He definitely views himself as a football God and everyone else is a peasant. Keep in mind he's also the same expert-level talent evaluator who brought Julius Thomas here.

 

Donald Trump and Gase the same person?:shifty:

 

Meh... in a way... he's right whether you like it or not.

We can sit here all day and try and interpret plays, and give our opinions on them, and what we think we saw, but at the end of the day what he's saying is true. He knows the playcall. He knows what's supposed to happen on that play, and why they've called it, and therefore after reviewing the tape he knows what happened and has the ability to say yes, what happened is what was supposed to, or wasn't.

We don't know that as much as any of us want to sit here and talk about it and give our opinions. Ultimately, him, Cutler, the rest of the offense, they're the ones who know.

Much like how we pick apart defensive plays, or blame one player or the other on D for a blown coverage. We're just spitting out our opinions on what we think we saw. They know, we're assuming, interpreting, and offering opinions.

So, I assume, there's an awful lot of cases where the reporters in PC's are asking questions that are quite stupid, because their assessment is wrong based on that assumption, much like our's here likely is.

I'm not sure why you're so personally offended by this. Clearly he's upset with the performance of the offense, and clearly he's also upset with people trying to assign blame (or whatever) based on what they think they see, if what they're seeing isn't correct.

Sure, they've made mistakes along the OL. That's obvious to anyone etc. etc.

I think what he's more referring to though is the folks in the media and such out there saying things as if they're fact, and their evaluation or assumption of what happened on the play is flat out wrong, because well, as I said earlier, they don't know the playcall.

It's like that famous argument when a QB misses a WR on what's clearly a miscommunication between the two. They both yell at each other, and fans ,and the media assigns blame to someone because... well... that's what we do when we talk about the game. However, some of us are going to say OMG... what a terrible throw/decision by the QB! He's awful! Others are going to go... naw... the WR ran the wrong route! he sucks! Really though, the only one's who actually know, are the QB, the WR, the coaches... I think that's ultimately his point

 

I guess being last on O in this league really means you're doing a hell of a job, keep up the great work Gace. Now don't question what you see, we're too stupid to understand....

 

Brothers from different Mothers maybe?

 

I said in another post that watching the game back, Ajayi bounced almost every run outside because the holes were small through the middle. And it would be easy to say it's Gase's fault for calling plays in the A/B gap when it's not really there, but you could also flip that around and say Ajayi wasn't doing his job. Small holes are still holes and he chose to go against the blocking scheme to freelance, so I'd be pissed off as a head coach too.

As for Cutler, I don't think he looked bad on any one series this year so far. Yet I haven't seen that big separation from our receivers very often and Landry is getting smothered as soon as he catches the ball. The attempted TD pass to Thomas last week that was picked? I think it's crazy that we didn't have Parker over there one on one. But it's also possible that Gase wasn't seeing the effort from Parker so it's very hard to play arm-chair QB and second guess.

FOR NOW, I have complete faith in Gase and his ability to turn around the 2017 season. People keep ignoring that impossible road trip we just went on- that's a massive factor that shouldn't be ignored. This is our first time home in a month and I think it will make a big difference this week....just remember that it is still a short week since we had to fly home from London. So it's probable that we will lose this week as well as we make adjustments and get the offense reset. I hate saying that but it's true- you can't fix big problems in two or three practices.

 

Impressed you used the word audacity! :up:

 

The A/B gap is never there, our guards suck too much to make it work. Ajayi is just trying to make the best of a bad situation its not his fualt. Gase kept calling it over and over instead of running outside zone which is what ajayi excells at. Gase said himself he did not know how to run outside zone before last season and has been having to learn on the fly, he should have had it down by now bit it appears he is still not there yet.

Cutler has thrown many bad passes, ha has missed wide open recievers on numerous occassions either because he underthrew it, sailed it, or threw it behind recievers. Hiss accuracy has been all over the place. He seems to throw the slant and the out routes very well and he has a good deep ball. Everything else has been very innacurate and off with the timing.

Yes all the flying I think has been a factor. However there are clear deficiencies in the way we are calling plays and the general scheme of the offense both running and passing that need to be changed in my opinion.

