In terms of being a deep threat..

---------------
Throws of 20+ Yards, Last 2 Seasons

Mike Wallace
- Targets: 54
- Receptions: 12
- Completion%: 22.2%
- Yards: 460
- TD: 2

Kenny Stills
- Targets: 30
- Receptions: 15
- Completion%: 50%
- Yards: 710*
- TD: 7

*47.3 Yds per Rec (leads all NFL WRs)

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/12477833/mike-wallace-traded-minnesota-vikings-miami-dolphins
---------------

Ryan Tannehill is good at throwing low trajectory direct laser beams. But he's weak at high-arcing an accurate deep ball that allows a speedster to accelerate through the ball. In fact, in the 2 years together, Tannehill + Wallace NEVER successfully connected on the deep ball in stride. They were a terrible fit for each other

In order for Tannehill to consistently threaten deep, he needs strong catch radius receivers who are good at ripping low trajectory contested throws out of the air, while facing the QB. An acrobatic catch radius receiver like Kenny Stills is a much better fit for Tannehill.

Wallace only had lots of touchdowns because we threw to him a lot in the redzone, in an attempt to justify his salary, and keep him happy. The vast majority of Wallace's TDs were short throws that could have been made to a variety of players. After all, on direct throws, Wallace is primarily a body catcher with a small catch radius. Simply looking at Wallace's TD total is a fantasy football approach.

Tannehill + Kenny Stills is going to be a better match than Tannehill + Wallace.

 

Stills is as good and probably better than any WR who'd be available in the 3rd round so I like trade. Is he as good at Wallace? I don't believe so, but his production:cost ratio will be better and if we're able to add another quality wideout the WR unit as a whole could be better than last year's for a fraction of the cost.

 

Also, looking at catch rate..

Catch Rate; Wide Receivers; 2014 Season; Minimum 50 passes, 87 players ranked

#3 Kenny Stills (76%)
#5 Jarvis Landry (75%)
#27 Greg Jennings (64%)
#35 Michael Crabtree (63%)
#38 Brian Hartline (62%)
#53 Mike Wallace (58%)
#61 Brandon Gibson (57%)

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/wr

Whether you look at deep pass production, or catch rate, Kenny Stills is going to be an upgrade over Mike Wallace.

 

I agree with you that Stills will be a better fit with Tannehill than Wallace was. But I doubt that our coaches had the luxury to call plays just to keep one player happy or to justify his salary instead of calling the play with the best chance for a Touchdown.

 

Your absolute best argument for Stills's ability is going to come from the concept of expected points added per play, where Stills led the league in both 2013 and 2014, and by a fairly wide margin.

In other words, the plays Stills made, on a per-play basis, are associated with far more points for a team than the plays made by any other receiver in the league.

And that incorporates actual touchdowns at 7 points apiece, so even Mike Wallace's 10 touchdowns don't even come close to putting him in Stills's territory in that area. In fact, Wallace was among the league's worst starting receivers in expected points added per play.

 

If Stills would've had Wallace's number of targets in 2014, he would've caught 85 passes for 1,259 yards at his rate of production.

Compare that to Wallace's 67 catches for 862 yards.

 

Imagine what Wallace's stats might have been if Tannehill could have accurately thrown the ball to him when he was wide open down the field. There is no stat that encapsulates the sense of lost opportunity and momentum shift on the many occasions that Wallace beat coverage, was wide open for a big gain and probably a touchdown and Tannehill just blew the throw. If a hypothetical machine could add in the numbers lost on those lost big plays, Wallace's numbers in your stats would have been through the roof.

 

If Wallace had a super accurate Drew Brees throwing to him last year as Kenny Stills did, his numbers would have been...

 

this.

Wallace would have had a monster year.

 

He'd still drops perfect passes in his hands. Even from Brees. We have a ton of film proving that. Also film showing zero effort and zero fight for contested catches or ones that weren't perfect. Stills is the opposite.

 

You think Tannehill is Henne 2.0 so it's hard for anyone to take you seriously. Have you ever bothered to embarrass yourself and compare their stats?

 

I insist that catch rate is a dubious statistic because it's an entirely dependent variable based on the independent variable of what kinds of routes you're running and where you're lined up.

However I will say that when you consider the fact that Kenny Stills was the Saints' deep guy, his catch rate suddenly becomes VERY impressive. Impressive both for him, and for Drew Brees.

The better way to reflect this though is with a simple yards per target figure. That statistic is going to control for the imbalance between catch rate and yards per catch by combining the two, with the understanding that there's a natural inverse relationship between catch rate and yards per catch.

Only DeSean Jackson had a better yards per target figure in 2014, among 89 qualifiers. Kenny Stills was 2nd in the league at 11.6 yards per target.

But that too won't necessarily account for everything because a guy can have a high yards per target figure because the quarterback only picks him out and targets him when he's open, and let's say he doesn't get open very often and so the guy isn't targeted much, that figure can be inflated a bit.

That's where you can account for usage by calculating a yards per route figure. Kenny Stills ranks 21st among 90 qualifiers in yards per route at 2.03 yards average.

