**Official Falcons Phins Gameday thread***

shoutout to every fin fan who takes ATL in the pts -10 this weekend should be a lock!!!!

"rafael wrote:

Agreed. It makes sense to look at career averages for a guy like Matt Ryan. He has basically been in the same system with similar players (beyond the normal personnel and coach turnover in the league). But with a younger QB like Tannehill who has had so much instability around him, it makes more common sense to look at where he was at to guess as to where he'd be now.

IMO the big issue with our passing game is timing related. While Cutler has more overall experience and as much experience in this system as Tannehill, the one experience advantage Tannehill had is familiarity with these players. He was more successful hitting those medium depth passes which kept the defense back and provided more space for the run game and screen game to work. The OL is not blocking worse than last year, IMO it's better than the last several years. The difference is that we're not threatening the same areas of the field as successfully so the defense is coming up quicker. That does provide hope that our offense may improve if Cutler and the receivers develop more chemistry. (It would be nice to hear that they were putting in extra time working together). There are other factors in that Tannehill is more accurate and tends to not bail as quickly or throw while falling back in the face of pressure as well.

So you're suggesting that the o-line is blocking well, but the opposing defenses are playing us differently than last year? I'm no expert, but it just seems that if that were the case either the passing or running offense would be better. I agree that the timing is off, and Cutler isn't as accurate as RT, but he's completed 72%, 60%, 71%, and 46%, respectively, in their first 4 games (That's a 63% average). In comparison, in RT's first 4 games last year he completed, 55%, 71%, 64%, and 60%. (63% average) So, Cutler isn't as inaccurate as some think.

The WR's are dropping too many passes. Maybe that's due to the unfamiliarity with Cutler?
None of the WR's are getting separation which makes the QB's job much harder.
Ajayi is getting hit as soon as he touched the ball. That's o-line.
Gase's play calling is horrible. However, I believe that it's due to him not trusting people to do their jobs.
I don't remember one screen play working this year. That's blocking.

"bigballa2102 wrote:

shoutout to every fin fan who takes ATL in the pts -10 this weekend should be a lock!!!!

I typically don't bet on my teams.

However, a buddy and I have been betting on NFL and college football for the past 4-5 seasons. This will be the first time I bet on a Dolphins' game. I took the Dolphins +11.5.

We bet $150-$200 per week. We each pick 6 NFL and 6 College games. You can bet either the O/U or line. The person with the better wining % wins the money.

So far this season I am 4-0-1. The week we had a push was the week where the Redskins and KC played on Monday night. It all came down to that game. He had the 'Skins +6.5. I'm not sure if anyone here saw that game, but it was AWESOME!

There was about 2:00 to go in the 4th. Score was tied at 17. KC had the ball and was driving. My buddy is giving me shit because we both know KC is now playing for the FG and thus will not cover. Anyhow, KC kicks the FG with :04 left on the clock. Score is 20-17, KC. Anyhow, KC kicks off and the Redskins try the old hook and lateral play, fumble the ball, a KC players scoops it up and runs it into the endzone for 6 points. Thus, KC wins by 9 and we both ended up 6-6 for the week. haha....

hahah that's funny I was on the better end of that kc game, as well as this one against Houston last weekend, ya I went 6 for 6 last weekend I don't see Miami even being within 2 touchdowns in this one, the saints killed us and atl is a way better offense than the saints and coming off a bye at home, but like they say on any given Sunday and usually spreads of 10+ don't ever cover. Specially this one where we have 200 yards of offense in 3 games lol its hard not to think that spread isn't going to keep going up and be pushing 13 by gametime lol

Let me just throw something out here. I know different observers see different reasons for our failings, but do you guys realize just how pathetic this offense really has been? Your normal "causes" probably don't cut it. That is, something really seriously abnormal is happening here and it's probably useful to see just how abnormal that is.

We are averaging 10.25 ppg so far. Black line is the historical NFL average ppg and the shaded region represents +- 2 standard deviations, or (approximately) 95% of all teams in that year:

Compared to recent history we are more than 3 standard deviations away from the mean. That's basically saying less than 0.13% of all NFL teams will perform at this level. Stated differently, for a 32 team league you'd have to go 25 years before expecting ONE team to perform this bad! .. over an entire year of course, which hasn't yet happened.

