Ryan Tannehill

"Fin D wrote:

Was the Eagles offense better than Patriots offense or was the Eagles defense better than Patriots defense? Because again, the Eagles defense may have been statistically worse than Pats offense in the season and playoffs, but just so happened to be good enough at the one weakness the Pats had. You don't know without tape because stats won't tell you that.

The tape won't tell you that either. At least no human can answer that question. All they will have are opinions, nothing else.

More importantly, playing the devil's advocate gets you nowhere. Almost all the technology you see around you is due to some application of statistics or modeling of a physical system where tons of approximations are made and we do NOT know the underlying cause-effect relationships – no different than here. What's important to is to find the BEST measure you can think of for something and not wait for a "perfect" understanding of the system that may never come.

And in this case that's points scored and points allowed. And based on those measures defense wins championships is a myth.

"Mcduffie81 wrote:

I know you’re not stupid.

I agree he wasn’t the best at getting out of trouble. But you did say multiple times that Tannehill has a “fatal flaw”. I don’t agree with that at all. And much of that bad stigma comes from dealing with those Jets, Bills and Pats defenses with crap “game plans”.

Yes I did say that..and it’s what I keep referring to, I just feel it’s gonna always resurface..It happens when you don’t trust the player under certain conditions.

"cbrad wrote:

All those confounds exist in the regular season. So GIVEN those confounds what is the result is what is being asked here. You don't need to know all the cause-effect relationships to estimate something statistically.

Besides.. it's not like I'm the only one using points scored and allowed to argue this specific point. Remember last year's SB? Yeah.. a bunch of people used ONLY the 13-3 score to once again say defense wins championships is true, ignoring of course all other SB's. And Carmen (our X's and O's expert here) has in the past said that points scored and points allowed is the most important measure of offense and defense (he's right about that btw.. correlations to win% show that).

Can't just cherry pick and use those stats when it supports an argument. Have to live with the consequences of using such stats.

btw.. there is NO ONE that can actually answer the types of questions you are posing. People can have opinions, but don't be fooled into thinking any tape watcher or "expert" can tell you what percentage of the success of any play was due to X, Y or Z. NO ONE can do that.

Points allowed, turnovers, and 3rd down percentage rate. Next would be special teams effectiveness in the field position battle. Offense can pick it up from there.

"Carmen Cygni wrote:

That defensive play sealed the game. Much like Malcom Butler's INT vs Wilson in SB XLIX.

It wasn't cherry picking, it was the cherry on top.

Though, speaking of cherry picking, you chose a mere two examples out of 53.

And while speaking of defense wins championships, it's a postseason accomplishment, not specifically the SB itself.

I looked at ALL playoff games, you didn't. The results are true for both playoffs in general AND the SB.

Be honest. If you had to argue offense wins championships you could easily come up with as many examples as arguing defense wins championships. Just live with the data dude.. there's nothing wrong with modifying a pre-held belief when it's contradicted by data.

"FinFaninBuffalo wrote:

But, if you are not practicing that during the week, what is the likelihood that it would be successful? What would the receivers do if the team is not planning for and practicing those plays during the week? How is there a chance in hell that it would be successful? I know it sounds good, but really? I think you are projecting success (by watching other teams that incorporate it as part of their game plan) that is just not likely in the scenario where the QB is being coached to stay in the pocket and the receivers and OL are expecting it.

I think you are over analyzing the trait, it should be an instinctual thing..not a very difficult concept to understand either..hey if the run game, and the oline, and the coaches understand his weakness and they can mitigate that, roll him left, roll him right, multiple times a game, just get him outside the pocket in a few of those third downs, then maybe he can overcome it.

"cbrad wrote:

The tape won't tell you that either. At least no human can answer that question. All they will have are opinions, nothing else.

More importantly, playing the devil's advocate gets you nowhere. Almost all the technology you see around you is due to some application of statistics or modeling of a physical system where tons of approximations are made and we do NOT know the underlying cause-effect relationships – no different than here. What's important to is to find the BEST measure you can think of for something and not wait for a "perfect" understanding of the system that may never come.

And in this case that's points scored and points allowed. And based on those measures defense wins championships is a myth.

Too simple, vague, and meaningless in the reality of the game and it's constant ongoing adjustments and occurrences. We all want simple definitive answers, but such cannot be had thru the view of simplistic numbers.