This makes sense. Kenny was the deep guy for the Saints and based on what I saw, the Saints had a system where they'd have their receivers run routes a certain way regardless of what the coverage was, and it was up to Drew Brees to recognize the coverage and let that dictate where he goes with the football. So there were a lot of routes Kenny ran that were essentially just clear-outs for other players in the passing game. This is a concept with which Mike Wallace is pretty intimately familiar as well, I'm sure. Wallace's deep speed was used by Miami to keep defenses honest and maintain spacing, and he had to run some of these routes knowing he was never going to be targeted.

Based on what I saw, Kenny Stills has excellent speed that really threatens the defense, and he combines it with great quickness. Basically in three games I watched, whenever he ran a route on which he is expected to get open based on the coverage, he got open. And that's accounting for all of the routes on coaches tape, not just the ones where he was targeted. I saw maybe two or three times where he should have been expected to win on the route and he really didn't. But he combined that with two or three times where he really should NOT have been able to create separation based on the defensive coverage, but somehow he did anyway through a combination of fakes that were pretty damn good.

That's his strong suit, aside from his speed. His faking ability is extremely impressive. He was borderline uncoverable on out-and-up routes. He made guys look absolutely helpless with that route. And we're talking trusty veterans like Ike Taylor and Lardarius Webb, in addition to very promising young chaps like Desmond Trufant. It wasn't always a bottom scraper like Danny Gorrer. The guy he embarrassed the worst this way was probably Ike Taylor.

But there are other routes where his fakes create all kinds of problems. He's a guy that can really execute this way, basically stringing together three moves on a route, and then finishing with a catch. There was an out route he ran I believe against Ike Taylor that he had zero business getting open on based on Taylor's coverage technique where he maintained strong outside leverage. But Stills had Taylor eating out of the palm of his hand by drifting to the outside right into Taylor's coverage, then changing his shoulder aspect and cutting an obtuse angle to the inside. Taylor's outside leverage means that his weakness is the move to the inside, so when he sees Stills make this move to the inside, he's got to react. But just when he does that Stills cuts SHARP to the outside and runs straight to the sidelines leaving Taylor in his wake. Brees had escaped the pocket, creating a better angle to hit Stills right on the sideline, underthrew the ball and Kenny had to dig it off the turf. Initially ruled a no-catch but replays showed he successfully dug it off the turf and it was reversed for a catch. Really just one example though of the way Stills is able to manipulate his body and trajectory to create separation.

And when you get down to it, Stills can finish catches. He's good with the ball in the air and good at fighting for the catch. A lot of people want to say he's far better than Wallace at this, but I think Wallace was mainly inconsistent this way. He often showed very good ability to finish catches. And then he showed poor ability to finish catches. So maybe Stills is more consistent. I'd have to actually look at all his games instead of just three games to be sure.

 

No one knows how Stills or Wallace would've done if you switch out QB's (and possibly other stuff). That debate can go on forever without resolution UNTIL this season starts. I mean we're going to find out in less than a year what Tannehill -> Stills looks like.

I would really be interested in posters here making a firm prediction about Stills' 2015 stats, averaged on a per game basis (in case he gets injured). Then we can bump this thread to see who was more right than wrong.

Just in general, if you don't have the ability to settle a debate from the data, you can instead measure how accurately different people interpret that data, and infer from that how valid the interpretation was.

So.. anyone want to put down in writing what they think Stills' stats for 2015 will be, if he started every game of the season?

My prediction? I think he'll have 900 yards and 6 TD, in other words, similar to what he did with NO but with more TD's.

 

When I finally realized that Tannehill had no problems hooking up long with his other receivers, or that Wallace wasn't catching it cleanly even on intermediate or short routes, I started paying more attention to what Wallace was doing on the field. What I saw was someone who couldn't adjust the belt on a pair of pants, let alone to a ball in flight. I am not being facetious when I say that I think Mike Wallace needs glasses.

 

I'm not gonna predict stats, but I will predict better deep ball numbers between 17 & Stills, then there were between 17 & Wallace. If I turn out to be wrong, I will admit it.

I wonder though, if I turn out to be right, will the "deep ball problems mostly/all Tannehill's fault" admit they were wrong?

 

Would be nice to get a range.. "better" is harder to quantify.

 

I really don't think it is all that hard to put the deep ball numbers up against each other and see what's better.

Tell you what, I predict it will be better in the following categories: deep ball completion percentage and deep ball TDs, then 17 to Wallace 2014 season.

 

Kenny Stills is not without weaknesses though. The small number of times I saw him not win his routes, invariably that was due to physicality. He's not a very physical player. The Saints hid him in stacks a lot, lined him tighter to the formation, used him in the slot, put him in motion a whole lot, etc. These are things you can do to hide a player from overly physical press coverage. He thrived on those things and Miami did a lot of those things with Mike Wallace, so I'm not that concerned about it. He doesn't finish run after catch opportunities physically. He's purely a speed guy in those instances.

