I believe he has the skills to be at least in the top 10. With garbage around him, he didn't have results like that. With good surroundings, his results went off. Good QB on bad team won't look good, results-wise. Good QB on good team will have good results.
He definitely has the arm & the mobility and has been said, in good surroundings (ie having a decent oline, a good running game and coaches that didn't handcuff him to the pocket & that allowed him to audible), he was "statistically" the best QB. He just doesn't have the "off the cuff" game that the likes of Mahomes, Wilson, Rodgers have and certainly doesn't have that 6th sense of where the pressure is coming from.
By extension then you must believe that Tannehill's surroundings in 2019 were better than Patrick Mahomes's, despite that Mahomes's team won the Super Bowl.
You really don't understand teams and chemistry at all. Honest question: did you ever play any organized sports growing up? I don't ask this to try to make fun or marginalize, but to honestly understand where you're coming from. The team with the best players isn't always the best team. But having the best players can make a massive difference in do or die situations, like the playoffs. And, not for nothing, you're again trying to conflate team success with individual success.
I honestly think its somewhere between what you both are saying. If you were to absolutely isolate Tannehill on his own, I dont think he is as bad as some portions of his tenure in Miami would dictate nor is he the best QB in the league like you may assume if you only saw him last season. That is just my opinion, but I find when two sides vehemently argue a truth it's usually somewhere in the middle. If I were to rank him, I'd say I think he should be a top 7 or so QB, who falls or rises based on how his surroundings fit him. .
What you've said repeatedly here is that a QB's individual performance fluctuates as a function of the quality of his surroundings. If you say Tannehill isn't as good as Mahomes in terms of individual ability, yet Tannehill outperformed Mahomes individually, then by definition Tannehill must've had better surroundings than Mahomes.
No, that's not true. You really love trying to boil things down to only two things. Did you play organized sports growing up?
So for 9,200+ posts you maintain steadfastly that QBs' individual performance is either elevated or deflated by the quality of their surroundings. Now when you realize that puts you in the position of having to say Tannehill's surroundings in 2019 were better than those of Patrick Mahomes (whose surroundings were Super Bowl champion caliber), you want to introduce additional variables into the equation. Just go ahead and explain it with whatever variables you now choose to include: how is it that if Ryan Tannehill isn't as good as Patrick Mahomes individually, he nonetheless outplayed him in 2019? What caused that?
I see where you are coming from on some of these points in reference to individual talent and surrounding talent. I dont think its so cut as dry as whose surroundings were "better" in any situation because better is subjective to a degree where we need to define what it means in this context. Is it better to have more talent around you overall, or more talent that fits your skills? Is it better to have that talent on defense so you dont have to play from behind as much and can remain balanced, or is it better to have it on offense where you can hopefully put up points in bunches? Is it better to have a star WR or a star HB? Where does TE talent fit in? It's not that these questions dont have answers but we have to qualify what we mean by "better" before we ask the question you posed. .
With regard to the highlighted portion above, how many times have you seen me say in this thread that in 2019 Ryan Tannehill had exceptionally good surroundings for him (note the emphasis on "for him").
A few, and I agree with that statement. That still doesnt tell me how to objectively compare two sets of surroundings that are tailored to the skill sets of the QB in question. The truth is, I cant put an objective number on the impact Andy Reid and surrounding talent have on Patrick and therefore I find it hard if not impossible to make the direct comparison. The thing is that you can never really know what might have happened in this universe if things were different. If he is drafted by Tennessee and doednt have Andy Reid to retool his mechanics from the ground up, is he still as successful? If Tannehill was drafted by Reid would he be an absolute star QB? These questions dont have definite answers IMO.
To be fair it's a really long thread that has been going on forever, so I may not have remembered your exact range. Also I'm not saying anyone made the case he is the best. I was implying if you only took last year into account, you could make that argument and that if he isnt as bad as season X we cant claim he is as good as season Y either.
The point is that the lone person arguing the other side had repeatedly put up straw man arguments by comparing Tannehill to Mahomes, Brees, Wilson, etc.
