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Ryan Tannehill

Discussion in 'Other NFL' started by bbqpitlover, Oct 16, 2019.

Ryan Tannehill is...

  1. A terrible QB

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. A below average QB

    4 vote(s)
    5.7%
  3. An average QB

    7 vote(s)
    10.0%
  4. An above average QB

    39 vote(s)
    55.7%
  5. An elite QB

    16 vote(s)
    22.9%
  6. The GOAT.

    4 vote(s)
    5.7%
  1. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    In such cases, film review using small sample sizes is used to identify issues with the stat, and then determine what theoretically could be "averaged out" with large sample size. The result of statistical analysis with large sample size however often can't (or even shouldn't) be directly validated with human observation because humans simply can't reliably process that kind of data.

    However, there are a few cases where you don't need film review at all because humans are simply terrible at the task. Best example is win probability. The concept behind that stat is solid, and humans are generally so bad at it that you wouldn't want their opinion.

    So I'd say that for the great majority of stats film review is either necessary or desirable to at least get an idea of what the issues with the stat are, but there are a few cases where no film review is necessary or even desirable.
     
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  2. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    Thank you!!!!
     
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  3. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    What you're both saying here is a function of construct validity and whether it's been established. Once construct validity has been established for a statistic and you're dealing with large sample sizes, film review can do nothing but detract from the reliability of the conclusions.

    For example, film review to support the notion that Peyton Manning's performance varied at a level significantly higher than that of the average QB is both unnecessary and undesirable. Why? Because passer rating is a valid measure of quarterback performance with large sample sizes, which makes the film review unnecessary. It's undesirable because as cbrad pointed out, people can't process that amount of information and make reliable comparisons on the basis of it. To do so reliably, they would need to invent ways of numerically representing and tabulating what they're seeing, and then at that point we're simply doing "statistics" anyway.
     
  4. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    I feel a whole lot more comfortable trusting the opinions of people on football message boards when they're based on statistics with large sample sizes than I do the opinions of people on football message boards when they're based on film review, regardless of sample size.

    So there's your equivalent of "medical knowledge" as it pertains to this context. There isn't any of that kind of authoritative opinion being offered here, by myself or anyone else.

    Certainly you aren't telling us you are the "medical authority" here, and so we should trust your film review?
     
  5. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    When the coronavirus ends and people go back to work :lol:
     
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  6. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    Not to discount what you said, the ultimate stat is the score at the end of the game. You either won or you lost, bottom line. That’s what’s been lost throughout this entire thread. The Titans won...and won and won and won.

    Those of us who are Tannehill fans were ecstatic for him and wished to God that had been OUR team.

    The Doubting Thomases and naysayers of Tannehill were unable to share in that glee and had to resort to the “yea, but” arguments why Tannehill still isn’t a good quarterback.

    Whether a quarterback goes 12/15 for 115 yards, 3 TDS, and no Ints or goes 32/50 for 375 yards, 2 TDs, 3 Ints doesn’t matter so long as the ultimate stat at the end of game is in your favor.

    That’s the bottom line; did your team win or did they lose?
     
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  7. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    If I read your post properly, I don’t agree with you. Reviewing film is critical to identify a team’s overall strategy and player tendencies on each and every play.

    Football players have trained for years and because of that training, they have become creatures of habit. Studying film helps identify those habits so you as the opposing player know what said player is going to do before he does it. Best be assured, he’s studied you as well.

    Like I said, if I read your post correctly, if not sorry for the rant
     
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  8. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yeah you misunderstood. I agree with what you wrote, but the practical consequence of what you wrote with respect to The Guy's question about how film study could be relevant when you're talking about a stat like career passer rating after 50,000+ passing attempts is that potential issues with the stat are identified not over large sample sizes, but over smaller sample sizes.

    So film study can be used to show when passer rating on a single play or even a game produces "inaccurate" results, but not over 50k passing attempts where the human becomes highly unreliable.

    And that's true for most stats. Win probability is an exception where no film study is useful in validating the stat because humans generally can't tell how much a particular play increased or decreased the probability of winning the game.
     
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  9. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    You can say that about EPA as well. So two of the statistics that relate the strongest to winning (EPA and WPA) we'd need a computer to determine. There isn't anybody out there watching film and telling us for example that when the Titans were 11% likely to beat the Chiefs at the start of the fourth quarter in the playoffs, the plays Ryan Tannehill was involved in from then on were associated with 3.36 expected points for the Chiefs.
     
  10. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    I was referring the the published film review of experts....... Find some articles and read them.
     
  11. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    That I'd disagree with. I think you can get an intuition for EPA because the relation is close to linear. Yes, you'd have to see some examples of EPA but I think humans can learn to intuit that. Win probability is much tougher. Look at win probability long enough who knows.. you might start to get an intuition, but I'll believe it when I see it.
     
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  12. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    And those can have merit, but in the context of this conversation, they'd be as valuable as similar reviews that indicated Andy Dalton played well in 2015 and Nick Foles did in 2013.
     