"cbrad wrote:

I looked at ALL playoff games, you didn't. The results are true for both playoffs in general AND the SB.

Be honest. If you had to argue offense wins championships you could easily come up with as many examples as arguing defense wins championships. Just live with the data dude.. there's nothing wrong with modifying a pre-held belief when it's contradicted by data.

LOL, such BS. You simply looked at statistics. Such of which are not even remotely capable of determining the actual occurrences and circumstances that determine the outcome of a football game.

"Carmen Cygni wrote:

Too simple, vague, and meaningless in the reality of the game and it's constant ongoing adjustments and occurrences. We all want simple definitive answers, but such cannot be had thru the view of simplistic numbers.

It's simple yes, but not meaningless. It's not what would be expected if your hypothesis is "defense wins championships".

"Carmen Cygni wrote:

LOL, such BS. You simply looked at statistics. Such of which are not even remotely capable of determining the actual occurrences and circumstances that determine the outcome of a football game.

Again.. if defense wins championships were really true, then you'd have to find a way to explain all the way above average offensive production of playoff winners and SB winners. Tall order, especially since humans tend to have a bad intuition for in-game win probability. Note how you argued the Philly SB: you looked at one moment in the game. It doesn't matter if it was the "cherry on top", what matters is that all the other plays in the game MATTER, and humans (including you and me) don't know how to intuit their effect.

"The_Dark_Knight wrote:

Tennessee's OL is REALLY going to have to show for this game. They're going to have to get those running lanes opened for Henry and give Tannehill adequate protection to be able to get GOOD throws downfield. Harbaugh has the playoff experience and is not taking this game lightly and the Titans are going to have their hands full.

With that being said though, Tennessee needs to be who they are...a powerhouse running game, keeping their defense honest and exploiting the lack of coverage in the secondary when its there.

If Tannehill's league-high regular season passer rating is truly an indication of his individual ability, there's no reason why he shouldn't be expected to drive the bus on Tennessee's performance against the Ravens. You can't tout his league-high regular season passer rating as an indication of something special about him and then when the going gets tough insist that his surroundings drive the bus on his and the team's performance.

If the Ravens were playing against the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, you'd certainly expect Patrick Mahomes to have one of his individually stellar games to give the Chiefs the best chance to win. No reason why you shouldn't expect that from the player with the league-high regular season passer rating, if that's truly an indication of his ability.

"Carmen Cygni wrote:

I liked Peas; good defensive mind. Peas also had excellent coverage schemes as I also enjoyed watching his disciplined secondary, but his problems arose bc he wasn't bold enough to trust it and bring pressure. A defense can only maintain sound coverage for so long before it breaks down and the offense improvises and finds holes (which every defensive call has).

He actually brings the heat, but Titans have no good pass rusher. At times they use Logan Ryan.

"cbrad wrote:

It's simple yes, but not meaningless. It's not what would be expected if your hypothesis is "defense wins championships".

Again.. if defense wins championships were really true, then you'd have to find a way to explain all the way above average offensive production of playoff winners and SB winners. Tall order, especially since humans tend to have a bad intuition for in-game win probability. Note how you argued the Philly SB: you looked at one moment in the game. It doesn't matter if it was the "cherry on top", what matters is that all the other plays in the game MATTER, and humans (including you and me) don't know how to intuit their effect.

Defense gets you to the dance, offense has proven to win SBs.

Just look at the recent SB games the last ten years.

Did someone REALLY just use an example of "defense wins championships" on a game said defense allowed 33 points (most ever to still win) gave up a record 613 total yards, the Patriots NEVER punted once, and gave up a record 42 first downs as an indicator that defense wins championships is about as funny as a comparison as I have ever seen.

Carry on though, I'll be over here chuckling.

"cbrad wrote:

The tape won't tell you that either. At least no human can answer that question. All they will have are opinions, nothing else.

More importantly, playing the devil's advocate gets you nowhere. Almost all the technology you see around you is due to some application of statistics or modeling of a physical system where tons of approximations are made and we do NOT know the underlying cause-effect relationships – no different than here. What's important to is to find the BEST measure you can think of for something and not wait for a "perfect" understanding of the system that may never come.

And in this case that's points scored and points allowed. And based on those measures defense wins championships is a myth.