 

Its funny people will defend Cutler when his entire career has been people mocking him for being a dip****.

If he wasn't a Dolphin not a single person here would say hes a good QB without being laughed at.

 

I agree about the o-line.

Cutler has missed some throws, but his comp% is 67. His accuracy isn't the problem. The timing is off, but that's not an accuracy issue. I think the o-line and the play calling have not allowed this offense to get into a rhythm.

 

I liked him in Denver and I liked him in Chicago. I think he's become jaded due to the inconsistency in his career with teams/coaches/players. He definitely has the ability to be a very good QB in this league and saying he's "good" isn't a stretch.

Saying that, I really wish they had taken a look at Kaep. I'm on the record as saying that at this point in their careers I believe Kaep's ceiling is higher. However, I also think Kaep's floor is lower.

 

Its not a popular view, but Gase is going to get a pass from me this year, unless he does something that is just godawful. I did not buy into the hype going around that Cutler was coming in here to give us a "real" QB, and watch what he can do with all of this "talent". So we have a 2nd year coach, that lost his starting QB before the season even started. Objectively if you had this same thing on any other team that you didn't cheer for what would be your expectation?

Cutler even in his prime was not as good as Tannehill. Tannehill had better touch by his 2nd season then I ever saw from Cutler. When we lost Ryan the season outlook took a giant hit. Cutler was nothing more then the best choice of a horrible situation. We will see Cutler put a few good games together, but in the long run he will break your heart if you think he is going to give you a solid run leading us deep in the playoffs. The only way that happens is if our run game takes all the pressure off of him. And for that to happen this offensive line needs to get fixed.

Its also time to re-evaluate the talent on this team. We have potential everywhere, but NOBODY on the offense is a star. We don't have a guy that we can count on to pull out a big play and turn the game around. When the offense is struggling, it feels like everyone is looking around waiting for someone to fix it. Tannehill was the closest we had (also probably not a popular opinion) when he was out there I knew his head was going to be in the game till the very last play.

Having Cutler here hopefully shows us where our team is really at. Its common to blame the QB for a lot of the problems on a team, he gets paid the most so he takes most of the blame... but what if that isn't the case?

WR - tons of potential. Parker is a 50/50 player at this point in his game. He will make an awesome catch one play, and look completely lost the next time, I had hoped this year would be the year something clicked. Teams aren't game planning to take him away from us, he does that himself. Landry plays hard, and has great hands, but with his speed he isn't going to get good separation, and the defenses aren't afraid of him. Stills is probably the best of the three at this point. Defenses are afraid of his speed, and he actually does run some good routes even when not taking the top off of the defense, but Defenses aren't spending significant resources to stop him. Combined we appear strong on paper, but it doesn't show up on the field.

OL - feels like every year with this unit... We have to get this fixed. The OL being a mess has made evaluating QBs hard, evaluating game plans impossible, and making a Offense that on paper looks to be competitive actually look like hot garbage. Tannehill might have actually been making this unit look better then it was... which is comical, cause they looked awful with Tannehill in there.

TE - I was actually excited to see what this unit could do this year. I have seen Fasano have a couple great plays (mostly in blocking), but I haven't seen anything from Thomas yet.

RB - I like Ajayi, he runs hard and seems like a beast to take down. I honestly can't tell if he isn't being used right, or if he is just another victim of the O-line play. My guess is a little of both.

PENALTIES - These are happening so much I pretty much consider them part of our offense... When everything is going wrong already, you can't put yourself in 3rd and longs...



On the plus side maybe the front office is starting to get in sync. I was critical of the year before, but I really like this last draft. That infusion of young talent on D is going to translate to us having a few years to work out this offense.

 

Who thought Tannehill and Cutler were similar?

Tannehill went down during camp. Anyone who actually thought there wasn't going to be a significant drop off due to his injury wasn't being honest.

 

I'm not sure I understand what you're so upset with still. Do you think he's not aware of the issues you've listed? He's aware. He's mentioned it. Hell, just last week after the NY game he said the offense is garbage, for the last two years, and he's tired of it. So clearly they're trying to fix it.

