Damn!!Can we all stop feeling sorry for ourselves..Defense baby!!!

Also worth pointing out that 2017 might turn out to be a pretty good draft for us.. which was mostly on defense. Harris, Tankersley, Godchaux all showing they're probably not busts at the very least and might turn into long term starters (we'll see.. it's still early). And that's after the Raekwon injury which reduced the potential production from draft picks this year.

Timmons also showing the FO might not be that bad. Again though.. it's early so we'll see, but news is good on defense so far. If they perform well against Atlanta I think we can say it's for real and not just due to who we played.

"cbrad wrote:

Also worth pointing out that 2017 might turn out to be a pretty good draft for us.. which was mostly on defense. Harris, Tankersley, Godchaux all showing they're probably not busts at the very least and might turn into long term starters (we'll see.. it's still early). And that's after the Raekwon injury which reduced the potential production from draft picks this year.

Timmons also showing the FO might not be that bad. Again though.. it's early so we'll see, but news is good on defense so far. If they perform well against Atlanta I think we can say it's for real and not just due to who we played.

in your opinion C-brad...do dominant defenses have a better chance to win then vice versa.?

"djphinfan wrote:

in your opinion C-brad...do dominant defenses have a better chance to win then vice versa.?

I think a good way to see the effect of having better or worse offenses or defenses is to look at how win% is best predicted by offensive and defensive rankings (by points) across NFL history (1966-2016):

That equation is the summary: Win Percentage (WP) = 95.5 -1.66*Offensive Rank (OR) -1.44*Defensive Rank (DR).

First thing to note: each improvement in defensive rank increases win% by 1.44% while each improvement in offensive rank increases win% by 1.66%. That means that across NFL history offensive rank is more important than defensive rank because win% goes down more for each rank you lose on offense compared to defense.

You can plug in our current ranks and see it doesn't bode well. We are #4 in defense but #32 in offense. That comes out historically to a 36.6% win rate.

As to the question of how important a dominant defense is.. that graph actually shows you shouldn't separate defenses or offenses into "dominant" vs. "average" vs. "bad" or so because it's a continuum that's fit well by a plane (i.e. a line along either offense only or defense only.. which makes a plane in 2D space).

So how good does the offense have to be for us to be likely to get into the playoffs, given our current defensive rank? In recent years these are the best-fitting normal distributions to teams that made the playoffs vs. those that missed it:

You need just above 9.15 wins, or 57.2% win% to be more likely to make the playoffs than to miss it. Using that equation from the first graph you'll see that means our offense has to be ranked 19th by points scored with this defense in order to make the playoffs.

I like that post above, nice job. Right now we are averaging 8.5 pts. a game from our offense I believe. I won't bother looking it up but I would think we would need more than double that to climb into the top 20 in the current NFL. Also, our defense is fairly thin, like many positions on this team, so we would also need to control the clock and TOP better than we did last year. Are we holding onto the ball enough to protect our defenders from injuries this year? I haven't kept track but our time of possession must be at least somewhat improved over last year.

"Dolphin North wrote:

I like that post above, nice job. Right now we are averaging 8.5 pts. a game from our offense I believe. I won't bother looking it up but I would think we would need more than double that to climb into the top 20 in the current NFL.

After the Titans game we are now at 10.2 ppg on offense. We need to get to 19.8 ppg to get into top 20.

Kiko and reshad best at their positions for a week..

''ooooooofense...come out and plaaaaaaaaaaaay''

have to remember as far as stats, 30 teams have played one more game...I know we still suck on O.

WHO CARES!!! think about this...

Hopefully Hayes and Timmons will want to be dolphins next year, we load up on offense during the offseason like we did on D..we get ourselves a stud Tight end, two studley interior lineman, developmental qb with hi level talent.

"cbrad wrote:

Also worth pointing out that 2017 might turn out to be a pretty good draft for us.. which was mostly on defense. Harris, Tankersley, Godchaux all showing they're probably not busts at the very least and might turn into long term starters (we'll see.. it's still early). And that's after the Raekwon injury which reduced the potential production from draft picks this year.

Timmons also showing the FO might not be that bad. Again though.. it's early so we'll see, but news is good on defense so far. If they perform well against Atlanta I think we can say it's for real and not just due to who we played.

Don't forget Vincent Taylor

Which game was it that folks were calling for Burke's head? Haha

I kid. Now, the offense......

"Dol-Fan Dupree wrote:

Don't forget Vincent Taylor

And William Hayes.

