpg in playoffs
    98/99 -- .329 gpg in regular season; .158 gpg in playoffs
    99/00 -- .241 gpg in regular season; .174 gpg in playoffs
    01/02 -- .195 gpg in regular season; 0 in playoffs
    02/03 -- .118 gpg in regular season; 0 in playoffs

    Did he somehow learn to be clutch, or become imbued with clutchness, before the 85/86 playoffs, then lose his clutchness the following year? Then he continued having poor playoffs in 88/89 and 89/90, only to return to pretty much his average for a few years before his big 94/95 playoffs? But then his clutchness dissipated in 95/96, before returning in 96/97, before disappearing again for pretty much the rest of his career? If so, that Clutchness Fairy is one fickle b!tch.
     
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  21. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    If there was any way I could define what it is and how to measure it statistically then I would have started it already.
     
  22. roy_miami

    roy_miami Well-Known Member

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    Maybe somebody on the other team, like the goalie perhaps, was as clutch or even more clutch than Lemiuex those series?
     
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  23. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    Could be. In 8 separate playoffs against multiple teams. Could also be that in his 3 good playoff series he got lucky and faced slumping goalies.
     
  24. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    It wasn't 3, it was 7.

    I'm still waiting for you to provide other players that have performed similarly in the playoffs.
     
  25. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    Like was said, CLemieux could be an outlier. The fact that you're clinging to one example as proof of clutch should tell you all you need to know. You seem pretty confident that he's alone in what he did, so that would seem to line more up with the outlier theory.
     
  26. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    It's rare for a hockey players stats to go up in the playoffs, just like any sport, Jordan is one of a small handful of players who score more in the playoffs.

    Wayne Gretzky didn't do it, his only drops by one 10th, same as Mario Lemieux, they simply maintained their extremely high level, which made them clutch.

    There's a list of QBs here somewhere on this thread, that shows how some QBs maintain a very high level in the playoffs, because its more than common for a QBs numbers to drop in the playoffs.

    There's examples in every sport, Claude Lemieux is just one.
     
  27. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    The problem is if we use playoff performance to determine clutch, then we realize Thill hasn't been to the playoffs. Ok, I'm told that's his fault...because he's not clutch....yet Drew Brees last year missed the playoffs despite putting up a 101 qb rating. Peyton Manning won the SB with a 67 QB rating on the season.

    It is these things (and the countless other times in other seasons similar type evidence occurs), more than anything else, that highlight the problem with the concept of "clutch" or W/Ls/playoffs being on the QB.
     
  28. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    No, it wasn't 7. The other 4 playoffs were:

    4 goals in 7 games
    4 goals in 7 games
    2 goals in 5 games
    3 goals in 7 games

    First, those are negligible sample sizes. Second, for two of those 4 seasons the playoff goal per game rate wasn't really better than his rate that regular season. In 92/93 he averaged .39 goals per game in the regular season and .4 in the playoffs. That is obviously a negligible difference, especially with such a tiny playoff sample size. In 91/92, he averaged .571 goals per game in the 7 playoff games and .525 in the regular season. Over 7 games, that .525 goals per game comes out to 3.675 goals. Since you can't score a fraction of a goal, it effectively corresponds to 4 goals in 7 games. The other 2 seasons, he effectively scored one goal more than would have been expected from his regular season numbers.

    Not sure what you mean re: waiting for me to show other players who have performed similarly in the playoffs. My point is that every player, with a large enough playoff sample size, performs similarly in the playoffs to how they perform in the regular season. And as I have shown, CLemieux is no different. The less than 10% variance between his career playoff goal scoring rate and his regular season goal scoring rate is a negligible difference that is quite likely to occur by pure random chance.
     
  29. Dol-Fan Dupree

    Dol-Fan Dupree Tank? Who is Tank? I am Guy Incognito.

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    The interesting part about the quarterback position is that though the quarterback has the biggest impact on the team, it is also the position that is most dependent on the team.
     
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  30. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    It hasn't been shown anywhere that it is so rare for hockey stats to go up in the playoffs. I'm not a hockey guy, but your Gretzky and MLemieux examples are hardly compelling since they were essentially the same guy in the playoffs as in the regular season.

    Michael Jordan's numbers didn't really go up in the playoffs. His minutes did. On a Per 36 mins basis, his scoring numbers are basically identical in the playoffs and regular season.

    In all sports, level of competition increases in the playoffs and it tends to reduce offensive stats by a bit. It's not that players are wilting under the pressure. The stats for QBs don't show any real trends of lesser QBs dropping off more than others. By their nature, NFL playoff stats are very small sample sizes -- no team plays more than 3-4 playoff games in a season and most teams that make the playoffs play only 1 or 2. The lesser QBs tend to be on lesser teams and, due to seeding, tend to play better teams in the playoffs and on the road.
     
  31. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    I don't think it's necessarily any more dependent on the team than other offensive positions, but it is certainly dependent to a significant degree.
     
  32. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    This is not true, and there has been tons of evidence presented otherwise in this thread alone. For many stats, the league-wide average is less in the playoffs than in the regular season. True in football, true in baseball (batting averages around 0.2 less in playoffs), true in hockey, etc..

