He’s getting closer and closer to me eating his crow, when the playoffs begin I will be watching to see if he can manage the situations that I don’t trust him in..but man when you give him good protection that accuracy is excellent.
As someone that often agreed with you while Ryan was on the team I'll say it's time to eat crow already. All you can ask for of your QB is to be competitive - leading teams to competitive December football - Something lacking in Miami since 2001. Something Tannehill is starting to prove, and prove decisively. Miami hasn't been to an AFC Championship game since 1994 - Tannehill had them on the verge of the Super Bowl last season. I don't think you need to raise the bar further. Tannehill has proven all he can prove, a deep playoff run is only the cherry on top at this point. Sucks but it's true.
And don't get me wrong, Tannehill will always have some warts to his game but his pure talent coupled with a competent team has seemingly allowed him to thrive.. This guy has become a modern day Rich Gannon with at least another 5-6 good years left to go in a league that has veterans thriving. I actually think that he'll continue to get better as his confidence matches his arm talent. I knew he had it in him - When he was challenged by Philbo and the Miami media he almost always stepped up his game.. When things settled he let down his guard. I see a guy playing with consistent passion. It was something that I wished he was able to summon from within while in Miami but I guess he didn't have the right surroundings or coaching.
The big thing in Miami is that we just couldn't put together a cohesive line- it seemed like every year we would bring in a competent veteran then he'd spend the majority of the season on IR. We saw glimpses of what RT could do with solid line play and plenty of what happened when he didn't have it. So far, they haven't dealt with that in Tennessee and it's paying off. I think he'll always struggle with pressure though unless they absolutely drill it into him to run, run, run the football whenever protection breaks down. Yet today, we see him leveled as he throws a beautiful TD pass...and that's also the RT we know and love. He's still tough as nails and one heck of a competitor.
If you would, please take the time to read the thread and see the relevancy as it pertains to Miami. Kind of rude to pop into a thread you’ve not participated in and demand it be moved. We’ve been quite content with the conversation
I must say that Gardner Minshew is about the anti-Tannehill. He’s got excellent pocket skills, an upbeat and loud leadership style, makes things happen off script, and has a noodle arm, has difficulty threading tight windows, not very fast or strong. Funny thing is people were continually writing off Minshew in the off season despite his performance, very much the same way people wrote off Tannehill. I really enjoyed seeing two very different QBs play, and I still feel cheated that the Dolphin’s didn’t take him in the 5th round last year when he was still available.
At this point, I don't think he is ever going to have the escapability/draw it up in the dirt style of play that seems to be in vogue. He will never be Wilson, Watson, Jackson, Mahommes, Mayfield, etc. He may always err on the side of waiting for the play to develop vs pulling it down and running around with it. There were at least three TD passes yesterday that felt like the play took a second too long. Watching the plays was actually a bit uncomfortable, but the throws...... absolute darts into tight windows. He has elite arm talent and may be the best in the league right now at standing in the face of a rush and delivering the ball knowing he is going to get blasted. He doesn't duck or turn away from the hit. The TD to Humphries was a thing of beauty and was mainly remarkable because it has come to be expected. He may be the best in the league at throwing into tight windows. His velocity and accuracy are top notch. Finally, I love what Roger Saffold said about what Tannehill said after getting blasted on the Humphries' TD..... "and one....". I.E he makes the shot while getting hit..... classic.
Meant to comment on this earlier but makes even more sense to comment now following the Titans second game. Henry didn’t/doesn’t carry Tannehill. Tannehill didn’t/doesn’t carry Henry. This is the offensive philosophy of the Titans in general. They are going to have a balanced attack between passing and rushing. That’s just the Gospel according to Vrabel. Mike Vrabel’s offensive philosophy dictates a balanced offensive strategy between to run and the pass keeps defenses off balanced and creates the potential for higher scoring opportunities. You can agree or disagree but that is the philosophy. Week 1’s game against Denver, Henry had 31 rushes for 116 yards. Tannehill was 29/43 for 249 yards and 2 TDS. Relatively balanced. You don’t see a 2:1 ratio of passing over rushing. Yesterday’s game Henry had 25 rushes for only 85 yards. Tannehill was 18/24 for 239 yards and 4 TDS. That was as perfectly balanced as anyone can expect in the NFL, nearly a 1:1 ratio. The difference between yesterday’s game and the week 1 game was first down plays. Henry was gaining significant yardage on first downs against Denver than he was against Jacksonville. The Jags were able to hold Henry to short yardage on 1st down, but their strategy of effectively holding Henry had no effective tactic to shutting down Tannehill and the Titans receiving corps. I have to guess they assumed that without AJ Brown, Tannehill would be limited in the passing game. Well if Tannehill’s history is any indication, even during his tenure in Miami is Tannehill is more than capable of spreading the ball around. Of his 18 completions, 6 different receivers we’re targeted, 2 were targeted 5 times, 1 was targeted 6 with Smith, Humphries and Firkser catching the lion’s share. With all of the hyped focus concerning the Titans being on Henry, folks are still being extremely careless in forgetting the Titans are a well balanced TEAM with great quarterback at the helm that can throw the ball far and accurately. As I stated, one didn’t carry the other. That’s not the Titans way. They walk shona a shona and hit you with a devastating 1-2 punch offensively. The only way you’re going to beat them is out score them. Their offense can dictate the tempo of a game, slow and low scoring, or fast and high scoring.
