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2022 Best Case Scenario for Tua

Discussion in 'Miami Dolphins Forum' started by Galant, Jan 25, 2022.

  1. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    It must be an outlier; there's no way a QB needs people to block for him. That's just impossible since the stats don't show that...
     
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  2. TheHighExhaulted

    TheHighExhaulted Well-Known Member

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    Not according to the Z score
     
  3. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    lol give it up guys. The stats say what they say. Hey if you'd rather use PFF go for it. From 2010-2021 the average PFF grade for the SB winning offensive line is 15.8. In other words.. average. That's including the Rams this year btw.
     
  4. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    Nothing to give up. All that means is PFF is getting it wrong.
     
  5. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Sure stats are wrong, PFF is wrong, but you know much better than everyone else.
     
  6. Fireland

    Fireland Well-Known Member

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    Something the Bengals and Dolphins certainly do not have
     
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  7. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    PFF had them ranked overall 20 this year (stats say they were worse than that btw.. so I'd go by stats like PBWR), but sticking to PFF there were 3 lines with worse rankings from 2010-2021: Giants in 2011 were ranked #31 (that fits btw), Seattle in 2013 ranked 27th (also fits), and NE in 2014 ranked 23rd (can't remember if they were really bad.. usually NE is good and they were in the other SBs according to PFF).

    So 3 out of 11 were worse than the Bengals by whatever PFF uses for their grading. Personally I'd only use the Giants and Seattle as comparable examples, except of course that they won the SB.
     
  8. hitman8

    hitman8 Well-Known Member

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    Rams had the 7th best offensive line in the NFL this year. 3 out of the 4 teams in conference championships had olines in the Top 7. Yes a great QB and elite receivers, along with a good run game and creative scheming to get the ball out quickly can win in spite of a bad oline as the Bengals showed this year, but having a good oline and a complete team is better, and makes winning a whole lot easier on your QB, as the Rams showed.

    It's why I say don't just look at stats and ignore common football sense. Complete teams win Superbowls most of the time, going back decades and it's still true today.
     
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  9. Fireland

    Fireland Well-Known Member

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    And they **** the bed in the playoffs. Even if you would consider their play to be average in the regular season it wasn't in the playoffs which is where it counts.
     
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  10. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yeah like I said that's true this year. But if you're giving credence to those rankings, then use them and you'll see that on average the OL for the SB winner is.. average ranked.

    The "complete team" winning SBs is true for many positions, from QB, WR, and of course defense (especially pass defense). But it's no longer true for RB and OL. Have to adjust to the modern game, like last quarter century-ish.
     
  11. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    Me? No. Anyone who's ever played or coached football at any level? Yes. That's why our new head coach said that offensive line was a big priority. That's why Flores and Gase had the same stance on the topic. It's common sense that everything starts and ends in the trenches.

    Statistics may not show it from a snapshot view, but the line has been and always will be critical for a quarterback's success. Burrow needed one block tonight...and it could have come on 3rd down (a run) or 4th down (a pass). He didn't get it, and I'm guessing those two plays just become blurred away in the stat logs. But those two downs were critical.

    And if you looked back throughout the game, throughout the Bengal's season, you'd find plenty of other downs like that as well. Just one block keeps the drive alive. Everyone who has ever played the sport sees that so clearly. But your stats don't show that and it's why we continue to have this conversation.
     
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  12. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    For a QB like Tua OL is very important. Thing is, QBs like Tua generally don't win SBs, at least not the Tua we've seen so far.

    I guarantee you most GMs and HCs aren't disputing these stats. Look at where they spend their money. Most SB winners don't put most of their money into the OL. It's usually more the skill positions. On OL the one exception is the LT, but not the OL as a whole. So by virtue of how GMs spend their money they are agreeing with the stats.
     
  13. hitman8

    hitman8 Well-Known Member

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    In the world of stats and averages over time you might be right, in the real world of football when you're in a pressure situation where you need a game winning drive and Aaron Donald and Von Miller are wrecking your poor oline, you're wrong.

    It didn't matter that you had Burrow and Chase there if your oline can't block you're screwed. Again, build a complete team, you ignore the oline you end up paying for it.
     
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  14. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    So Eli and Wilson didn't win SBs behind terrible OLs? You're saying this never happened? Or is that real football history?

    The pressure Eli faced was way worse than Burrow btw. Go back and look at that helmet catch (the most impressive catch IMO in history). Yes, in real world football this stuff happens. One can argue with PFF (and I do), but it's not like they're worlds off. My argument is mostly that it's subjective and not an "operational definition" they're using.
     