    For hockey:
    http://www.quanthockey.com/TS/TS_GoalsPerGame.php

    Almost every year goals per game is higher in the regular season than in the playoffs. So the fact Lemieux had a higher goal scoring average in the playoffs (0.342) than regular season (0.312) already makes him statistically "clutch" by the definition I was using: drop-off (or difference) is on average less from non-pressure to pressure situations than for the league (assuming as most do that playoffs = more pressure.. and if you don't want to use "pressure".. then just talk about performing when it counts most, which can if necessary be objectively defined).

    The only issue I had with Finster's claim was that he was year-in-year-out clutch. The stats suggest Lemieux was overall clutch (not in dispute statistically speaking) primarily because of two years (also not in dispute when you calculate probabilities year by year). But let's not try to argue Lemieux wasn't clutch by the definition used here because he is.
     
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  33. Finster

    Finster Finsterious Finologist

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    Ah, the 2-5 year, I had missed that, and you left off the 7-20 year, so that's actually 8 years that he scored at a higher rate.

    Thanks :up:
     
  34. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    Please. The 7/20 year was also effectively the same as his career average (.35 v. .312). Over 20 games, the .312 average projects to 6.24 goals, i.e., 6-7 goals. That's what he did. Good for him.

    And even with 8 years above his career average, it still leaves 10 years when he was below his career average in the playoffs. In other words, more often than not he was worse in the playoffs than his regular season average. And this is the guy you hold up as the poster boy fo9r clutch?
     
  35. Fineas

    Fineas Club Member Luxury Box

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    First, I don't see that chart as being the least bit compelling about there usually being some notable dropoff in playoff scoring. On the contrary, in the last 45-50 years they have been extremely close, with some years having higher playoff scoring. From my manual calculations for CLemieux's career, the regular season scoring average was 6.08 and the playoff average was 5.74, a difference of about 5-6%. In other words, a really small difference and certainly not the kind of difference that would support the claim that it is so rare for anyone to score as much or more in the playoffs than in the regular season.

    As for your definition of "clutch," I think that is pretty weak sauce. There are many, many possible reasons why some players may have drop-offs and others may not -- matchups, hot goalies, coaching strategies and, yep, random chance. And you know that as well as anyone. If, over a 20 year period, average regular season goals are 5.4% greater than playoff goals, A LOT of players will have less than the average dropoff based purely on random chance. And by A LOT, assuming a normal distribution, I mean approximately 50% will have less than average dropoff and 50% more than average dropoff (excepting those that are exactly average). I suspect you could calculate the likelihood of any of the approximately what is the likelihood, through nothing but random chance, that any of the approximately 690 NHL players in any given season scoring at a higher rate in the playoffs. And I'd bet that the number is significant. So no, simply having less dropoff than average doesn't make one clutch and doesn't show an ability to handle pressure better than most others. It could be pure random chance. Not to mention the other kinds of reasons I mentioned (matchups, coaching strategies, hot goalies, etc.)
     
  36. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    We talked earlier about Flacco's playoff run and whether it was due to 'clutch' or streaks.

    One of the points I raised was that if Flacco was 'clutch' why has it gone away in the last few years.
    http://www.footballoutsiders.com/film-room/2016/film-room-joe-flacco

    This article says that based on film analysis Flacco has become lazy with his throwing technique after winning the superbowl. Which goes back to cbrad's point about executing physical skills under pressure, and in this case an apparent failure to practice the basics leading to a reduction in Flacco's ability to execute physical skills under pressure. Some of the examples also show poor decision making skills too.
     
  37. Don't_Be_A_Troll

    Don't_Be_A_Troll Banned

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    Its not Tannehill's fault. Its everyone else's fault. They all suck. The rbs, wrs, o line, d line, lbs, secondary, special teams, ross, Tom Brady, john madden, oj simpson, the water boy, the popcorn stand guy, and everyone else under the sun including your mom. Tannehill is already elite. Everyone knows when you go from an average team to a good team the QB will turn into an elite player. Duh. The team makes the player. Not the player themselves. People in here need to learn some football.
     
  38. Don't_Be_A_Troll

    Don't_Be_A_Troll Banned

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    Once Tannehill goes from an average team to a great team he will become an elite QB. You watch.
     
  39. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Since when does "clutch" have to be rare? As long as on average a player's drop-off from "less pressure" to "more pressure" conditions is less than that of the league, it doesn't matter what percent of players satisfy the condition, they're "statistically clutch".
     
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  40. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    Also the types of influences cbrad and I have been talking about as 'clutch' are pretty much weak sauce kind of numbers to begin with.
    We're talking about not losing 10% of your passer rating when behind in the last 4 minutes.
    We're talking about winning one extra game over and above expected wins every two seasons for HoF QBs.

    We're not talking about square jawed, iron eyed Clutchy MClutch going out and bringing the team back from 20 points down with 3 minutes to play every week
    We're talking about small shifts in performance, that are consistent over a long time frame.
     
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