Sure it will....or can. It may not always be inconclusive, but knowing what your seeing on the field can certainly tell you if the offense or the defense is the reason for one team scoring more points than the other.

Again, your approach removes context. An incomplete pass, in your approach shows up as a QB error and unless you watch the game you don't know if it was a WR error or good defense or the line didn't hold when it should have or the right play was called on defense or....

Your entire approach, if whittled down to it's logical foundation is built on a notion that the offense's success is entirely independent of the defense it is playing against.

"PhinFan1968 wrote:

Bro...that defense is legit. Why can't they just do exactly like NE's defense did, trusting their offense to do better on their side (as it no doubt will)? I'm sure they'd be happy to give up 2 TD drives knowing they're gonna get 4+. This one just feels like such a blowout...the line is 10 / 9.5 on this one. Gonna be fugly.

One other thing, these "underdog" defenses need to stop dropping gimme INTs. They're far too rare in the playoffs to just let 'em go (Titans and Texans both). Texans dropped 2-3 gimmes, Titans dropped 1 (REALLY rare from Brady).

I'm not sure they will want to mimic NE's game plan. That game plan would also greatly reduce the number of times their offense gets the ball. IF the game goes into a ground grind and neither team exceeds 30 points base purely off of how many touches they each get, it becomes a little more likely that the Titans could win the game.

They have an aggressive defense and they will live with giving up a quick score or two if it means their offense can feast. That's my prediction at least.

"Cashvillesent wrote:

He actually brings the heat, but Titans have no good pass rusher. At times they use Logan Ryan.

Titans blitz percentage (24.9%) is among the bottom 10 in the league. Pees has the same mentality and weaknesses he displayed in Baltimore.

"The Guy wrote:

If Tannehill's league-high regular season passer rating is truly an indication of his individual ability,

It's not. Passer rating is the culmination of the passing offense as a whole, it has nothing to do with a single player.

"The Guy wrote:

If the Ravens were playing against the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, you'd certainly expect Patrick Mahomes to have one of his individually stellar games to give the Chiefs the best chance to win.

I'd expect Mahomes to be rattled at times and his inaccuracies to come to surface against a very good defense like the Ravens pose.

And again, there are no individual performances to be had in football. Every player is reliant on the unit they play within, and ultimately the team itself.

"Fin D wrote:

Sure it will....or can. It may not always be inconclusive, but knowing what your seeing on the field can certainly tell you if the offense or the defense is the reason for one team scoring more points than the other.

Only in theory. Never seen anyone in practice demonstrate they can do that using a method that's replicable by others.

"Fin D wrote:

Your entire approach, if whittled down to it's logical foundation is built on a notion that the offense's success is entirely independent of the defense it is playing against.

Absolutely untrue. Using points means you're assuming everything that matters for scoring points matters because it's the effect of all possible causal mechanisms on what matters for winning: point differential.

"Phins_to_Win wrote:

I'm not sure they will want to mimic NE's game plan. That game plan would also greatly reduce the number of times their offense gets the ball. IF the game goes into a ground grind and neither team exceeds 30 points base purely off of how many touches they each get, it becomes a little more likely that the Titans could win the game.

They have an aggressive defense and they will live with giving up a quick score or two if it means their offense can feast. That's my prediction at least.

Both teams typically use a ground grind on offense, though of course Baltimore uses its running quarterback as part of that game plan. We're dealing with the teams here that had the fewest and second-fewest pass attempts in the league in 2019. Neither team likes to feature the pass with its quarterback.

"cbrad wrote:

Only in theory. Never seen anyone in practice demonstrate they can do that using a method that's replicable by others.

What do you think coaches do?

"cbrad wrote:

Absolutely untrue. Using points means you're assuming everything that matters for scoring points matters because it's the effect of all possible causal mechanisms on what matters for winning: point differential.

No, it's true. Again, you cannot tell at if the team played bad defense or good offense by point differential. You have no idea. Watching tape can tell you that.

"Carmen Cygni wrote:

Someone chose a couple games to fit their agenda, so I helped spread the silliness.

It was in jest as you singled out only a few SB's. The term refers to regular and postseason play and certainly not just a SB performance alone.

Dude.. I'm the one that looked at ALL games, both all regular season, playoff and SB's. The way you keep repeating "defense wins championships" left NO room for saying it's not true in some cases, which is why I asked about specific games.

