Ryan Tannehill

"AGuyNamedAlex wrote:

I dont think we ever had a playoff caliber team honestly. I consider our playoff season an incredible fluke based on our talent level.

I also give him a semi-pass for the Cutler year.

You're seeing that now, everyone was shipped off and honestly, we are barely worse off minus Tannehill.

We cant say Tannehill didnt have the surrounding talent AND Gase had the talent. It's a contradiction.

I don't understand the bold.

My stance is this:

Tannehill never had decent WRs until Landry.
Tannehill never really had even an average line.
When Gase took over, Thill had decent offensive skill position talent around him but he still didn't have an oline.
Gase was a big reason to blame for not improving the oline. He did, however, commit to the run (begrudgingly) and let Thill audible.
Doing so, made the team playoff worthy...until Thill went down. Then Gase couldn't hold the team together because he doesn't really know how to lead. He also had no idea how to spot defensive coordinator talent....and he's probably a coke head.

"Fin D wrote:

Gase was a big reason to blame for not improving the oline. He did, however, commit to the run (begrudgingly) and let Thill audible.
Doing so, made the team playoff worthy...until Thill went down. Then Gase couldn't hold the team together because he doesn't really know how to lead. He also had no idea how to spot defensive coordinator talent....and he's probably a coke head.

His biggest flaw IMO.

"Fin D wrote:

I don't understand the bold.

My stance is this:

Tannehill never had decent WRs until Landry.
Tannehill never really had even an average line.
When Gase took over, Thill had decent offensive skill position talent around him but he still didn't have an oline.
Gase was a big reason to blame for not improving the oline. He did, however, commit to the run (begrudgingly) and let Thill audible.
Doing so, made the team playoff worthy...until Thill went down. Then Gase couldn't hold the team together because he doesn't really know how to lead. He also had no idea how to spot defensive coordinator talent....and he's probably a coke head.

Those last two Gase seasons we had virtually the entire starting offensive line on injured reserve. It wasn't just that they didn't have the right guys...our starters were "okay". The problem was that we were paper thin at depth and it was a massive drop-off to the reserve players.

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-titans-scheme-has-made-ryan-tannehill-a-top-10-quarterback

@KevinColePFF
ICYMI: As a longstanding Tannehill skeptic, I didn't expect to come away from this analysis with a positive conclusion. Yet I found a strong fit between Tannehill, his surrounding talent, and the Titans' passing scheme that has me believing

"cuchulainn wrote:

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-titans-scheme-has-made-ryan-tannehill-a-top-10-quarterback

@KevinColePFF
ICYMI: As a longstanding Tannehill skeptic, I didn't expect to come away from this analysis with a positive conclusion. Yet I found a strong fit between Tannehill, his surrounding talent, and the Titans' passing scheme that has me believing

Interesting.

Two things stated in those graphs are worth mentioning because if you don't see/understand them those graphs can be misleading:

1) That first graph says "250-dropback average", meaning that the last data point in that spike with Tennessee includes the 203 passing attempts with Tennessee AND the last 47 attempts with Miami. In other words, that spike with Tennessee is NOT his performance with Tennessee alone, it's a mixture of his performance at the end of 2018 with Miami and 2019 with Tennessee. If it was only Tennessee it would be WAY higher than 2014 or 2016 so people shouldn't think that graph is somehow suggesting he did similarly well in 2014 or 2016.

2) That second graph, in case people don't see it, is a mixture of 3 things: PFF's subjective grades, EPA per dropback, and draft position prior (meaning you automatically start off with a higher grade if you were drafted higher). The "Bayesian updating" part just means that after each new data point they change the likelihood of each hypothesis being correct based on a mathematics called Bayesian inference. The important thing to note here is that the reason Tannehill is mostly between 50th and 75th percentiles is not because of EPA per dropback but because of his PFF grades (which are subjective). You can see this clearly in the 2nd graph in that link:
https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-titans-scheme-has-made-ryan-tannehill-a-top-10-quarterback

The only thing I don't quite understand is how they define a dropback. There are over 3500+ dropbacks in that first graph, yet Tannehill has only 3114 passing attempts and 272 sacks. Adding those up won't get you there. They also say he has 256 dropbacks this season, yet Tannehill has 203 passing attempts plus 24 sacks, which is also short. So what else is PFF including in a "dropback"?

