Is Ryan Tannehill the long term solution at QB?

It's not a QB stat for ANY QB.

I'm still surprised that Henne didn't pan out for someone. I think our coaching staff ruined him.

 

I dare say that the reason why we keep having discussions like this thread is because Philbin, Sherman, and Taylor didn't do themselves any favors with regards to Tannehill's development.

 

This is where I think you're wrong. W/L on its own isn't that great (no QB stat is), but compared to other traditional QB stats it's on the better side. Look at the W/L record all-time of QB's (for QB's that started enough games) and you get a list that will correlate pretty well with intuitive measures (of course there will be some like Bradshaw that don't belong near the top but that's why we're talking about a correlation). Over time, it's about as good as Y/A or passer rating.

 

But without comparing teams of those QBs to teams of QBs who don't win alot, you're not really learning anything.

Correlation does not equal causation.

 

Yeah let's talk about the differences in the types of stats. If you want to talk about efficiency of a QB, I'd use Y/A and dismiss W/L record because Y/A gets more directly at that. If you want to talk about the aggregate effect of all kinds of hard to measure ways in which the QB influences the success/failure of a team, I'd use W/L record instead of Y/A.

These stats are similar over time in "ranking" QB's, but for different reasons. You are definitely right about W/L not telling you the causal factors behind the outcome.

 

Have any of you actually considered the effect of a QB coach on a QB? You know, the guy responsible for prepping our QB's each week. Do some digging into our QB coach. It might lead you to something interesting... That will, or should help put some things into perspective.

 

Sigh.

Can't the same be said about coaches?

 

The hardest to quantify influences are those of the coaches. I don't think anyone dismisses influence of the coaches, it's just that it's really hard to point to stats to make an argument. And considering how hard it is for experts to predict how good a coach will be in a new situation, I'm not sure what you really should go by.

 

The only thing you can really judge a QB on, are physical things...like, did he put the ball where it needed to be. Did he throw the ball with enough arc. Stuff like that. Y/A still requires a receiver to catch a ball.

 

I agree, but there's no way to measure those things without a significant amount of subjectivity creeping in. Since stats are clearly useful, it's still worth considering when which types of stats can help estimate how good a player is.

 

Is it? I'm not so sure of that. However, that's kind of the point. Stats are misleading you all. Start looking at the plays, start looking at the decisions made by the player. Are you seeing mental mistakes? By all accounts, Ryan is intelligent. By all accounts, our QB coach was married to the former OC's(who was friends with the now former HC) daughter, and was completely unqualified for the job.

So, if our offense looks a bit lost at times, and the decisions look a bit off from the QB at times, even when his reaction after a INT is confused... does that not make you think he may not be as properly prepared as he should be to play? That's what your QB coach is there for. To help them breakdown film, understand the looks they might see, you know... prep them to execute the gameplan. Sure you could make the case that Zac Taylor is the best QB coach ever and Tannehill just sucks and is dumb as a post. However the information we have on that situation is the opposite.

All QB's are going to make bad decisions during a game, sometimes they just get fooled due to playing a good defense etc. Sometimes, they just aren't prepared for things. That's what your positions coaches are there for.

Just food for thought..

 

Stats aren't clearly useful. Not at all. They don't take everything into consideration.

You can look at Tannehill's Houston performance and go, man, he was lights out. Yes, his throws were great and on target, his decisions were right, but there were a lot of defensive breakdowns by Houston, poor tackling/angles, that lead to a lot of big plays. 18/19 is impressive all day long, no doubt. Not a lot of high difficulty throws there either though.

Then you can look at Tannehills NE performance. If Matthews runs a better/the right route on one, probably two pass plays, and if the officials properly call a NE penalty for Stills being essentially tackled, we're not starting at 0TD's and 2 INT's on Ryans line...

So, how usefull are those stats? Not very..

 

Stats are useful. You get objectivity and trends over time you'd otherwise miss/forget, even if the data you apply statistical analysis to is impoverished relative to what a human observer sees. And psychology is full of examples of people coming to incorrect conclusions given data, even in sports. All kinds of biases exist that you can get rid of with stats.

 

I think the no-call on the Stills play was correct, and Tannehill's numbers weren't great anyway, but the larger point is that you're looking at an individual game. Statistics become more meaningful the larger the sample size. Stats may not definitively tell you whether someone had a good game, but they've got an excellent chance of telling you whether someone had a good season, and a really high probability of telling you whether someone had a good career.

 

Yet somehow you diminish the W/L column as if it's not somehow indicative of the worth of a QB... You can't have it both ways.


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And the stats tell us that we've had average or below average play, consistently, from most of the team. Blocking, receivers, defense (in several areas), special teams, and coaching. Even quarterback. The question is, how much do those other areas affect Tannehill, or a developing QB in general? Those who dislike Tannehill will argue that those things aren't really affecting Tannehill a whole lot. Those of us who think that Tannehill can still be very good will argue that those things have affected him immensely.

