Hickey And Wallace Had A Sit Down To Discuss Future

No, I'm saying we shouldn't expect to beat one of the best defenses the league has seen in a while by modeling after NE. Tom Brady's strength is Tom Brady. Give him Randy Moss and he beats Dan's records. Give him a TE and not much else and he dinks and dunks his way to a Super Bowl. Unless you are Tom Brady I wouldn't say it's okay to dink and dunk our way to the top. I'd say let's hope Tanny develops his long game a bit better.

You were agreeing with a statement by someone else that said NE epitomizes matching their WRs to their QB which is untrue. They went from a balanced if underwhelming corps with Givens and Branch, then they trot out a corps so sorry, their highest yardage wr was Reche Caldwell, and still came within plays of another Super Bowl. Then they go out and get Welker and Randy Moss, two receivers on polar opposites of each other, and were an insane catch away from the greatest season in NFL history. Then they get rid of Moss and go two TE heavy and he still kicks butt. Then one goes and murders someone and the other is injured mostly for the past couple of seasons and they're still in the NFCCG.

NE doesn't match their players to Tom Brady. TB matches whatever hairbrained plan BB has, each and every single year the past decade and a half.

You have complete, HOF QBs like Rodgers and Manning losing to that defense. If Tannehill is that limited I'm worried about Tannehill. You can dink and dunk to the playoffs, but don't dink and dunk your way to championships now, and Tom Brady BARELY pulled that off.

People think Tom is now dinking and dunking because that's all he can do, so BB goes and gets him those WRs. He's dinking and dunking because that's the type of WRs Belichick is giving him. His highest YPA ever was with two TEs. He can still throw the deep ball it's just his WRs suck on those.

 

Read the comments, the whole thing is messed up.

 

Then I pasted the wrong link. Try this one:

http://archive.advancedfootballanalytics.com/2007/08/yac-receiver-correlation.html

 

Same guy gives QBs credit then WRs credit...he should run for office.

 

At this point we know that Ryan Tannehill has a strength of accuracy in the short and intermediate ranges, and we don't know whether his downfield game is going to improve.

The way you complement him under those conditions is by surrounding him with receivers who have YAC talent, some of whom also have downfield speed. Right now two-thirds of his starting receiving corps don't have significant YAC talent. You can't improve the team's lowly passing efficiency numbers under those conditions, if Tannehill's downfield game doesn't improve.

After three years of sub-7 YPAs, you have to hedge your bets at this point in my opinion.

 

That's an awful lot of salary cap money to spend on a "training partner," however, given that there is no guarantee that the improvement will occur.

It's quite the risk to interfere with the improvement of the rest of the roster to that degree, when instead you could simply replace Wallace with a YAC receiver, for far less money. Or you could pay about the same money to someone like Jeremy Maclin, who has YAC ability and deep speed, and do a better job of hedging your bets.

 

james walker chimes in..I just don't like the idea of abandoning the deep level of the field because the qb is not very good at finding it..its a sucky *** conundrum.

 

Getting rid of Wallace doesn't mean abandoning the deep level of the field. Just about every NFL receiver is a deep threat, at least in the sense that they can beat you deep if you make a mistake and you can't really eliminate all deep safety help because the ramifications if they do beat you are too significant. In 2012, we started Bess and Hartline at WR and completed more 20+ passes, at a higher completion percentage, and for almost 200 more yards than in 2014 with Wallace, despite having more than 100 fewer pass attempts. Our deep passing efficiency and productivity was much better pre-Wallace and with a rookie Tannehill than it was last year.

 

I believe that certain players make other players play differently, and if you lose said player the residual affect on other players could be negative...I understand the argument that the fit between he and the qb isn't the best fit, but I blame that on the qb more, so where does that leave me, well, if there is an opp to trade out said player with what I think is a comparable talent I might do it.

 

If you gave Ryan Tannehill a guy like Vincent Jackson, you'll erase the deep threat "issue" rather quickly.

 

Not sure what you are saying. Our deep passing game was better with a rookie Tannehill, Hartline and Bess than it has been with Wallace and an improved 3rd year Tannehill. If we lose Wallace, it is also quite possible the effect is positive. It may mean more deep targets for the guys Tannehill seems better at hitting deep. It may mean other receivers feel more involved in the game and elevate their play as a result. What we know for sure is that Wallace has not improved our deep passing game. So I think we agree that if you can replace Wallace with a top WR for similar money, we should seriously consider it. But I'm not completely sure I'd reinvest so heavily at WR. While many consider it a given that major investment at WR is necessary or desirable, I'm not so sure. There are plenty of other guys who can catch 62% of the passes thrown to them for a 12.9 ypc average. If Wallace's 108 targets go to someone else, there's a pretty good chance that guy will catch 65-70 of them for 850-900 yards. People point to Wallace's 10 TDs, but only 1-2 at the most were caused by Wallace's speed or any other special skill. The rest were either created by scheme or were in traffic, and while Wallace was much better than in the past at those traffic catches, he still isn't special or elite in that regard. There are a lot of much cheaper WRs who are still much better at catching in traffic than Wallace.