Finally, the bolded quote from Kevin Cole in cuchulainn's post, "I found a strong fit between Tannehill, his surrounding talent, and the Titans' passing scheme that has me believing" isn't shown or suggested to us by these graphs. There must be something else Kevin Cole wrote in that article (can't see the whole thing for free) that is the basis for that statement.

"cbrad wrote:

only thing I don't quite understand is how they define a dropback. There are over 3500+ dropbacks in that first graph, yet Tannehill has only 3114 passing attempts and 272 sacks. Adding those up won't get you there. They also say he has 256 dropbacks this season, yet Tannehill has 203 passing attempts plus 24 sacks, which is also short. So what else is PFF including in a "dropback"?

Maybe they gave him 29 bonus dropbacks for the way he dropped back and knocked the be-jesus out of that defensive lineman that intercepted the ball!

"Fin D wrote:

I don't understand the bold.

My stance is this:

Tannehill never had decent WRs until Landry.
Tannehill never really had even an average line.
When Gase took over, Thill had decent offensive skill position talent around him but he still didn't have an oline.
Gase was a big reason to blame for not improving the oline. He did, however, commit to the run (begrudgingly) and let Thill audible.
Doing so, made the team playoff worthy...until Thill went down. Then Gase couldn't hold the team together because he doesn't really know how to lead. He also had no idea how to spot defensive coordinator talent....and he's probably a coke head.

What it means is a team has talent to win or it doesnt. There cant be a combination where Tannehill doesn't have the talent surrounding him to succeed on offense as a QB but Gase has the talent on offense to win games. I think a lot of our conservative play calling was from knowing that our line was awful and couldnt hold a pocket if the defense knew we had to pass.

I do think there are better ways to mitigate pressure than just drinking and dunking btw, but I at least understand a bit why it happened.

I cant speak to how much input he had into those talent problems as well, our GM situation was weird.

To me he is painfully average. Maybe a little below, but I think people here also think hes a lot worse than he really is.

"cbrad wrote:

Interesting.

Two things stated in those graphs are worth mentioning because if you don't see/understand them those graphs can be misleading:

1) That first graph says "250-dropback average", meaning that the last data point in that spike with Tennessee includes the 203 passing attempts with Tennessee AND the last 47 attempts with Miami. In other words, that spike with Tennessee is NOT his performance with Tennessee alone, it's a mixture of his performance at the end of 2018 with Miami and 2019 with Tennessee. If it was only Tennessee it would be WAY higher than 2014 or 2016 so people shouldn't think that graph is somehow suggesting he did similarly well in 2014 or 2016.

2) That second graph, in case people don't see it, is a mixture of 3 things: PFF's subjective grades, EPA per dropback, and draft position prior (meaning you automatically start off with a higher grade if you were drafted higher). The "Bayesian updating" part just means that after each new data point they change the likelihood of each hypothesis being correct based on a mathematics called Bayesian inference. The important thing to note here is that the reason Tannehill is mostly between 50th and 75th percentiles is not because of EPA per dropback but because of his PFF grades (which are subjective). You can see this clearly in the 2nd graph in that link:
https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-titans-scheme-has-made-ryan-tannehill-a-top-10-quarterback

The only thing I don't quite understand is how they define a dropback. There are over 3500+ dropbacks in that first graph, yet Tannehill has only 3114 passing attempts and 272 sacks. Adding those up won't get you there. They also say he has 256 dropbacks this season, yet Tannehill has 203 passing attempts plus 24 sacks, which is also short. So what else is PFF including in a "dropback"?