I guess I personally believe we all have controversial arguments or viewpoints sometimes and that we all make bad points too. I'm not going to make him into a villain for sticking to his view, whether I think it's wrong or not. I dont find him infuriating like some people in life I've had to deal with. I guess because in the grand scheme of things, how "The Guy" feels about Tannehill is very low on my priority list.
The question is how he performs with average surroundings, as those are the kind teams are most likely to have. Several folks here have portrayed the Titans' 2019 surroundings to have been merely average, a significant step up from the supposedly horrendous ones on the Dolphins, and supposedly the reason Tannehill's performance improved. That position isn't internally consistent, however. To believe Tannehill had only average surroundings in 2019 is also to believe he is the best QB in the league. If Tannehill with only average surroundings can outperform Patrick Mahomes, whose surroundings were Super Bowl champion caliber, then Tannehill is by extension a better QB than Patrick Mahomes. So, if we recognize the internal inconsistency in that position and realize Tannehill's surroundings couldn't possibly have been average, then we're at the point where the data explorations I've done here probably explain a good bit of his 2019 performance, as they have centered on situational and environmental advantages he was experiencing. Yet here we are debating them for eight months and nearly 9,300 posts. If I hadn't "stuck to my guns" on this as some have said, then any impartial reader of this thread would arrive at the conclusion that the implied unanimous consensus at thephins.com is that Ryan Tannehill is better than Patrick Mahomes. Is that how we want to appear?
The problem is you're the only one making that comparison and youre doing it by talking in absolutes that dont exist. There is no "average", every team is built differently to some degree and there isnt a reliable way to say: "Well player X's team has a good WR, LT and linebacker core, that equates directly to player Y who has a team with a TE, RT and Corner with the rest of the parts being equal" In other words how can you describe the average building in a city where no two structures are built the same?
There is certainly some level of quality of Tannehill's 2019 surroundings (as well as his surroundings with Miami), and it ranges from extremely poor to extremely good, with average being in the middle. Do you disagree?
My argument isnt necessarily isnt that it doesnt exist, but rather that the data is reliant on individual pieces that cant be reliably separated from one another in an objective way by humans. In other words we can give generalized thoughts based on circumstantial evidence, but we can never pin it down and say "These are exact hard numbers that prove x about the surroundings" Which always leaves a possibility that we are wrong despite the circumstantial evidence. Anything short of 100% verification of something leaves room to be incorrect, in other words.
Right, but pan back to the big picture here. Ryan Tannehill outperformed Patrick Mahomes, who was just given the most lucrative contract in NFL history. Mahomes's team (i.e., his surroundings) won the Super Bowl. If we explore data that indicate situational and environmental advantages for Tannehill, why would those data meet with endless debate rather than agreement? Why wouldn't the response be "of course those data could explain why Tannehill outperformed Mahomes."
Wed also have to take into account the defenses they faced, weather conditions, who was active that week, whether Mahomes or Tannehill had a cold the week of their worst games, and a billion other factors. I think we could draw some generalized conclusion though, sure.
Mahomes also gets more money based on age. If Tannehill had a season like he just had, and he was 5 years younger, I bet he'd have gotten a bigger contract than he got.
So sure, have at it. Any exploration that's based on situational and environmental variables and attempts to explain why Tannehill outperformed Mahomes in 2019 is certainly logically sound and should be met with an open-minded response.
Something somewhat related that just happened: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id...watson-reach-4-year-160m-extension-agent-says
No. Again, why do you insist on trying to twist things? What I said was if Tannehill was 5 years younger, I bet he'd have gotten a bigger contract. I didn't say he would have gotten a bigger contract than Mahomes. Of course, there's no way of knowing what the perception of Tannehill in the league would be if he'd been drafted too say, a team with weapons like KC and Andy Reid as his coach.
My mistake. I thought that when you said he would've gotten a bigger contract than he got, the "he" was Mahomes.
Has anyone ever expended so much energy claiming that Tannehill was the problem in Miami, that he wouldn't do anything better in Tenn, that he wouldn't continue to do better in Tenn, that no really.... he won't continue to do better in Tenn, he didn't really do better in Tenn, and he won't do better next year in Tenn......
But that order is not really dependent on ability alone. Age is a big factor. Tannehill is relatively old, so that will affect the contract he's offered.