 

How much importance are we really giving it? It's not SOLELY a QB stat. We're saying QB is the biggest factor on offense, therefore they heavily impact the W/L column. Tannehill hasn't threaded the needle for nearly 4 seasons and he won't for a fifth season.

So do you think any QB heavily influences the W/L column? Do you think Tannehill couldn't have helped to get more wins all other things constant on our team? Because if you don't think so, that would mean he's been just as good as any other QB we rank above him.


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Oh wow. This is very telling.


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Thank you. There IS a pattern. Literally only two or three guys in this thread believe anything other than this.


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These types of conversations really confuse me because I don't understand why anyone would watch a game, form an opinion, and the look at a stat sheet to figure out what really happened. Stats are all but meaningless because they don't tell you anything about what actually happened on the football field. Dropped passes, spectacular plays, defenders falling down...none of that makes it into a stat line, but it's also the reason we love the game so much. For example, Big Ben put up a QB rating of 22.6 in Super Bowl XL AND THE STEELERS WON THE GAME! And the only way that's remotely possible is if the numbers lie.

Folks, if you want to know how good or bad Ryan Tannehill is, then throw away all those statistics in your head and just watch some film. Here's what to look for-

- Is he properly reading the defense before he snaps the ball?
- Is he seeing the 1:1 coverage and giving his team the best possible chance of getting a completion?
- Is he making the proper reads once the ball is snapped? Is he escaping pressure while scanning the field?
- Is he throwing accurate passes? Is he putting enough velocity on the ball?
- Is he locking onto receivers? Do defenders struggle to read his intentions?
- Is his receivers getting yards after the catch? Are throws properly placed or is it receivers making plays?
- How does he respond to a bad throw or a negative play? How does he interact with his teammates?
- How does he respond in 2 minute offenses when the game is on the line?
- Does he earn the win in close games?

This is the stuff that ultimately makes a franchise quarterback. The numbers can't tell you that story though, only your eyes can on game-day by watching closely and forming your own opinions.

I have to make one other point though and this is BIG ONE. Some folks here have said that wins are not a good indicator of QB talent....that's plain baloney folks. If the Fins win the Super Bowl this season with Tannehill putting up a 22.6 QB rating in the big game, are you going to complain? Heck no...Pittsburgh didn't either and Big Ben is still their quarterback. That's because the ONLY STATISTIC that matters is the win or the loss, and it really doesn't matter how good/bad your QB looks...as long as he can secure that W. For example, look at some of Favre's tapes with Green Bay....he probably threw 10 horrible passes per game and he got picked off more than any of the "greats". But it didn't matter; he took chances to win and made up for it when he screwed up. That's what a good QB does....he wins. The rest of the stuff does not matter one bit.

 

It's the OL, the WRs, the HC, OC, GM, the DC, the owner and the QB coach now. Unbelievable. Anybody else? The DB coach that didn't coach up guys good enough to get the ball back to Tannehill every down on defense?

We're not even placing any blame on our QB at this point.


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Trade Tannehill to Cleveland for Johnny Manziel straight up

 

Yet another single, extreme example. Matt Ryan sucks and lost to the Bucs because he threw an INT in the red zone! Nanny nanny poopoo! Yet he threw for 397 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT.

How many games are there where each QB throws 6 or 7 TDs? What was it, the 4th highest scoring game ever?

Plus there ARE factors other than the W/L column in the regular season. The post season too. His brother Peyton is a great example. How about all the QB measuring stats like Passer Rating and QBR? GWD?

Stop posting single games and try to find a trend to report on. Otherwise they're just drops in a bucket.


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Just keep something in mind.. all these criticisms about stats using impoverished data are perfectly valid, but they're perfectly valid for EVERY application of statistics.

To be consistent, you better have the same opinion about stats being useless in baseball, in tracking the effectiveness of treatments in medicine, in determining the probability of an event occurring (a missile launch, crime in a neighborhood, congestion in traffic, etc..).

To say stats are useless because they use impoverished data is putting us back into the 18th century.

 

Are you trying to say statistics don't give a good picture of a given situation over a period of time?

I'm completely okay with saying don't take statistics at face value. I made that argument against resnor with the GB vs DEN play by play.

But you have to admit that statistics give a good picture of how good a QB is over time. Eli has never exploded in the regular season. Flacco either. Just like how Peyton has always been a monster regular season QB with the exception of his, what, rookie season and now? Too young and inexperienced, too old.


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Yes you can and I explained how.

 

By deflecting to every other position on the field and every front office guy and coach?

No, sorry. Gotta learn to critique QBs. Tannehill doesn't do the best he could do given his surroundings.