Finally, the bolded quote from Kevin Cole in cuchulainn's post, "I found a strong fit between Tannehill, his surrounding talent, and the Titans' passing scheme that has me believing" isn't shown or suggested to us by these graphs. There must be something else Kevin Cole wrote in that article (can't see the whole thing for free) that is the basis for that statement.

And here is the conclusion even in an article as favorable to Tannehill as the one outlined above, entitled "The Titans' Scheme has Made Ryan Tannehill a Top-10 Quarterback":

What Tannehill has done this season is impressive, and it's potentially a turning point, yet it still should only marginally affect our assessment of him as a passer. Incorporating the entirely of Tannehill’s career, our best guess for how Tannehill will perform going forward is roughly in line with an average quarterback.

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-titans-scheme-has-made-ryan-tannehill-a-top-10-quarterback

"Hoops wrote:

Last 2 #1 picks both of which QBs have won the heisman

Huh? My point was that only 2 Heisman Trophy winning QBs have won the Super Bowl...

Roger Staubach and Jim Plunkett

"cbrad wrote:

Interesting.

Two things stated in those graphs are worth mentioning because if you don't see/understand them those graphs can be misleading:

1) That first graph says "250-dropback average", meaning that the last data point in that spike with Tennessee includes the 203 passing attempts with Tennessee AND the last 47 attempts with Miami. In other words, that spike with Tennessee is NOT his performance with Tennessee alone, it's a mixture of his performance at the end of 2018 with Miami and 2019 with Tennessee. If it was only Tennessee it would be WAY higher than 2014 or 2016 so people shouldn't think that graph is somehow suggesting he did similarly well in 2014 or 2016.

2) That second graph, in case people don't see it, is a mixture of 3 things: PFF's subjective grades, EPA per dropback, and draft position prior (meaning you automatically start off with a higher grade if you were drafted higher). The "Bayesian updating" part just means that after each new data point they change the likelihood of each hypothesis being correct based on a mathematics called Bayesian inference. The important thing to note here is that the reason Tannehill is mostly between 50th and 75th percentiles is not because of EPA per dropback but because of his PFF grades (which are subjective). You can see this clearly in the 2nd graph in that link:
https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-titans-scheme-has-made-ryan-tannehill-a-top-10-quarterback

The only thing I don't quite understand is how they define a dropback. There are over 3500+ dropbacks in that first graph, yet Tannehill has only 3114 passing attempts and 272 sacks. Adding those up won't get you there. They also say he has 256 dropbacks this season, yet Tannehill has 203 passing attempts plus 24 sacks, which is also short. So what else is PFF including in a "dropback"?

Finally, the bolded quote from Kevin Cole in cuchulainn's post, "I found a strong fit between Tannehill, his surrounding talent, and the Titans' passing scheme that has me believing" isn't shown or suggested to us by these graphs. There must be something else Kevin Cole wrote in that article (can't see the whole thing for free) that is the basis for that statement.

For the # of dropbacks, don't they count dropbacks even if a penalty erases the play? That may account for part of it.

"PhinFan1968 wrote:

For the # of dropbacks, don't they count dropbacks even if a penalty erases the play? That may account for part of it.

If they do that it's kind of ridiculous to me.

Half the time a QB sees a flag he knows is against the defense he will end up taking a massive deep shot he wouldnt have taken otherwise.

I suppose their logic is if you include declined penalties you need to include accepted as well but ehhh...

"Fin-O wrote:

Well we all already established that it takes time to learn a new system. So to me it was certainly a group effort of mediocrity.

Nothing turned me off more than sitting front stage that Thu night game at Cincinnati and watching Ryan and his offense look as lost as lost can be.

Now that it’s unanimous Adam Gase is just a garbage coach, we can all comfortably consider him as big a part of the problem as anything.

I don't agree with you about Gase, therefore your stating "...it’s unanimous Adam Gase is just a garbage coach" is wrong.

How wrong is still to be determined. Based on the unsupportable and overstated "unanimous" crap statement about Gase I just have to ask, do you work for CNN?