So keep that pathological level of ineptitude in mind when trying to think of what exactly the problems are. This is NOT your normal "we're just not clicking" offense, nor is it easy to just pin it on one unit because this is REALLY abnormal.

"danmarino wrote:

So you're suggesting that the o-line is blocking well, but the opposing defenses are playing us differently than last year? I'm no expert, but it just seems that if that were the case either the passing or running offense would be better. I agree that the timing is off, and Cutler isn't as accurate as RT, but he's completed 72%, 60%, 71%, and 46%, respectively, in their first 4 games (That's a 63% average). In comparison, in RT's first 4 games last year he completed, 55%, 71%, 64%, and 60%. (63% average) So, Cutler isn't as inaccurate as some think.

The WR's are dropping too many passes. Maybe that's due to the unfamiliarity with Cutler?
None of the WR's are getting separation which makes the QB's job much harder.
Ajayi is getting hit as soon as he touched the ball. That's o-line.
Gase's play calling is horrible. However, I believe that it's due to him not trusting people to do their jobs.
I don't remember one screen play working this year. That's blocking.

- The WR's are dropping too many passes. Maybe that's due to the unfamiliarity with Cutler? - Regardless of QB, passes have to be on time and target. I saw 2 drops against the Titans.

None of the WR's are getting separation which makes the QB's job much harder. - Timing again. They are running routes while he is back pedaling and jumping around, then he's late and throwing ducks off his back foot.

Ajayi is getting hit as soon as he touched the ball. That's o-line. - That's 8 men in the box along with poor blocking by the new TEs. The OL aren't the only blockers. Jay can't keep the defense honest.

Gase's play calling is horrible. However, I believe that it's due to him not trusting people to do their jobs. - The OL is struggling, but his QB is making things worse.

I don't remember one screen play working this year. That's blocking. - Blocking where? Again, it's not all on the 5 OLmen.

As I said before - Is Jay the only problem? No. Is he magnifying the problems? Yes. While not ALL the bad is Cutler, NONE of the good is Cutler.

Re-watch that INT play. The blocking wasn't bad. He was looking to run before he even had the ball and then threw a "Smokin' Special" to a guy in blanket coverage. That was ridiculously bad.

His best play against the Titans IMO, was the 8 yard scramble. That was a positive sign.

Maybe he'll figure it out this week. Hold your breath. ;-)

"cuchulainn wrote:

- The WR's are dropping too many passes. Maybe that's due to the unfamiliarity with Cutler? - Regardless of QB, passes have to be on time and target. I saw 2 drops against the Titans.

None of the WR's are getting separation which makes the QB's job much harder. - Timing again. They are running routes while he is back pedaling and jumping around, then he's late and throwing ducks off his back foot.

Ajayi is getting hit as soon as he touched the ball. That's o-line. - That's 8 men in the box along with poor blocking by the new TEs. The OL aren't the only blockers. Jay can't keep the defense honest.

Gase's play calling is horrible. However, I believe that it's due to him not trusting people to do their jobs. - The OL is struggling, but his QB is making things worse.

I don't remember one screen play working this year. That's blocking. - Blocking where? Again, it's not all on the 5 OLmen.

As I said before - Is Jay the only problem? No. Is he magnifying the problems? Yes. While not ALL the bad is Cutler, NONE of the good is Cutler.

Re-watch that INT play. The blocking wasn't bad. He was looking to run before he even had the ball and then threw a "Smokin' Special" to a guy in blanket coverage. That was ridiculously bad.

His best play against the Titans IMO, was the 8 yard scramble. That was a positive sign.

Maybe he'll figure it out this week. Hold your breath. ;-)

Thomas, Stills, Landry, and Gray all dropped a pass.

"danmarino wrote:

Thomas, Stills, Landry, and Gray all dropped a pass.

Pretty sure I've read this after each game. I've started trying to track passes that I consider "accurate throws" from Cutler. I mean, I read for years that Tannehill's lack of accuracy was the reason we didn't get more production from our WRs. Now, it seems that the WRs have forgotten how to catch and the OL is worse than what Tannehill had to endure. Weird.

So, how many drops does that make for each now?