  15. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    It's never been about spending money EXCEPT at the coaching level. NE generally has a solid line off of mid-round picks. It's development to deal with speed, with angles...we just don't have it in Miami. A good line coach has 8 or 9 guys ready to go, regardless of draft position. A lousy line coach has 1st round studs doing well and everyone else stinking up the field.

    And who are QB's like Tua? Again, you're basing that 100% on stats. He's a rhythm pocket passer, even though our offense has very little rhythm. That's not a Tua thing though, that's an offensive thing.
     
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  16. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    In a competitive market (if you exclude rookie contracts) money tells you a lot about priorities. NE is actually quite the exception in being able to get good OL play for so long with mid round picks. With many other teams they've had to sacrifice one area to build up other areas. So yes money is a good barometer, at least for FA.

    And the fact Tua doesn't have far better stats IS indicative of Tua's talent. That "rhythm" thing as you call it is not something everyone else except the QB determines. The QB has a major influence on his own stats! Had we not messed up the tanking and got Burrow we wouldn't have Tua stats. Had we taken Herbert we wouldn't have Tua stats. Yes Tua is in large part to blame (or to be given credit for) his stats.
     
  17. brandon27

    brandon27 Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    In a sense, I agree with this. While the importance of Burrow and Chase can't be denied, you aren't getting 100% out of them if you aren't blocking up front. I think Waddle can do some of what Chase has done downfield this year but we haven't had the time behind our OL to do it. But if you can't give Chase the time to get downfield to make plays you're not getting Chase in Cincy this year, you're getting Waddle this year. So; I dont think you can go 100% in on the OL, because the skill positions are far too important but as you said; if you dont build a complete team with an at least competent OL then you're going to need more luck than normal to win.
     
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  18. hitman8

    hitman8 Well-Known Member

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    Actually the helmet catch is a perfect example, that was basically a hail Mary play they had to make in order to overcome bad blocking. Yes, it happens, but it's much better to have a good oline that you can depend on in pressure situations to make it easier on your QB and recievers.
     
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  19. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    No one ever disputed that it's much better to improve every position. That's obvious. Statistically almost every QB performs a lot better with better pass protection. However, what the stats show is that it doesn't improve win% as much as if you were to improve the QB or WR position by a similar z-score (a measure that allows you to compare across positions/conditions).

    So, to circle back to some arguments from days/weeks ago, the issue is not whether the OL is "important". Of course it is if stated in a vacuum. The issue is what is "most important" for building a SB winner. Teams have resource constraints so they have to prioritize, and when you see what they prioritize you see they (or at least most SB winners) are agreeing with the stats I'm referencing. It's not just theoretical.
     
  20. Fireland

    Fireland Well-Known Member

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  21. hitman8

    hitman8 Well-Known Member

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    Resource scarcity is not an excuse for having a lousy oline. Yes, QB and recievers are more important overall in today's pass happy game, but you still should strive to have a good oline. You should not just depend on landing an elite QB and Reciever combo to overcome your terrible oline. You should always strive to build a complete team, as the Rams did.
     
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  22. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    Let's try this a different way. Instead of looking at a season, a full game or even a single drive, tell us why Cinci was stopped on 3rd down. Use stats to show us what specifically happened above and beyond what our eyes could tell us.

    Oh, you can't though. Donald blew through the line and stopped the RB for no gain. We don't need stats for that.

    The problem you're having here is that you're trying to use the wrong tools for the wrong job. How did Donald make the play? What actually happened? Statistics cannot answer that. But that doesn't matter, right? It was only one down of a full football game. But here's the thing, if stats can't explain how Donald made that one tackle, how can it explain anything past the sheer basics of win rate?

    On every down, eleven players fight for position on the field. That's the beauty of football, to be honest...22 bad men trying to impose their will. Your viewpoint cheapens it down to just numbers though and ignores the entirety of what actually happens on the field. Sometimes blocks are missed. Sometimes assignments are out-schemed. Sometimes people just fall down. But that doesn't matter to you, you completely ignore all of that good stuff, to assign a metric and say that it's ironclad proof of something that the statistic doesn't even understand.
     
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  23. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yeah easier said than done. Resource constraints are real. And given that you can't always just find an elite QB you obviously prioritize elsewhere, which is what we'll do in 2022. But resource constraints definitely ARE an excuse. It's a real constraint.

    btw.. few SB winners are built like the Rams. They basically spent like crazy in FA, giving away tons of draft picks for high priced players. Glad it worked out for them but that team won't be a power once those resource constraints hit in the coming years. Not that I'd mind if we did that as long as we get one SB win out of it.
     