  13. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    I really, REALLY don't agree with your assertion that Rosen with Moss, Gronk and others on the same team.

    No, Rosen is an NFL QB. Again, that alone means he has elite physical abilities. Put him on a stacked team, and he looks awesome. Put him on a team that can't block? He's gonna be terrible.

    Again, it gets into the mental/processing side of things, which we can't really measure.
     
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  14. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    You are actually making the case for film study. In your mind, you just deducted 3.36 points of value from Ryan Tannehill's performance.

    Here is a play:

    Pass Incomplete
    (1:32) (Shotgun) R.Tannehill pass incomplete short middle to A.Brown (T.Mathieu).
    3rd & 6 at TEN 35

    Use your spreadsheet or stats package and tell me EXACTLY what happened on that play. How much responsibility goes to the QB, receiver, defensive back, members of the OL, members of the DL or LBs, or the two coaches who called the offensive and defensive plays. No peaking at the film.

    Was the throw on target?
    Was the receiver open?
    Was the ball dropped?
    Did the receiver run the correct route?
    Did the receiver slip?
    Did a lineman step on the QB's foot?
    Did a defender make a great play?
    Was there pass pressure?
    Should the throw have gone to someone else?
     
  15. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    Try reading and reporting on some before commenting on their value.
     
  16. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    You're essentially postulating again that there are no differences in ability among QBs. You're saying their performance is determined by their surroundings exclusively. When we induct a QB to the Hall of Fame, his ceremony in Canton should involve zero time celebrating his unique ability and should instead focus only on how his stellar surroundings facilitated what would've otherwise been a pedestrian performance.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2020
  17. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    I've already acknowledged that the validity of film analysis versus statistics is a function of sample size. The point you're responding to was only that there are statistics whose precision probably can't be replicated by humans.
     
  18. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    No. I'm acknowledging a fact that you can't grasp. The worst QB in the league is still an elite player, that's why they made it into the NFL.

    "According to calculations by the NFL Players Association, the chances that any high school football player makes it to the NFL are about 0.2 percent. This percentage is based on the statistic that only about 215 out of 100,000 high school seniors who play football every year make it to the NFL. Only about 9,000 people of the original 100,000 make it to play at the college level."

    So we're quibbling here over elite players. They all have the physical ability. What separates the great QBs from the bad NFL QBs is the mental and processing side.

    Did you ever play sports? I mean, some of this is basic. If you're surrounded with great players, you will be able to make more plays. It's just how it is. I don't care what you think your stats say. You have this mindset that all you need is an elite QB, and the team will be a Super Bowl contender every year. That's just not true. You've got to have a complete team. Let's get ridiculous: put Rosen on a hypothetical team that gives him perfect blocking with HoF receivers. You don't think his numbers would be through the roof? Put him on a team with league average blocking, and HoF receivers, I still think his numbers would be through the roof. It's when he has to navigate through adversity everything falls apart. It's the mental side and the processing.

    But good luck finding a way to measure that.
     
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  19. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    Further, I've argued many times that numbers don't show necessarily whether a QB is great or not. I don't think Troy Aikman was a better QB than Marino. I don't think Brady is a Better QB than Marino. I could go on and on. But the idea is, yes, the teams you played on DO make a difference both in PERCEPTION of a QB, and his overall stats.

    Jay Fiedler looked better than he was due to the team around him. So you have to consider all these things, and you've got to understand, stats don't tell you all of that.
     
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  20. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    In other words, you cannot determine what happened on a small set of plays using stats alone.

    Yet, you have repeatedly used the EPA from a small sample of plays from the 4th quarter of the AFC Championship game to try to assign blame to Tannehill.

    Why would you do that without film analysis when you know film analysis is necessary in that case?
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2020
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  21. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    We could get even more ridiculous than that. Take a very good high school quarterback and surround him with the best players at the other 21 positions on the field in the history of the game.

    Problem is, that degree of variation in surroundings doesn't exist in reality. The degree of variation in surroundings that does exist in reality distinguishes the great quarterbacks from the lesser ones, and it does so because of the differences in their individual ability.

    If that's truly what distinguishes great quarterbacks from lesser ones, then that's measured in the same statistics we use to measure performance, since the performance measures themselves are distinctive in that regard. Just because something is measuring what happened on the field in a physical sense doesn't mean that what happened on the field wasn't driven by something mental or emotional. If a QB processes information faster, for example, then he's going to perform better physically as well, and that will be represented by the same ol' statistics we're used to.
     
  22. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    I used the same statistic with an even smaller sample of plays to indicate that Tannehill won the game in the fourth quarter against the Chiefs in the regular season.
     
  23. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    And it is WRONG to use it without looking at the film in either case. I'm not even saying the the film would show that Tannehill wasn't at fault in the loss and was the reason for success in the win. But, you just cannot make that assumption. You know that and do it anyway. When called on it you deflect.
     
  24. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    OK you have my word that from now on I'll use film as well whenever I analyze a small sample of play with statistics.
     
  25. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    No, that's not a fair comparison. A high school QB would not have the same physical ability of Rosen.
     