I saw the ball hit Landry in the hands when he was outstretched for it and called that a drop as I've seen him make that catch easily in the past. I saw Cutler throw an off-balanced duck to Stills that he had to go to the ground and try to catch and called that a drop as he should have had it. The announcer, HOF WR Lofton, talked about the lack of accuracy and velocity from Cutler and how it affected the WRs. I saw the ball thrown low and behind Thomas, who also went to the ground trying to catch it, and I saw a ball thrown at Gray's hip, that was should have been in front of him. Are these the same plays?

Here's your WR Drop leaders. Stills is credited with 2 on the year.

- http://scores.nbcsports.com/fb/leaders.asp?type=Receiving&range=NFL&rank=232

And is it just me or....

"cbrad wrote:

Had to work with points scored in all games because sample size is way too small if I just take his time with Gase. And if we start from game 6 last year that's only 8 games so as I told Fin-O your intuition may be correct but I can't get the required granularity (error propagation though the calculations is way too great with small sample size).

However.. to get a general idea of where the calculations might go if the 8 games are truly representative, note that 6 of those 8 games Tannehill had 21 or more points, and one of the other 2 games it was only enough to beat the Titans (and the remaining one game we would have lost to the Titans). That gives you a rough idea of what the most likely result would be if the offense from last year was in place this year: we'd most likely be 3-1.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/T/TannRy00/gamelog/2016/

Sure, but if you base it on the first four games of last season (which would be more of a tit for tat comparison since we started slow both years), we scored 10, 24, 24, and 7. 65 divided by 4 is 16.25 a game, which makes us 1-3. But if you take the actual offensive scores from each match-up, we're 3-1. If you adjust for our defense's improvement over 2016, we're 0-4 (scoring 16.25 a game and giving up 16.75).

My point is that you can spin those stats a lot of ways to show we're on par, playing great, below average or whatever you want. It's too small of a sample size to determine what Tannehill may or may not do.

Here's a little bonus though- if Matt Moore started the last four and we play the same game with his only four games last season, we're 4-0 in almost every scenario. Since most of you would agree that RT is better than Moore, it shows that this particular analysis is rather pointless.

"KeyFin wrote:

Sure, but if you base it on the first four games of last season (which would be more of a tit for tat comparison since we started slow both years), we scored 10, 24, 24, and 7. 65 divided by 4 is 16.25 a game, which makes us 1-3. But if you take the actual offensive scores from each match-up, we're 3-1. If you adjust for our defense's improvement over 2016, we're 0-4 (scoring 16.25 a game and giving up 16.75).

My point is that you can spin those stats a lot of ways to show we're on par, playing great, below average or whatever you want. It's too small of a sample size to determine what Tannehill may or may not do.

Here's a little bonus though- if Matt Moore started the last four and we play the same game with his only four games last season, we're 4-0 in almost every scenario. Since most of you would agree that RT is better than Moore, it shows that this particular analysis is rather pointless.

There's no way to spin the results if you do the calculations correctly. All you can say with small sample size is that the results you obtained are unreliable. Let me explain how to do the calculations correctly and you'll see what I mean.

In post #12, using the 77 games Tannehill started, I said that 46.75% of his games at least 21 points were scored, 57.14% of his games at least 18 points were scored and 87% of his games at least 11 points were scored.

OK, now remember that this season we gave up 17, 20, 20 and 10 points, in that order. So, looking at only one game at a time, let's say the probability of winning game 1 is P1 = 0.5714 (getting rid of the % sign means dividing by 100), the probability of winning game 2 is P2 = 0.4675, and of course P3 = 0.4675 and P4 = 0.87.

So.. let's explicitly do two calculations: the probability of winning precisely 4 games, and the probability of winning precisely 3 games. The probability of winning precisely 4 is simply P1*P2*P3*P4 = 10.87% as stated in post #12.

The probability of winning precisely 3 games requires a bit more thought. There are 4 possible ways to win precisely 3 games: either win games 1,2,3 and lose game 4 OR win games 1,2,4 and lose game 3 OR win games 1,3,4 and lose game 2 OR lose game 1 and win games 2,3,4.

OK? So what is the probability of that first possibility: win games 1,2,3 and lose game 4? It's simply P1*P2*P3*(1-P4) because (1-P4) represents the probability of losing (technically: not winning) game 4.