"Galant wrote:

2010: Reshad Jones
2015: Jay Ajayi, Tony Lippett, Bobby McCain
2017: Davon Godchaux

MIA should probably stockpile 5th round picks annually

— Travis Wingfield (@WingfieldNFL) October 10, 2017

This Travis wingfield dude does some outstanding work on our team...someone needs to recruit him to be a beat writer for us..

"djphinfan wrote:

This Travis wingfield dude does some outstanding work on our team...someone needs to recruit him to be a beat writer for us..

A huge improvement over Omar.

"djphinfan wrote:

This Travis wingfield dude does some outstanding work on our team...someone needs to recruit him to be a beat writer for us..

Travis is too big time to come slum with his old friends.

"Dol-Fan Dupree wrote:

A huge improvement over Omar.

I hope that everyone who reads this , who is a true dolphin fan will follow him on twitter and Insta to help expedite this process of him moving up the ladder..

"Aqua4Ever04 wrote:

I’ve posted several threads in the main forum that get one or two replies. It became a waste of time.

takes time brother...head down...grind...it will come...start threads, speak to us, tell u how you feel about everything.

"Aqua4Ever04 wrote:

I do all the time in the club level. I want sharing everything here as well, but the threads died before a discussion started.

people may not post but they do read.

I like that Suh understands what the falcons like to do..horizontal offense, lots of misdirection..

we need to stay disciplined early, less aggressive early, keep things in front of us, figure it out then get more aggressive.

"cbrad wrote:

After the Titans game we are now at 10.2 ppg on offense. We need to get to 19.8 ppg to get into top 20.

I'm tired and just going by memory but I remember 19 (Chargers game), 6 (Jets game), 0 (Saints game) and 9 (Titans game) by our offense. In 4 games those 34 points would be an 8.5 point average. If you want to count the defensive TD (Reshad Jones I think), you would have 41 points in 4 games for a 10.1 average. I have no idea how you get 10.2 even if you count Jones as an offensive player. So there is a TD and another "mystery point" that either I forgot or you are adding somewhere. Either way, my point was that I think this offense needs a lot more production and now that I reflect on it a bit more I believe that even more so, by another quarter of a point than my original quick estimate. 19.8? Thanks for finding that. Yep, these guys need to come together somehow and find a solution to more than double their output.

"Dolphin North wrote:

I'm tired and just going by memory but I remember 19 (Chargers game), 6 (Jets game), 0 (Saints game) and 9 (Titans game) by our offense. In 4 games those 34 points would be an 8.25 point average, a little lower than I originally said. If you want to count the defensive TD (Reshad Jones I think), you would have 41 points in 4 games for a 4.1 average. I have no idea how you get 10.2 even if you count Jones as an offensive player. So there is a TD and another "mystery point" that either I forgot or you are adding somewhere.

41/4 = 10.25 not 4.1

In any case you're right "offense" shouldn't include the Reshad Jones TD, but all the stats I'm comparing to didn't make that distinction so I left it in (that is, NFL.com officially lists offensive and defensive ranks and they include points by the defense as "offense" whether we like that or not).

Oh.. and 34/4 = 8.5 not 8.25

I think you're tired :smile:

"Colmax wrote:

Which game was it that folks were calling for Burke's head? Haha

I kid. Now, the offense......

I had serious concerns that there would be a big dropoff in our Cbs and S's from Vance Joseph to Matt Burke. Pre-season made me more concerned. Now, I am relieved to see I was probably wrong... but lets see how the Falcons passing attack does versus Nate Allen.

"Dolphin North wrote:

I like that post above, nice job. Right now we are averaging 8.5 pts. a game from our offense I believe. I won't bother looking it up but I would think we would need more than double that to climb into the top 20 in the current NFL. Also, our defense is fairly thin, like many positions on this team, so we would also need to control the clock and TOP better than we did last year. Are we holding onto the ball enough to protect our defenders from injuries this year? I haven't kept track but our time of possession must be at least somewhat improved over last year.

Well, like I said in another post, we are 4-0 on the year if we could have scored 21 in each game (since the opponent's highest score has been 20 so far). Last season, Carolina was 18th in PPG with an average of 21 points, which correlates pretty well with cBrad's chart of us needing to be 19th. Tennessee was 14th last season with 22.0 PPG- New Orleans was 12th with 23.3. So it's a pretty crowded area with around 21.5 being average per season.....we just need to score the league average and we should have a chance to be playoff bound.

That may sound like a big jump forward since we got blanked twice in the past three weeks, but our two other games were 19 and 16 points. So we're really just looking for one extra TD from the horrible performance last week....that seems fairly doable if the defense can keep up this terrific pace.