  24. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    You don't need to understand the microstructure of things to understand phenomena at the macro level. For example, you don't need to consider all the tiny details of everything that's happening on Earth to predict its orbit around the sun. You can ignore all those details and just look at the mass, distance from the sun, velocity etc. There's no logic behind needing to understand every detail to understand what happens on a large scale. No science at all would exist if your viewpoint had any merit.

    In this specific case you're right stats can't tell you what happened on a particular play. Let me throw this back at you. How much does any specific play change the probability of the team winning? I mean that's the end goal right? There stats are FAR superior to any football expert. Basically, the human observer and statistical analysis tend to be good at different things. But if the stats are saying something with very large sample size and it's highly correlated to winning — this is precisely the situation in determining relative importance of different stats to win% — then no human "eye test" is going to overturn that.

    Have to know the limits of each approach. The human "eye test" has serious limitations too, and what I claimed about the relative importance of QB/WR vs OL on average (note I'm talking about "on average" here, not a specific situation) is backed up by massive data.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2022
  25. hitman8

    hitman8 Well-Known Member

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    You don't need to spend a ton of money to have a good oline. A competent GM can build a complete team even with salary cap constraints. Unfortunately we have not had a competent GM here in decades.
     
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  26. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    That I can agree with. In fact that's closer to the blueprint used by SB winners — don't spend too many resources on OL, but still try to field at least a decent one through good enough coaching, etc. There's some hint that McDaniel might finally break our trend.
     
  27. hitman8

    hitman8 Well-Known Member

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    I have some mild faith in McDaniel. At least he seems smart and seems to value the oline. If only he can keep Grier out of the draft room and have final say over player personnel, then I would have some more faith in this team actually turning around. But if Grier is till making the player personnel decisions, then we are screwed for the foreseeable future.
     
  28. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    The stats aren't FAR SUPERIOR. Did stats tell you Burrow would go long in the 3rd quarter and the defender would fall down? Did stats tell you that 22 seconds later, they'd get a turnover in field goal range? Those two plays were the most critical for the first three quarters and they both happened to be mistakes by the Rams.

    What was the most important play of the 4th quarter? Stats would tell you the TD pass by Kupp. Or the sack of Burrow on 4th and 1. Maybe that's when the winning percentage hinged the most. But a football mind would tell you the play that changed the game was the holding call on 3rd and goal which gave the Rams 4 yards and a new set of downs. Was it actually holding? Who cares, right, because statistics don't need context...even though that play essentially crowned a super bowl winner.

    Stats can't tell you the "why". And if you don't have the why, you can't grow as an organization. As an outsider looking in, sure, win rate of blocking is a great stat. Did the Bengals really only block people 13% of the time though? That's complete BS. There were six to seven people blocking and four to seven rushers every single down. The why matters. It's the only thing that matters. You build championships by answering the why.

    Again, just listen to our new head coach's interview with Travis on 'what's the value of statistics'. He said they're one of many tools to help make decisions. If stats explained everything and the why didn't matter, then we could have computers calling plays and not even hire a head coach. That's just not how it works though.
     
  29. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Lots of points here.

    1. Yes, stats are far superior in estimating how much of an effect a given play has on the probability of winning the game. There's really no comparison to humans here. Humans are highly biased toward thinking certain plays late in the game matter most, when it's really more the accumulation of a bunch of plays. No human can match statistics on this issue.

    2. Yes, statistics can sometimes tell you why. For example, stats showing that the number of rushing attempts, or even rushing efficiency, has no correlation with the success of play action passing is telling you something CANNOT be a cause that many football experts probably thought (and still think) might be a cause. Don't for once think football experts truly understand all cause and effect relationships in football, or that their view doesn't change with stats. In every field where statistical analysis becomes prevalent, the cause-effect relationships people end up accepting change as a result. Certainly true in medicine. I guarantee you the general devaluing of the running game and also the general increase in aggressiveness of play calling is in large part due to analytics demonstrating old "expert" ways of thinking were not correct.

    3. McDaniel said the right thing about knowing which statistics to trust. Lots of stats published out there are junk, so at least he seems to be aware of that. Whether he really knows which stats are the most relevant we can't tell from an interview however. Oh, and let's not introduce any strawmen here like "if stats explained everything". No one ever claimed they did. But they are superior in some cases.
     
  30. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    Seriously, guys, you're not even listening to one another - everyone here agrees! Your methodology is different and the degree to which you'd take it varies, but everyone here agrees that the Miami offensive line needs to improve this year. Some would say we need a top OL some would say an average OL, but right now we've got a very poor OL, and this year that needs to take a step forward.

    In addition, everyone here agrees that the WR corps needs to improve as well. Again, there are differences, but the WR unit needs to get a lot better.