In probability theory, the word "OR" means "addition", while an "AND" means "multiplication", at least if events are all independent of each other which we can assume here.

So the probability of winning precisely 3 games is: P1*P2*P3*(1-P4) + P1*P2*(1-P3)*P4 + P1*(1-P2)*P3*P4 + (1-P1)*P2*P3*P4 = 34.53% as shown in post #12.

As you can see, there is only ONE way to do the calculations (correctly) so you can't spin this. Sample size comes into play because you have to estimate the distribution from which you get these probabilities, and the smaller the sample size the greater the potential error in your estimates of P1, P2, P3 or P4, and those errors propagate through the calculations. That's what I was referring to in posts #14 and #18.

But you can't spin the results. All you can say is the results are unreliable with small sample size. That's also why I said in post #18 that IF the small sample size was truly representative, then you'd most likely get 3-1 in the situation described.

"cbrad wrote:

There's no way to spin the results if you do the calculations correctly. All you can say with small sample size is that the results you obtained are unreliable. Let me explain how to do the calculations correctly and you'll see what I mean.

In post #12, using the 77 games Tannehill started, I said that 46.75% of his games at least 21 points were scored, 57.14% of his games at least 18 points were scored and 87% of his games at least 11 points were scored.

OK, now remember that this season we gave up 17, 20, 20 and 10 points, in that order. So, looking at only one game at a time, let's say the probability of winning game 1 is P1 = 0.5714 (getting rid of the % sign means dividing by 100), the probability of winning game 2 is P2 = 0.4675, and of course P3 = 0.4675 and P4 = 0.87.

So.. let's explicitly do two calculations: the probability of winning precisely 4 games, and the probability of winning precisely 3 games. The probability of winning precisely 4 is simply P1*P2*P3*P4 = 10.87% as stated in post #12.

The probability of winning precisely 3 games requires a bit more thought. There are 4 possible ways to win precisely 3 games: either win games 1,2,3 and lose game 4 OR win games 1,2,4 and lose game 3 OR win games 1,3,4 and lose game 2 OR lose game 1 and win games 2,3,4.

OK? So what is the probability of that first possibility: win games 1,2,3 and lose game 4? It's simply P1*P2*P3*(1-P4) because (1-P4) represents the probability of losing (technically: not winning) game 4.

In probability theory, the word "OR" means "addition", while an "AND" means "multiplication", at least if events are all independent of each other which we can assume here.

So the probability of winning precisely 3 games is: P1*P2*P3*(1-P4) + P1*P2*(1-P3)*P4 + P1*(1-P2)*P3*P4 + (1-P1)*P2*P3*P4 = 34.53% as shown in post #12.

As you can see, there is only ONE way to do the calculations (correctly) so you can't spin this. Sample size comes into play because you have to estimate the distribution from which you get these probabilities, and the smaller the sample size the greater the potential error in your estimates of P1, P2, P3 or P4, and those errors propagate through the calculations. That's what I was referring to in posts #14 and #18.

But you can't spin the results. All you can say is the results are unreliable with small sample size. That's also why I said in post #18 that IF the small sample size was truly representative, then you'd most likely get 3-1 in the situation described.

Okay, but you used one base factor- Tannehill's 77 games under three different coaches, in three different offensive systems, and with three different primary receivers. In a portion of those scenarios, he was told to never leave the pocket. In a portion, he was told to scramble. And in the final portion, he was told to scramble and advance the ball if he saw certain things. So it's safe to say that the 2013 RT was a lot different from the 2016 version- but what do you use to accurately predict how he'd play in the first four games of 2017?

I don't think the 77 games represents that number.

As others have said, maybe you need to base things off the last 8 games only when the line was playing good, Parker was involved and Ajayi was hitting his stride. But is that the line we've had on the field for the past month? Nope. Maybe you go with the first four games like I did- but that's just as biased as using the eight game streak.

Even then, that's not objective in itself because there are so many additional factors we haven't mentioned- abandoning your home with a baby there, travelling thousands of miles, practicing away from home, the Timmons distraction, the kneeling distraction, etc. There are just too many variables to predict a reliable set of compatible games....and we haven't even talked about opponents yet.