 

Just saw your edit. Yeah, if he does a lot better with the deep ball, then I don't think people can argue Tannehill has a deep ball problem. I think that just puts more credence into the hypothesis that the deep ball problem was Tannehill -> Wallace specific.

 

So you truly believe Mike Wallace was so good last year that he would've had the best WR season of all time and would have completely and utterly destroyed all of his previous records from when he was #1 WR with a Super Bowl winning QB who has what many consider a very good deep ball....if Tannehill could only "throw accurately"?

Have you watched a set of Stills highlights yet? He has to slow down or come back on under thrown balls in more than half of the plays I have watched. Some of you guys are going to ride this forever and ever because Mike Wallace didn't catch 100+ passes for 2400 yards and 23 TDs a season. What'd he do his last year in Pittsburgh?

 

The percentage of catchable downfield passes Ryan Tannehill threw Mike Wallace in 2014 was higher than the percentage Ben Roethlisberger threw him in 2012.

 

...roughly the same as they were in 2012 with Ben Roethlisberger?

 

I'm always very hesitant to put much stock in receiving TDs. I don't have aggregate data on them. But I'd bet they vary quite a bit from year to year. And that's because as Ck points out with catch %, TDs are a dependent variable with a lot of things affecting it. Even for QBs, TD% and INT% can vary quite a bit from year to year. And they probably have more control over that than WRs do with their TD%.

 

I like comparing a #1 WR that sees double/triple teams, to a #4 option on a team that throws it 50 times a game... It makes total logical sense...

the truth is. no-one knows. This is a wing and a prayer attempt to justify those newly hired stats geeks in the front office. Miami's attempt at moneyball.

 

Just did a quick calculation on 10 randomly picked top WR's TD stats for seasons where they started at least 10 games. I'm generally finding the standard deviation in TD's to be around 3-3.5 TD's, meaning you can expect their TD stats to change within +- 3.5 TD's around the mean 2/3 of the time from season to season. Highest and lowest I found (of the 10 randomly picked top WR's): Randy Moss's std was over 5 TD's and Andre Johnson's was less than 2.5.

 

Catch rate has a great deal to do with how accurate the QB is with his throws. Tannehill is accurate on short to intermediate range passes, but not very accurate over 20 yards. Therefore Landry had a high catch rate because he was the main receiver on those short to intermediate passes thrown by Tannehill.

Stills happen to have played with perhaps the most accurate passer in the game today. Brees can put the ball on target whether it is a short, intermediate, or deep passes.

I think the trade for Stills was a good trade, but I won't be surprised if his catch rate percentages goes down now that he will have Tannehill throwing him the ball and not Brees. Especially if Stills is going to be the WR who will be expected to replace Wallace on the deep ball routes.

 

So that's around 20-30%, maybe more, of their total TD production from year to year?

 

Actually more. The mean for Andre Johnson was 5.4 TD, and his std was 2.32, so that's 43% for him, while for Randy Moss the mean was 11.77 and the std was 5.46, so that's 46%. In general, I'm finding that std/mean ratio is between 35-45%.

 

If Stills makes even a slight effort to go after an underthrown or overthrown (catchable) ball, we are already looking at progress at the position.

 

I like the idea that Kenny Stills is only 22 years old and still has a long career ahead of him. He has shown skills and abilities and is developing. The biggest difference in Stills and Wallace in my opinion is that Stills has better hands and that has been missing.

 

Catch rate is more strongly correlated (inversely) with distance from the quarterback than it is receiver talent. That's why I don't like the stat.

To some extent, yards per target accounts for this by reconciling the inverse relationship between catch rate and average yards per catch. This is a superior statistic to use.

 

This is going to be great when Wallace has a great year with Teddy B tossing him the rock.

 

You can only hope so.

 

It'll happen. Teddy can throw a deep ball on point.

Our guy can't throw a deep ball within 20 yards of his target.

 

You are so butthurt.

 

So about all those completions to everyone but Wallace?

 

Correct. Wallace is a great deep threat, but only when paired with the right QB.

Wallace + Roethlisberger were great.

Maybe Wallace + Bridgewater will be a great fit, and we'll see the Wallace deep-ball-in-stride again.

But Wallace + Tannehill were a terrible fit for each other. Replacing Wallace with Kenny Stills is a great move, since Kenny Stills is a much better fit for Tannehill's skillset.

NOTE: I never said that Kenny Stills is an outright better WR than Mike Wallace. I'm saying that Stills is a better MATCH for Tannehill. Tannehill + Stills wil be better than Tannehill + Wallace. That does not mean that Wallace flat out sucks. When paired with the right QB, Wallace can be an absolute terror.

 

To be a monster deep threat, Wallace requires a specific type of throw (an accurate high-arc deep ball that allows a speedster to accelerate through the ball).

Ben Roethlisberger is good at that throw. Ryan Tannehill is not.

In order for Tannehill to consistently threaten deep, he needs strong catch radius receivers who are good at ripping low trajectory contested throws out of the air, while facing the QB. An acrobatic catch radius receiver like Kenny Stills is a much better fit for Tannehill.