I'm just saying, the initial thing you're getting bent out of shape about was him, essentially defending his guys for being criticized incorrectly by people who have no idea what they're talking about. Likely based on examples we discussed above. It's just the way it is. A reporter, a fan, etc, etc. we just don't know enough to pass off our opinions as fact. The only ones who know, are those who know the responsibilities on the playcall. That's all he was doing here, was defending his players. Believe it or not, that's part of the coaches job.

It's not like he stood there and say what do you idiots mean? Our offense is fine. We got shut out, but we weren't trying to score in London. Naw. we thought we could win with zero points. I mean, he's clearly acknowledged there's problems and that he's not happy about it, he's said they're going to work on fixing it. It hasn't happened yet, obviously. However that being said he's still going to defend his players from the idiot reporters passing off their incorrect opinions and interpretations as fact. That's part of his job. Keep in mind though, just because he may defend a guy in a press conference like that, doesn't mean they aren't on his *** behind closed doors in team meetings. He's just not going to single a guy out and throw them under the bus to the media.

Absolutely, you, I, and every other fan has the right to be upset about the performance of the offense. They've flat out stunk. I'm just not sure why you're upset about the coach making a comment that he knows what guys are supposed to be doing, and whether it's right or not. That's just... factual. He does, and he's one of the few that does because he's the coach. That's just... common sense IMO. I just think you're taking his comments way to personally because... he's right. Sure as fans we can say last year that Dallas Thomas and Billy Turner sucked and were killing the OL. Sure they still rolled with them for a few weeks. Why? Well, who knows. What we do know regarding that though is that they were the starters, the won the jobs in camp apparently, and Gase and his staff said when they got here, clean slate for everyone. Come in, do it our way, have success you'll be fine. If not, you're gone. So, I see that again as him simply doing what he said. That's how coaches win over players and locker rooms. So, yes, if he's going to stand there and be pissed at people who don't know what they're looking at, but acting as if they do so he can defend his players, and keep the trust of his locker room, you're damn right he should be doing that. He's very rarely called individuals out in his PC's. Most coaches won't. That doesn't mean they're turning a blind eye to it though behind closed doors. There's just nothing to gain from doing it in public.

 

^ Concision, baby. Concision.

:tongue:

 

Thank You for rational thought.

 

I saw several holes in the B gap on the right side in all three weeks, but Ajayi was reaching the gap as the holes were forming. It was never a massive crease to burst through.....every time it was one of those, "Scrunch up, slide through and then explode" type of holes. They were there fairly consistently though and he had two very long runs last season through identical holes. He's just choosing not to go there this season...possibly due to a linebacker at the 2nd level or seeing daylight outside. I didn't study it in that much detail because...well, it doesn't matter what we see. But the holes are there to run through.

I'm not making excuses for Cutler either- I just meant that he looks poised and confident moving through the pocket. He did appear a little more jumpy this past week after taking a few hits and I'm guessing that's where the missed throws came in at. We definitely had two TDs last week if he was accurate.

 

So to be fair, Ricky is right about a lot of people on this site believing that Jay was going to be as good or better. I have a feeling that Resnor was thinking similar to me. I didn't think Jay was anywhere near an upgrade to Ryan, however, I was also not going to badmouth the latest guy to put on the Dolphins uniform. I was going to wait and see.

One of my points was that if the hype hadn't have been there for Jay, would you still be feeling like Gase needed to be fired? Without the insane pro Jay spin, I think people would have expected a rough start to this season, and I think that's exactly what we have gotten.

 

Anyone who suggests this is delusional- you don't fire a coach after losing two football games on an impossible road trip. Belichek lost the same amount of games in that stretch as well, at home nonetheless, should he be fired too? Because we faced 10x the adversity that he did over the past month. Or maybe the answer is benching Brady and blaming it all on him. But wait- Brady got a full pre-season to practice.....Cutler got less than a week. So Brady definitely needs to be fired, he must be the worst QB in all of football.

As fans, we want instant gratification. We expect our team to be perfect at all times. And some tend to ignore all the facts and grossly overreact when the team struggles. Our team was tired, jet lagged, and got the least practice time in the NFL with a new QB. The truth is that we had very little probability of winning the past two weeks.