I'm not knocking your math though- I'm knocking your baseline as being taken for a given when it's clearly not. I believe you showed us a stat the other week of the percentage of playoff teams that return to the post-season- that alone says we can't accurately predict 2017 off of 2016 numbers. And with the insane schedule we've had, nothing accurately compares to the last four weeks.

"KeyFin wrote:

Okay, but you used one base factor- Tannehill's 77 games under three different coaches, in three different offensive systems, and with three different primary receivers. In a portion of those scenarios, he was told to never leave the pocket. In a portion, he was told to scramble. And in the final portion, he was told to scramble and advance the ball if he saw certain things. So it's safe to say that the 2013 RT was a lot different from the 2016 version- but what do you use to accurately predict how he'd play in the first four games of 2017?

I don't think the 77 games represents that number.

As others have said, maybe you need to base things off the last 8 games only when the line was playing good, Parker was involved and Ajayi was hitting his stride. But is that the line we've had on the field for the past month? Nope. Maybe you go with the first four games like I did- but that's just as biased as using the eight game streak.

Even then, that's not objective in itself because there are so many additional factors we haven't mentioned- abandoning your home with a baby there, travelling thousands of miles, practicing away from home, the Timmons distraction, the kneeling distraction, etc. There are just too many variables to predict a reliable set of compatible games....and we haven't even talked about opponents yet.

I'm not knocking your math though- I'm knocking your baseline as being taken for a given when it's clearly not. I believe you showed us a stat the other week of the percentage of playoff teams that return to the post-season- that alone says we can't accurately predict 2017 off of 2016 numbers. And with the insane schedule we've had, nothing accurately compares to the last four weeks.

Yeah that's basically what cuchulainn said in post #19, and as you see I didn't disagree.

Let me summarize: there's no "best" approach here. Either you use large enough sample size but make yourself vulnerable to the critique that conditions probably changed (note that we'd only know for sure after Tannehill played enough years under Gase), or you pick the condition you'd prefer (say from game 6 onwards last year) but then run into sample size issues.

The calculations were still worth doing, at least for me, because I had no intuition for what to expect either way.

"cbrad wrote:

The calculations were still worth doing, at least for me, because I had no intuition for what to expect either way.

You always try to be as objective as possible- I realize that. But very few here (myself included) stay objective with our posts...we defend our numerous viewpoints whenever possible. Me pointing out that the calculations didn't work was not a knock on you at all- it was merely saying that there's no factual evidence of how good/bad Tannehill would have done.

I personally think we would have been 3-1 or even 4-0, but that's based on gut intuition alone.

"KeyFin wrote:

You always try to be as objective as possible- I realize that. But very few here (myself included) stay objective with our posts...we defend our numerous viewpoints whenever possible. Me pointing out that the calculations didn't work was not a knock on you at all- it was merely saying that there's no factual evidence of how good/bad Tannehill would have done.

I personally think we would have been 3-1 or even 4-0, but that's based on gut intuition alone.

Not to mention being able to score. Take away the garbage TD in the closing ticks of the jets game and we're scoring 7 ppg on offense. Cleo Lemon did more, better, than what we've seen from Cutler.

They say that defense wins football games, well I believe we finally have a great defense, sure the offence is still not close to what anyone expected but if you remember that the slow start year Miami surprised everyone even themselves after start 1-4 they made the playoffs with such a terrible defence! Losing RT changed everything he showed how well he can play on coach Gase' system.
If cutler can stay INT free and we can at least run the ball explosive like last year we can show we can once again play with anyone. It happened last year after 4 games why not now as well?

mods please merge

"Canadianphinfan wrote:

They say that defense wins football games, well I believe we finally have a great defense, sure the offence is still not close to what anyone expected but if you remember that the slow start year Miami surprised everyone even themselves after start 1-4 they made the playoffs with such a terrible defence! Losing RT changed everything he showed how well he can play on coach Gase' system.
If cutler can stay INT free and we can at least run the ball explosive like last year we can show we can once again play with anyone. It happened last year after 4 games why not now as well?

For a defense to win games you need:

1) a dominant, not just good, defense... and it has to score points

2) good special teams (esp. punter)

3) the O has to at least eat up some T.O.P. to keep the D rested

bump this

"dirtylandry wrote:

bump this

Talk about being petty and pathetic.