It's actually refreshing that you're implicitly agreeing it's not true for the Philly game. Why? Because you looked at the stats? There's no way you remember every play in there.

Point is, you don't have a method here you can share with us, and you've provided NO evidence to back up your claim. So far your debating strategy is to just dismiss any claim contradicting yours without providing any evidence.

"Fin D wrote:

What do you think coaches do?

No, it's true. Again, you cannot tell at if the team played bad defense or good offense by point differential. You have no idea. Watching tape can tell you that.

You're just making claims without evidence. Show us a method if you want to prove otherwise. NO ONE can solve that problem.

"The Guy wrote:

If Tannehill's league-high regular season passer rating is truly an indication of his individual ability, there's no reason why he shouldn't be expected to drive the bus on Tennessee's performance against the Ravens. You can't tout his league-high regular season passer rating as an indication of something special about him and then when the going gets tough insist that his surroundings drive the bus on his and the team's performance.

If the Ravens were playing against the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, you'd certainly expect Patrick Mahomes to have one of his individually stellar games to give the Chiefs the best chance to win. No reason why you shouldn't expect that from the player with the league-high regular season passer rating, if that's truly an indication of his ability.

"Carmen Cygni wrote:

It's not. Passer rating is the culmination of the passing offense as a whole, it has nothing to do with a single player.

That's interesting, because it appears that lots of folks here are using Tannehill's 2019 season passer rating as an indication of his individual ability.

"Cashvillesent wrote:

Defense gets you to the dance, offense has proven to win SBs.

Just look at the recent SB games the last ten years.

Statistically the one exception to offense being somewhat more important is in the conference championships if you break things down by regular season or type of playoff game. I can post the figures again if you want, but the summary over the SB era is basically this:

1. In the regular season, the relative importance of the offense vs. defense when you plot z-scores of points scored/allowed vs. win% gives you a ratio of 11.29/10.76 => offense is about 4.9% more important for winning than defense.

2. For all playoff game winners, average z-score for offense is 0.7294 while average z-score for defense is 0.5464.

3. If you break it down by type of playoff game you get these averages:
- Wild Card winner: offense z-score = 0.6383, defense z-score = 0.5655
- Division playoff game winner: offense z-score = 0.7831, defense z-score = 0.4887
- Conference Championship winner: offense z-score = offense z-score = 0.6431, defense z-score = 0.7026
- SB winner: offense z-score = offense z-score = 0.9389, defense z-score = 0.4072.

So in all cases except the Conference Championships, it's true that the relative production of the offense is on average better than defense.

"djphinfan wrote:

I think you are over analyzing the trait, it should be an instinctual thing..not a very difficult concept to understand either..hey if the run game, and the oline, and the coaches understand his weakness and they can mitigate that, roll him left, roll him right, multiple times a game, just get him outside the pocket in a few of those third downs, then maybe he can overcome it.

With the Titans, they are doing that more. I don't think I am over analyzing what he was coached to do in Miami. I also think the weakness he has in this area is more than made up for with the rest of his game. IMO, 2019 proved that.

"cbrad wrote:

Statistically the one exception to offense being somewhat more important is in the conference championships if you break things down by regular season or type of playoff game. I can post the figures again if you want, but the summary over the SB era is basically this:

1. In the regular season, the relative importance of the offense vs. defense when you plot z-scores of points scored/allowed vs. win% gives you a ratio of 11.29/10.76 => offense is about 4.9% more important for winning than defense.

2. For all playoff game winners, average z-score for offense is 0.7294 while average z-score for defense is 0.5464.

3. If you break it down by type of playoff game you get these averages:
- Wild Card winner: offense z-score = 0.6383, defense z-score = 0.5655
- Division playoff game winner: offense z-score = 0.7831, defense z-score = 0.4887
- Conference Championship winner: offense z-score = offense z-score = 0.6431, defense z-score = 0.7026
- SB winner: offense z-score = offense z-score = 0.9389, defense z-score = 0.4072.

So in all cases except the Conference Championships, it's true that the relative production of the offense is on average better than defense.

And given the small difference there (0.70 to 0.64), and given that there is only one instance of that kind among so many others, that could just be a random anomaly rather than anything systematic.