And if we're bring honest here, it will probably carry over to the Titans game this Sunday. A win will take a massive turnaround despite another super-short practice week....so we should be ecstatic if we manage win. Make no mistake though, we will probably lose because it's just too much of an advantage to give up in the NFL. The Titans get 5 full days of practice...we get 2. That's colossal. There will be those who ignore all the factors though and expect us to win 55-0, and then they'll be right back here screaming for people to be fired again.

Just think about it. Over the past three weeks, 28 NFL teams have had 15 full practice days (minus us & the three other teams who played in London). Those other London teams had 12 full practices...we've had 6. That's it- 6 in a full month! It's no secret why our offense sucks right now.

 

Until Miami invests in a qb, it will be the same , dull franchise. Look at the Rams and Texans. Their issues are masked because they have a qb. Hell ,look at the Pats. The worst defense in the league almost but they have the qb. Miami has way too many holes to have a below average qb play for us.

 

??????

They have a QB. His name is Ryan Tannehill. We were the hottest team in the league before he went down. The offense's ineptness without him this year should tell everyone that Thill has been the solution not the problem this whole time.

 

We weren't the hottest team in the league even if you cherry pick from game 6 to when Tannehill went down. Teams like NE and Dallas were far more impressive on offense and more hyped during that period.

Regardless.. Tannehill proved he can be an above average QB during that stretch, but it's just a stretch. We don't know if he can sustain it. If playing at a Matt Stafford level is considered being a solution at QB then I'd agree Tannehill proved he could do that for awhile. We still need to see him do that for multiple years.

And if he can do that, then I think that's good enough to build a team around. But I'd still draft a QB early to see if we can hit on a QB that can be one of the best in the league as well as insurance in case Tannehill doesn't pan out. At worst you have a decent backup, and at best you vastly increase the chances of going deep in the playoffs (almost all recent SB winners had great career QB's or good ones that played great in the playoffs).

In any case.. despite anything Gase might say, Cutler's been a disappointment so far.

 

The Pats are 2-2 and by all accounts should be 1-3. Brady is masking nothing. Yes, he's putting up the numbers and the entire offense is playing great, but it just proves the point that defense wins games.

 

Right. Anyone who was saying that Cutler was equal or an upgrade weren't being honest. I think I said that.

I was optimistically hoping he would be good, but I certainly didn't think we'd be better off, or just as good, with Cutler.

 

I don't think many here feel Tannehill is the solution or the problem...it's a combination of things RIGHT NOW that can only be overcome with time. Would I rather see Tannehill over Cutler? Heck yes. But we have to play the cards we're dealt and make the most of it. All I can say is "Go Cutler" and hope that he has a few signature awesome games.

 

Definitely! And I think Gase is defending Cutler because Gase knows deep down that a lot of the problems are his own fault.

 

We were being honest. I mean, a lot of data was provided showing that historically Cutler and Tannehill were similar. I once adjusted passer ratings year-by-year to a single reference year and showed that they were both average to slightly above average over their careers. Even if you went by rankings that was true.

And even without adjustment their overall ratings are similar (that graph I still have handy):


So it has nothing to do with honesty. It's just looking more and more like we inherited the 2016 version of Cutler instead of who he's been across his career. So maybe the prediction was wrong, but it was at the time arguably the most honest assessment you could make based off stats at least (and others not using stats came to similar conclusions).

 

Saw cbrad was latest post. Clicked expecting charts and graphs. Got charts and graphs. Very satisfied.

Regarding Cutler/Tannehill, let's remember it took awhile for Tannehill to get in sync with the receivers in this offense... maybe it clicks for Cutler (and the OL hopefully) around week 5/6?

 

The picture gets a little more clear when you throw in pass protection rankings. (rankings by football outsiders)

CHI rank QBR Mia QBR
2016 7 78.1 21 93.5
2015 12 92.3 24 88.7
2014 18 88.6 19 92.8
2013 5 89.2 30 81.7
2012 24 81.3 21 76.1

Tannehill's rookie year is the only year he had a better pass protecting line. This pretty much has me go full circle to where I never felt like I got a chance to really evaluate Tannehill. If he is performing average but his O-line talent is below average, to me, that means he is above average, however without ever giving him a solid O-line who knows where his real cap is?