 

I didn't take it as anything. I was merely pointing out the obvious. As much as you try to make a big deal about me being sensitive about Tannehill, you seem particularly sensitive about anything related to Wallace.

 

I'm not sure a major investment is necessary, either. I think you could accomplish a great deal by replacing Hartline and Wallace with Eddie Royal, for example, and a 1st round pick who has YAC ability and speed, such as Kevin White.

 

Essentially this:

http://www.thephins.com/forums/show...-Effect-on-Ryan-Tannehill-s-Downfield-Passing

 

I absolutely see you pov, eddie royal is a good player that can do something with it..but wallace presents a different set of skills that can impact the game tremendously if the qb can get on the same page, why give up on that and indict the qb now?

 

If you look at the info in the link in the post just above yours, you'll see how Tannehill's performance downfield has declined since Wallace took over the downfield role from Hartline. Two years of a poor connection with Wallace says the connection between them is unlikely to ever exist, and the relatively small probability that it could develop in the future isn't worth the salary cap hit devoted to Wallace in my opinion. You just can't absorb that much of the team's cap with a wing and a prayer. That much of the cap should be devoted to something that's a sure thing, and a player who's all but a guarantee to produce in accordance with it.

There are players out there like that, as well all know. The Lions aren't wondering, for example, whether Calvin Johnson is going to live up to the percentage of their cap he's absorbing. They know that money is well-spent, and they know what they'll be getting from Johnson for it. When you allocate that much of your cap to a player, you should know. You can't "roll the dice" with that percentage of your cap.

 

i can't look at stats over what i see..you get rid of wallace it will have a trickle down affect, run game will be affected negatively..qb needs to locate his receiver better, stop rushing the throws, and stop trying to adjust his trajectory in mid release...

 

Lamar Miller didn't perform any differently as a rookie in 2012, without Mike Wallace, than he did in 2014 as a third-year player, with Mike Wallace. In fact, his performance in 2013 was appreciably different from his performance in either 2012 or 2014, and Mike Wallace didn't perform any differently downfield that year than he did in 2014. All that suggests that those variables aren't related.

 

Because he's got the same kind of ability to make adjustments and win the positioning game that deep receivers largely have, and Wallace is really awful at.

I basically picked Jackson because he's likely available, but it's certainly not limited to him. There's a lot of guys you could give Tannehill that aren't as fast as Wallace but would be way more successful as deep threats.

 

Yikes, we will have shnit rubbed in our face all season if that happens..any link??

 

He hit the deep ball with Hartline in 2012, as a rookie no less.

 

And if you want to spend that kind of money, you can also target Demaryius Thomas, who has that sort of downfield ability but also a whole lot more YAC ability.

 

nah, not really, there is an incredibly small amount of pure deep balls completed in his career..at least my definition of what a deep pass completed means.

 

...which is what?

 

a deep pass attempt has to threat a defense from a real estate standpoint..it has to extend to the third level in the air to truly benefit the team residually on future plays, if defenders are threatened by players who threaten that area of the field then you have the beginning of what constitutes a deep ball, the other part of it is actually completing it..

 

Again, this has been covered ad nauseam.

Mike Wallace presents what is in practice a very small target for deep passes, and was only successful with an extraordinary deep passer. There are multiple excellent deep threats that this isn't true for.

We've also seen Ryan Tannehill be quite successful throwing deep to guys who aren't really deep threats. He was dramatically better at it his rookie season with Bess and Hartline than he was since he started being forced to funnel them to Wallace.

 

Those passes in the NFL are most frequently in the 20 to 30 yard range in the air, and Tannehill was no different from average in that regard as a rookie, throwing to Brian Hartline at that range predominantly. That's declined considerably for Tannehill since Mike Wallace has arrived and become the predominant downfield threat, however.

 

Brian Hartline was 8th in the NFL in deep yardage in 2012 with 421 yards.

Mike Wallace's last three years(including 2012 in Pittsburgh) have been 263, 261, and 199 in order.

 

Tannehill's QB rating throwing to Hartline at that range in 2012 was 93. His rating throwing to Wallace at that range in 2013 and 2014 combined is 49.

 

i do not consider 20 yard passes in the air deep ball completions..I can throw a 20 yard pass with 40 percent of my arm strength.

And why again would I blame mike Wallace on the inefficiency of the deep ball in Ryan's repertoire or the team stats in that dept..?

Mike Wallace can get open deep at will...its up to the coordinator and the qb to be on the same page.

 

I said 20 to 30 yards. When you get beyond 30 yards, you're talking about passes that are completed very rarely in the NFL. The 20 to 30 yard range in the air is by far the most frequently targeted "deep" range in the NFL. We can all have our fantasies based on highlights we've seen here and there, but the truth is that those passes don't happen often at all.

 

Again, fantasyland. Those passes are not only completed very infrequently, they're not even attempted frequently.