Balance and imbalance aren't determined by a ratio according to The Dark Knight. Balance and imbalance are determined by the degree to which the imbalance deviates from the league norm. In the Denver game, 56.4% of the Titans' offensive plays were pass dropbacks, which is slightly below the league average of 58.8% in 2019. So according to last year's figures, the Titans were slightly imbalanced in favor of the run game in that game. In the Jaguars game the Titans had 25 pass dropbacks out of 62 offensive plays, or 40.3% pass dropbacks, which is about three standard deviations below the league average of 58.8% in 2019. Very highly imbalanced in favor of the run game, in comparison to the league norm.
No no no no...balance has nothing to do with league norm. Put your stats sheets away, this is simple 3rd grade math. If you run the ball 25 times and you throw the ball 25 times, your offense is evenly balanced. If you run the ball 14 times and throw the ball 43 times (as the Dolphins did yesterday) you are not balanced. All of this causation, correlation, deviation from league norm etc is completely irrelevant. If you have 25lbs on one side of your teeter totter and 25lbs on the other side of your teeter totter, it’s balanced. It’s really THAT simple.
The Titans weren't even balanced yesterday in terms of your definition. 40.3% of their offensive plays were pass dropbacks. Where that has meaning is in the fact that it was three standard deviations below the league norm, thus highly imbalanced in comparison to the league norm. If the league average was 50% (i.e., your definition of balance, which doesn't comport with the way the league functions, since it's a passing league) and the variance was the same, yesterday's 40.3% pass dropbacks would nonetheless be about 1.5 standard deviations below the league average, which would also be fairly highly imbalanced. The Dark Knight doesn't determine the way the NFL functions. The NFL does that.
He’s the QB we all knew he was. If you surround him with a ton of talent, it could help cover up gaps to his game and he can play at a high level. That wasn’t going to happen in Miami for a while. I still think the thing that separates him from Rodgers, Wilson and other elite QB’s is the ability to consistently make plays and avoid mistakes when things aren’t going your way and things are breaking down.
The question is, what is the difference if any between what's described above and any average QB in the league? If there is no difference, then the questions become 1) what is the likelihood of compiling that degree of surrounding talent (and/or coaching), and 2) what is the likelihood of winning a Super Bowl when the sorts of games noted in the second paragraph above have to be avoided? If the answers to those questions aren't favorable, and you have an average QB, then it'd behoove you to move on from him and find a better one.
Something also to consider regarding yesterday's game -- and this isn't an inherent knock on Tannehill -- is that the Titans could've theoretically scored 50+ points if they had passed the ball with league average frequency, given Tannehill's performance, if his performance would've remained relatively constant over that number of passing plays. As it was they were "balanced" and it nearly cost them the game. EPA per run play is considerably lower than EPA per passing play. So being "balanced" comes at a cost. If your quarterback is lighting the world on fire, it makes no sense to become "balanced" and almost lose a game that could've been a blowout in your favor. The question is, what stops the Titans from employing that strategy and riding Tannehill to comfortable wins? Why are they content with having nail-biters as they did very frequently last year, when they have a QB who can function at that level?
28 passing plays (Tannehill ran 4 times when there was no open receivers), 30 rushing plays. If you truly believe deep down to your common sense core that isn’t balance then I can’t help you. It’s said that math is the universal, unbiased language in the universe but as I’ve seen in my 55 years, math can be manipulated to express someone’s bias.
Because the object of the game is to win, not to see how many times your quarterback can throw or how many points you can score. Wins and losses. That’s the ultimate object of the game...to have more wins than your competitors. The Titans have their formula which is working. You just don’t like that formula and as a result, you find fault with the individual players. At the end of the day, the only question that matters is did they win?
Conservative play calling on both sides of the ball in the second half resulted in letting them back in it. Anytime Titans brought 4+ and kept Minshew inside, good things happened.Titans didn’t do enough of that and for whatever reason rushed three and played coverage with a banged up secondary. Jax OL played well, but Titans made them look better than they really were. Offensively, Titans ouldn’t be stopped and have too many receiver mismatches to be doing 7yd deep tosses to Henry with suspect run blocking yesterday. Team needs to develop a killer mentality. Titans put up 24 with ease in the first half and only 9 in the second half. It wasn’t anything they did either - the play calling got super soft which bailed the Jags out.
No, what matters is how likely they are to win, because that’s what indicates how good they are. Teams that win via blowout are more likely to win games than teams that win via nail-biters.