  26. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    But Rosen has the same physical ability as Patrick Mahomes?
     
  27. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    I'm not talking about scrambling. I'm talking about throwing. It's why I keep bringing up throwing at targets. If you put Mahomes and Rosen throwing at targets at various distances, I really doubt there would be a significant difference between them throwing at different differences and hitting targets.

    Yes, Mahomes can scramble. Mahomes most likely is processing at a quicker pace (kind of have to if you're scrambling, takes different processing). But as far as the physical ability of throwing the ball, I don't think you'd find much variation between the "bad" QBs and the "great" QBs.
     
  28. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps, but that's not the entirety of the quarterback position.

    Likewise, you could circumscribe the evaluation of wide receivers to speed, and say "well when we forget about route-running, defensive coverage recognition, hands, etc., everybody's pretty much equivalent, because the 40 times of wide receivers at the combine have a range of only about 0.2 seconds [4.3 to 4.5]."
     
  29. AGuyNamedAlex

    AGuyNamedAlex Well-Known Member

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    I actually do think there are differences between them other than processing speed.

    Some QB dont have the physical ability to throw certain routes at the NFL level. Regardless of his mental ability I wouldnt have Chad Pennington throwing a bunch of deep out routes. He just doesnt have the physical ability to consistently make that throw into NFL coverage.

    All QB are elite, but only compared to the average person. They arent all elite compared to each other, which is what someone would mean calling them that.

    I'm not agreeing with Guy, but I dont agree with this particular line of reasoning.
     
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  30. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    Again, disagree. The QBs main role is to throw the ball. So first and foremost, you need a QB that can physically perform the task. A receivers main job is not to run fast. His job is to be where he's supposed to be, and catch the ball.
     
  31. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    I agree, there is definitely differences in arm strength. But a guy like Pennington, like I addressed earlier, made up for a lack of arm strength by his mental side, allowing him to better process what was going on, and get the ball to where it needed to be.
     
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  32. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    The highlighted portion above is exactly the point I'm making in this context, and so you're agreeing with me. Not sure if you're misunderstanding the point or what, but you've echoed it precisely.
     
  33. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    So now what you're saying in essence is that quarterbacks don't vary in individual ability, because what one doesn't have in one area he makes up for in another, and that makes them all equivalent.

    For you there are no quarterbacks in the league who compare favorably or unfavorably to others overall. Overall, Josh Rosen is just as good as Patrick Mahomes.
     
  34. PhinFan1968

    PhinFan1968 To 2020, and BEYOND! Club Member

    Touchdownwire ranked the best QBs at numerous types of throws, specifically:

    Best 3-step Drop: Ryan Tannehill
    Best Outside the Pocket: Ryan Tannehill
    Best Play-Action: Ryan Tannehill
    Best Without Pressure: Ryan Tannehill

    There were 13 categories, and the only other QB with more than 1 top rating, was Drew Brees with 2.

    They claim the rankings were based off of advanced analytics from PFF and Sports Info Solutions.

    https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/...jackson-patrick-mahomes-tom-brady-drew-brees/
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2020
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  35. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    Hell they should have given him Best on Designed Rollouts too. Screw Baker Mayfield.
     
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  36. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    I'm saying I don't think physical ability varies as much as you are implying.
     
  37. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    I see what you mean, but I haven’t separated physical ability from other abilities in saying that quarterbacks differ significantly in individual ability. In fact I’ve said that if the driving force in the variation among quarterbacks is mental/emotional factors, then those factors will be represented by traditional statistics as well, and so I’m completely leaving room for your explanation of the source of significant variation that we see statistically.

    Peyton Manning’s career passer rating for example could represent nothing more than how he differs from other quarterbacks with regard to mental/emotional factors. A career passer rating doesn’t have to represent something physical exclusively.
     
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  38. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    For sure. That's kind of why I asked if you played sports. Some of this is intuitive if you played organized high School sports. When you have a team of highly skilled players, executing to the best of their ability, it's very different than a team with only one highly skilled player. It's also why having good mental/processing is important, because when you play other good players, it's much harder to execute at the top of your ability. The game moves faster, etc. So I think physically, when you get to the NFL level, that playing field is much more equal than we realize. These are all elite players, just to make the NFL. Yes you of course have some differences physically, but it's the mental side that allows a player to really differentiate at that level.

    It's just there's no really good way of measuring that. The NFL uses the Wonderlic for QBs. LMFAO
     
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  39. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    I think Manning is a great example. Physically great, definitely mentally great...except never had the results in the playoffs. Some of that was his teams. Some of that could be that his mental aspect broke down when in the playoffs against much more difficult competition than he faced playing in the garbage AFC South during the regular season.

    It's definitely different playing in the playoffs. Even if you're playing for some podunk high school in a tournament that no one really knows about. Different playing in a scrimmage than in a regular game. When you're in a lose and you're out situation, it's very different mentally.
     
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  40. brandon27

    brandon27 Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Oh, no need to apologize. I'm just amazed, and slightly impressed, but slightly concerned for the well being of some of you all at the same time :lol:
     
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