    The bigger question here is the best way to make these changes. Positional coaching vs. free agency vs. draft vs. scheme.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2022
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  31. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    I think you missed the entire point. The game hinged on a defender falling down, a bad snap/fumble in field goal range and a questionable PI call on 3rd and goal. Stats are not far superior in predicting any of those things- they were all chance.

    Now, your 14% win rate of the line rang true on Burrow's final drive; maybe real time metrics could have convinced Cinci to run a sweep instead of trying to go up the middle. But at the same time, those weren't just "any other plays" that were equal to an average down. Donald just wanted it more than anyone on the field at that moment and he wasn't going to be denied. And everyone knew it.

    All these things I'm listing are context, why the game went the way it did. Another example would be Burrow's two deep passes- one was perfectly placed to Chase in tight coverage against one of the top corners in the league...the other a defender fell down and the receiver was wide open. Those yards aren't equal...one was spectacular and much harder to come by. Stats can't understand that.

    My point here is that if you go strictly by the stat sheet or advanced analytics, you see patterns that cannot possibly give you the full picture. Context matters.
     
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  32. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    No you're missing the point. Just like I predicted you're telling me the game "hinged" on X, Y or Z. This is not an accurate way of looking at what happened. Every single play matters, and quantifying how much each play matters is done better through win probability than any human thinking "X is why the game was won or lost".

    THAT is context stats give you that no human can. Humans take the wrong lessons from things because of selective memory or because they for one or another reason think X was more important than Y. Win probability is a great example of where human bias is so bad you're far better off using stats.

    Now.. what happened on each play is not something stats can tell you. That part you're right about. But how important each play is.. that is something you better be using change in win probability on. btw.. don't try to insert the strawman of "going strictly by analytics" again. No one ever argued that.

    Oh, and this is precisely the type of question where I don't know if McDaniel understands whether win probability is a "relevant" stat or not. If he thinks no, then the analytical revolution in football will be better utilized by others, not him. Another example would be quantifying HC patterns in play calling. I bet no one is utilizing analytics as they should there. The future of systematic improvement in football is through analytics. I think people already know that. But I'm skeptical as to whether they understand exactly where to look for that extra edge. Your response is an example of that.
     
  33. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    Gotcha. So the three plays that led to scores weren't the most important plays of the 2nd half. Only computers can tell us that because humans are too dumb to understand the context within football. Makes perfect sense.
     
  34. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    No you didn't get it. I haven't looked at the win probability graphs but almost certainly those 3 plays changed win probability more than most other plays. The question is by how much? You have to look at all plays and weight them by change in win probability, otherwise you'll end up arguing based on cherry picked plays. That's what you've been doing. And what that generally leads to is vastly overweighting certain events ignoring a bunch of others that didn't stand out to you but have a large cumulative effect.

    That's what started this whole discussion about OL post-SB btw. A cherry picked game ignoring all the other SBs. Truthfully, it didn't matter which side won the relative importance of OL vs. QB/WR wouldn't have changed much based on this game even though the difference in OL strength for the 2 teams was huge. Cherry picking games means what? You would have changed your tune if we were talking after Seattle won the SB? No. You probably just wouldn't have mentioned anything. At least stats give you context like that: trend vs. single event.
     
  35. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    Guys, please. This general debate about stats vs. common sense/eye test or whatever has been had before and never goes anywhere. It doesn't seem particularly complicated to me, but whatever the case, it just derails the specifics of any thread where it appears. There's now a thread for stats/evaluation in the stickies. If you want to debate the merits of statistical vs. traditional evaluation or whatever please do it in there. As for this, or any other, thread where it might factor in, please stay on topic.

    Thanks.
     
  36. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    You should move it there each time the debate appears.

    You know you can't stop the debate from appearing because we're legitimately in a transition phase where analytics is becoming increasingly important, and it makes sense that people who have evaluated things differently feel somewhat threatened by an approach that throws away so much detailed information that clearly matters for understanding the game, but then makes up for it in many cases by removing bias, not being limited by human memory constraints, and by applying math to the problem.
     
  37. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    I was going to leave this one here for now, but if you want to carry it on then yes, I can move these posts over to that thread if you wish.
     
  38. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    I'm only in response mode, so I'm done if the others are too. Up to them.
     
  39. Two Tacos

    Two Tacos Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Yeah, but you need average. How many were bottom 10? It's a wierd argument here as the Dolphins were bottom pass and run blocking, not average.
     
  40. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    3 out of 11 were bottom 10. And yes that's correct you need average. That's my argument all along. We just need average, we don't need more than that. The blueprint for a SB winner on offense nowadays is top level QB, top level WR corps, and average OL and average RB. And yes you're right we don't have even average at OL or RB.

    btw.. our run blocking was actually decent by RBWR. It's the RB we're missing.
     

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