Apparently I believe in him more than you do since you don't believe he could've done better. You don't believe he could've gotten us to more wins. I do and that's why I criticize him. I'm sure all his coaches do. He knows he's not good enough YET, why don't you acknowledge that?


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A QB can do everything he's supposed to and still lose the game. With your logic, that doesn't matter. That makes your logic wrong.

 

Stop.

Don't tell me I gotta learn how to critique a QB then keep shoving W/L record as a QB stat down my throat.

 

I never said that doesn't happen. Quote me on it. And like I said, on average that almost never happens. You're just gonna make excuses all the time like resnor, aren't you? You can't judge Tannehill unless everything is much better than it is. You don't believe he could do better with the same team. You don't believe he could improve unless he has a better team. Okay, fine.


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That's only ONE thing I've said LOL. Wow man, you are something else.


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Okay, since somebody can't acknowledge everything I've said about Tannehill and my views are being misrepresented AGAIN, I guess I'm going to have to make it clear.

Tannehill doesn't complement the offense the way I KNOW he can. The way I KNOW he could make us a winning team.

He rarely ever scrambles. He doesn't have good pocket presence. Other QBs with worse OLs do this (Wilson and Brady are two examples that come to mind).

He doesn't get the ball down the field far enough to scare defenses and make them back off. That's why his YPA is so low. That's why we have WRs that get more YAC because, while he's accurate, he can't make a lot of big plays.

He takes more sacks than he should. He needs to learn to throw the damn ball away. Yes, the OL needs to improve, but he doesn't have to lose a bunch of yards every time he takes a sack.

I don't know if it's on him or his coaches don't trust him when they should but he doesn't have the ability to fully audible to a totally different play. Only to run plays from pass plays and vice versa.

That's about it. I think it's fair and it can be backed up by game tape over the course of his career, not just a few games.

Edit: if he improved on those things, we would have more Ws and less Ls. We probably would've gone to at least one wild card by now too. That year when San Diego went pissed me off.


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Guys, we're not talking about baseball, Russian troop movements, virus outbreaks or the stock market here....we're talking about Ryan Tannehill and NFL quarterbacks. And the raw statistical data alone does not tell anywhere near of a complete story to make a valid argument. It just doesn't.

But hey....feel free to prove me wrong. You have four years of data on Ryan Tannehill...six if you count his college years at QB. So take all of that combined data, that massive resource of infallible information, and let me know TODAY how many TD passes Tannehill will throw against the Bills this Sunday. Or how many times he will be sacked. Or his completion percentage. Or total yards. Or....let's give you some even easier ones. How many receivers he will throw to on the day? How far from the line of scrimmage will he throw his first pass? Just remember, you need to use ONLY STATISTICS and show your complete work in answering any of the above questions, because statistics does not allow any room for guessing.

Just pick one of those things and use your statistics to properly gauge what kind of day Tannehill will have, and I'll never doubt statistics again. But since you can't, the statistics are garbage for this particular conversation. They just don't tell enough of the story to have a clear indicator on who Tannehill is as a quarterback.

 

Omg wth?? You think statistics aren't worth anything because you can't predict exactly what will happen during a single game???


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as a side tangent, i find it interesting that people on colts forums are having this same discussion about andrew luck, and the discussions end up in the same two sides as people here have about tannehill. It just seems to boil down to overall frustration with the teams.

 

What you don't get is it's no different for most applications people would say stats are vital for. The kind of statistical data you might get from a typical patient is nowhere near enough to tell the full story. Same for stats in economics, etc..

First of all, no human can make those predictions accurately, so should we dismiss all non-statistical analysis too by that standard?

Second of all, in statistics everything is probabilistic if you want predictions. So you can't determine how good a model is by testing it on ONE occasion. What statistics does allow you to do is to quantify the frequency with which something occurs, in a particular situation. If that situation is "number of TD passes starting NFL QB's throw against a top 10 pass defense", then you can compare how many TD's Tannehill throws against that distribution and determine how far above or below average he is. None of that you can do in a quantitative or objective way without stats.

I hope you at least see stats are useful with that. If not.. maybe there's nothing more to discuss on the subject anyway.

 

Why is this so hard to grasp? Why are people accusing others of never laying any blame on Tannehill? All we've done, is tell people that it's not ALL on Tannehill. Whether it was the deep ball issue with Wallace, or pocket presence, or wins, or making the playoffs, or ypa, or any of it, the argument we've given is that IT'S NOT ALL ON TANNEHILL. NOT, NONE of it is on Tannehill. The problem is, we constantly are arguing people's points where they try to put it all on Tannehill, so our point gets lost in that argument. Yes, Tannehill could play better. However, Tannehill hasn't been the one playing the worst. It's like having a car with a blown transmission, and you're yelling at the mechanic to get the psi up in the tires.

 

I didn't say you said it. I said that's what your logic is.