"cbrad wrote:

The only thing I don't quite understand is how they define a dropback. There are over 3500+ dropbacks in that first graph, yet Tannehill has only 3114 passing attempts and 272 sacks. Adding those up won't get you there. They also say he has 256 dropbacks this season, yet Tannehill has 203 passing attempts plus 24 sacks, which is also short. So what else is PFF including in a "dropback"?

Possibly scrambles and completed plays called back by penalty? At a minimum, they should include scrambles if they are going to include sacks.

"Irishman wrote:

I don't agree with you about Gase, therefore your stating "...it’s unanimous Adam Gase is just a garbage coach" is wrong.

How wrong is still to be determined. Based on the unsupportable and overstated "unanimous" crap statement about Gase I just have to ask, do you work for CNN?

Fin-O is one of the few here that wouldn’t be caught dead working for CNN.

"PhinFan1968 wrote:

For the # of dropbacks, don't they count dropbacks even if a penalty erases the play? That may account for part of it.

"FinFaninBuffalo wrote:

Possibly scrambles and completed plays called back by penalty? At a minimum, they should include scrambles if they are going to include sacks.

What makes it a bigger mystery is there are multiple sites that actually track dropbacks and they explicitly define them as "passing attempts + sacks - spikes removed". In other words, the purpose of distinguishing between "dropback" and "passing attempt" is to look at the number of times a QB actually drops back to pass, so that number is always LESS than passing attempts + sacks and doesn't include scrambles. And all official NFL passing stats remove whatever happened during a penalty (because those plays didn't officially occur).

So whatever PFF is doing it's not based on the standard use of the term, which is bad for comparison purposes.

"The Guy wrote:

And here is the conclusion even in an article as favorable to Tannehill as the one outlined above, entitled "The Titans' Scheme has Made Ryan Tannehill a Top-10 Quarterback":

"What Tannehill has done this season is impressive, and it's potentially a turning point, yet it still should only marginally affect our assessment of him as a passer. Incorporating the entirely of Tannehill’s career, our best guess for how Tannehill will perform going forward is roughly in line with an average quarterback."

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-titans-scheme-has-made-ryan-tannehill-a-top-10-quarterback

Yeah they're apparently not familiar with hypothesis testing. Otherwise they'd see that there's statistical evidence the conditions changed in Tennessee (either the surroundings changed or the QB changed or both) and that you really shouldn't base any prediction of future performance on the assumption the conditions didn't change!

There's also a subtle hint they don't understand statistical analysis because they used Bayesian inference in a case where it's not really the right method. Bayesian inference is useful for predicting how the likelihoods of hypotheses change (or probabilities of events change) after a single extra event (ONE extra data point is obtained). You don't use that if you're just combining all data from the past, which is conceptually what they're trying to do in that second graph. You use MLE = maximum likelihood estimation.

"cbrad wrote:

Yeah they're apparently not familiar with hypothesis testing. Otherwise they'd see that there's statistical evidence the conditions changed in Tennessee (either the surroundings changed or the QB changed or both) and that you really shouldn't base any prediction of future performance on the assumption the conditions didn't change!

I'm voting that the surroundings changed more. I'm basing that on the fact that he is playing in a different offensive scheme, with a different coaching staff, and different players. If Tannehill also playing better? Based on what I see, yes. He has been an accurate QB but he have been even more accurate this season. He has done well from play action but he has been even better this season.

Clearly he won't maintain an average passer rating of 118 and a YPA of 9.8 for the rest of his career (or even the rest of the season, most likely), but, IMO, he has shown that he is a top 10 QB when given adequate surroundings.

Stats in football are pretty much useless.

It never gives you an accurate way of evaulating a QB.

Football might be the only sport that it is really a TEAM SPORT.

"Cashvillesent wrote:

Football might be the only sport that it is really a TEAM SPORT.

Football is somewhere in the middle in terms of the degree to which you can identify individual contributions vs. the degree to which stats are affected by what the rest of the team does. The fact (American) football separates plays, separates offensive/defensive/ST units, and has many different positions where the rules aren't the same for each position makes it easier to apply stats than in more fluid sports like soccer or ice hockey where it's nearly impossible to do useful statistical analysis.