We know he isn't Aaron Rodgers, who does well no matter what his line is, but that's not the norm in the NFL.

Cutler on the other hand, has had a good offensive line a few times in his career, and I think we can state where his cap was (I'm not willing to make a call on if he has hit the wall in his career).

 

I was optimistic on Cutler that he could be competent, but he was always a clear downgrade from Tannehill in multiple areas. But while he is not an answer, he is certainly not our biggest issue. Our biggest issue, and our biggest issue for umpteen years at this point has been our guards and our complete inability to draft good guards, LB's, and CB's. When you have not just bad guards, but the worst guards in the league for almost 5 years now, it short circuits your offense. And they are bad against both the run and pass, so when we continuously cant run the ball on first down and always have pressure up the middle from the guard position, it forces us into 2nd and long and 3rd and long situations which this offense as currently constructed just isnt built to handle. The fact that we not only thought it was a smart decision to re-sign Bushrod, but also thought that the best move would be to sign Larsen, was season ending incompetence. There were quite a few really good guards available that could have meant so much to this offense, as well as just replacing Bushrod with an average guard.

Also, our lb's are liabilities in coverage and have been for years as well. The fact that we signed Alonso to an extension was also horrible mismanagement. He has not been good since he got hurt after his rookie year. He WAS NOT good last year despite what the average fan thinks. He is terrible in coverage, and he and other LB's we have had for years have been terrible in coverage too.

 

Yeah, it's maybe a bit counterintuitive but sack percentage (which is basically what those FO's pass protection OL rankings are) is very weakly correlated with passer rating. For example, the correlation between year-end passer rating for starting QB's in 2016 and sack rate is an extremely small -0.103. Correlation between year-end passer rating and total sacks in 2016 was even worse (less correlation) at -0.0346!

That's basically saying sack percentage and sacks have a relatively small effect on passer rating. Like I said, counterintuitive.

In any case, you can see this is true when you condition passer rating on the number of sacks in a game. What's plotted below is average per-game passer rating (all adjusted to 2016 numbers) as a function of number of sacks taken in a game, for 3 QB's. As you can see, not too much change for Cutler or Tannehill until you reach a large number of sacks.


So adjusting the stats in post #32 by sacks won't have much influence. Adjusting by defense DOES matter though, and there Chicago was far worse over the last 5 years than Miami (by points allowed):
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/chi/
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/mia/

 

If your approach shows that the line's ability to block has no bearing on the effectiveness of the passing game, then your approach is wrong.

 

It's not my approach. It's the approach Phins_to_Win was suggesting. I'll credit him for looking at this, but it turns out total sacks and sack% (basically what FO's pass protection rankings entail) aren't capturing "ability to block" as well as you might hope. I've said this before but I don't think there's a good metric for the OL, be it in run blocking or pass blocking.

 

FO rankings are only using sacks? Sacks aren't the only indicator of pressure. In other words, if a QB doesn't get sacked on a play, it doesn't mean he wasn't under intense pressure. I have a feeling that their rankings aren't based only on sacks. So, if you reduce their ranking to only sacks, and then use sacks to passer rating to disprove that post, it seems like an exercise in futility. You changed the parameters, and thus, the initial argument.

 

FO has a stat called "Adjusted Sack Rate" that they rank pass protection by that claims to modify sack% by "opponent quality, down and distance" etc.. However, they do not include other forms of pressure, and it correlates strongly with sack%, so I'm not changing the primary parameter in their metric.
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/info/glossary#asr

I just calculated the correlation between starting QB passer rating (for the 30 QB's that qualified according to PFR) in 2016 and FO's Adjusted Sack Rate for 2016 and it's -0.273, so it's a stronger correlation than just using sack% but it's still a weak correlation because the primary component is sack%.
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ol2016
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2016/passing.htm

So the basic argument does stand. They don't (nor does anyone else) have a good metric for OL pass protection ability if we assume OL pass protection ability should be strongly correlated with passer rating (I'd make that assumption too).