You’re failing to consider that it’s a passing league, which is reflected in the normal level of (im)balance throughout the league. So in this case you’re leaving out the relevant math.
Ummmmm no...what matters is when the clock reads 0:00, did your team win or did they lose? A win is a win is a win. Whether you win by a single point, or you win by 10 touchdowns, winning is winning and the Titans are 2-0.
I never understood how fans didn't comprehend that very basic concept. The goal in sports is to score more than your opponent scores...what part of that becomes confusing?
Again, I said this earlier, and you pretty much ignored it, but when you're looking at run/pass ratio for the league, you're looking at half the teams losing. Losing teams throw more. That's a fact. So, your stats are already kind of flawed. Ideally, teams want balance. So, if you wanted to compare run/pass ratios of winning teams, you might get a different result, as you wouldn't have the inflation of losing teams who have to abandon the run and throw more.
Using that logic, a team that won a single game 3-0 and went 1-15 on the season would be just as good as a team that went 16-0 and won by a margin of 20 points per game, simply because the first team "won."
Tannehill was never the problem. It's clear the problems were with Gase, Philbin and the other terrible coaches we continue to hire.
Who ever said a 1-15 team was as a good as a 16-0 team? You really are too much Guy. Tell you what, ask the 2007 New England Patriots how awesome it was to break NFL scoring records...scoring 75 touchdowns, 589 points and a point differential of +315 points...and ***LOSE*** the Super Bowl to the lowly New York Giants. I don't care if a team wins by a point or by 3 touchdowns, if they are winning week after week then they are winning and THAT is the only stat that ultimately counts.
Why wouldn't you care if a team was winning by one point week after week, if it made that team highly unlikely to win against a team that was winning by 20 points week after week, if the two teams were likely to face each other in the playoffs? You're essentially saying point differential is meaningless. Do you actually think there's no correlation between point differential and a team's likelihood of winning the Super Bowl? That's essentially what you're asserting, by extension.
If a Miami QB threw up these stats, I'd be fairly happy. His 2020 start: 44 of 60 (73.3%) for 460 yards, 6 TDs, 0 INTs Very small sample size, of course, but he doesn't seem to have missed a step.
Offensive points matter? Okay, here's a history lesson for you. The Top 10 Offenses in NFL History 1990 Buffalo Bills (26.8 ppg); Lost Super Bowl XXV to the NY Giants 19-20 1983 Washington Redskins (33.8 ppg); Lost Super Bowl to Oakland Raiders 9-38 2011 New Orleans Saints (34.2 ppg); Lost NFC Divisional to San Francisco 32-36 2016 Atlanta Falcons (33.8 ppg); Lost Super Bowl to NE Patriots 28-34 1998 Minnesota Vikings (34.8 ppg); Lost NFC Championship to Atlanta Falcons 27-30 OT 2011 Green Bay Packers (35.0 ppg); Lost Divisional playoff to NY Giants 20-37 2018 Kansas City Chiefs (35.3 ppg); Lost AFC Championship to NE Patriots 31-37 OT 2007 New England Patriots (36.8 ppg); Lost Super Bowl to NY Giants 17-14 1999 St Louis Rams (32.9 ppg); Won Super Bowl against Tennessee Titans 23-16 2013 Denver Broncos (37.9 pg); Lost Super Bowl to Seattle Seahawks 8-43 Each one of these teams had the number one ranked offense, all broke existing offensive records in point differential, touchdowns scored or points scored and are rated as the top rated offenses in NFL history according to Gary Davenport with Bleacher Report. ***ALL*** of these teams except ONE lost either in the playoffs or the Super Bowl...and some lost embarrassingly. Having an offensive powerhouse and the ability to score points virtually at will doesn't mean near as much as you seem to think it does.
Who said anything about offensive points? I'm talking about point differential. You said point differential is meaningless if a team won the game. I said point differential has important meaning. Now you're off on some "offensive points" tangent.
And? You've been arguing that Tannehill throws less than average, and that Tennessee relies on Henry. All I'm saying is that including losing teams skews the numbers, and that means that the run/pass ratio is skewed by both the winning and losing teams, when comparing to an individual team. That being said, it really doesn't matter what other teams are doing. Pretty clearly Tennessee likes to try to be as balanced as possible. That's their game, and they seem to try to maintain that.
In 2019 Tennessee was nearly two standard deviations below the league norm in quarters 1 through 3, despite that they were almost never ahead in games by a comfortable margin during those quarters. The skew you're talking about almost always happens in quarter 4. Sure, and the question becomes, what happens when they don't do that, because there is variation in the performance of quarterbacks when that happens. Some quarterbacks perform just as well when being asked to pass the ball a ton, while others fall apart.
If you have Henry, it makes sense to run more than a team who doesn't have Henry, when when you don't have a "comfortable" lead. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, no matter how badly you want it to. Lol