Obviously football is a lot more complicated for statistical analysis than baseball, but it's by FAR not the only "team sport" on the planet lol.

"AGuyNamedAlex wrote:

What it means is a team has talent to win or it doesnt. There cant be a combination where Tannehill doesn't have the talent surrounding him to succeed on offense as a QB but Gase has the talent on offense to win games. I think a lot of our conservative play calling was from knowing that our line was awful and couldnt hold a pocket if the defense knew we had to pass.

I do think there are better ways to mitigate pressure than just drinking and dunking btw, but I at least understand a bit why it happened.

I cant speak to how much input he had into those talent problems as well, our GM situation was weird.

To me he is painfully average. Maybe a little below, but I think people here also think hes a lot worse than he really is.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I meant I don't understand it relative to the discussion. As I said, when Gase was here, surrounding talent (outside of the oline) wasn't bad on offense. We were literally the hottest team in the league until Thill got hurt.

Gase is average, on strategy and scheme. His biggest flaw int hat department is his ego, as it takes him too long to shift gears from something not working. The leader aspect of the job, he was woefully below average at. The team didn't really buy into him and it wasn't he sucked it up and started committing to the run did the team go along with him, because that's when we started winning. The following year, with no Thill, we weren't good and the only thing he had to get the team to follow him, which was winning, was gone.

Gase failed because:

- He was a **** leader. (Sorry, nowhere in the TOS does it say I'm not allowed to type *'s. Stop editing my posts.)
- Thill got hurt.
- He chose Burke to be DC.
- He's likely a coke head.

"Fin D wrote:

I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I meant I don't understand it relative to the discussion. As I said, when Gase was here, surrounding talent (outside of the oline) wasn't bad on offense. We were literally the hottest team in the league until Thill got hurt.

Gase is average, on strategy and scheme. His biggest flaw int hat department is his ego, as it takes him too long to shift gears from something not working. The leader aspect of the job, he was woefully below average at. The team didn't really buy into him and it wasn't he sucked it up and started committing to the run did the team go along with him, because that's when we started winning. The following year, with no Thill, we weren't good and the only thing he had to get the team to follow him, which was winning, was gone.

Gase failed because:

- He was a poor leader.
- Thill got hurt.
- He chose Burke to be DC.
- He's likely a coke head.

You watch the most successful coaches, and they don't just pass the other areas that aren't their specialty off to coordinators and forget about 'em...Gase does. Biggest leadership fail he has shown, to me. Just listen to Harbaugh, Tomlin, Belichick, etc. They come across as equally knowing all areas, even though you know they have a specialty.

When you're the HC, you don't operate "Us vs. Them" within your team...that's up to the coordinators to have their internal competitions between the units. It's your TEAM moron...not your offense. He'll never be more than a good coordinator IMO.

"Cashvillesent wrote:

Stats in football are pretty much useless.

It never gives you an accurate way of evaulating a QB.

That depends on sample size.

Certainly the statistics from a single game could be highly inaccurate in determining the ability of a quarterback. But by the same token, you can’t very well say that Peyton Manning’s career statistics are meaningless in reflecting his ability. Obviously they mean something.

"The Guy wrote:

Interested in #cbrad take on this.

In 2014, in the eight regular season games 4 through 11, Tannehill posted the following passer ratings:

109.3
83.3
123.6
73.3
125.6
81.8
114.8
104.9

In 2016, in the eight regular season games 6 through 13, he posted the following passer ratings:

97.4
99.4
86.8
130.6
89.3
130.6
63.1
124

In his eight games this season he's posted the following passer ratings:

78.1
120.1
109.8
82.3
133.9
155.8
131.2
140.4

Unless I'm mistaken, neither of the top two samples of passer ratings is significantly different from the bottom one.

"cbrad wrote:

That's correct they're not significantly different, but it doesn't really mean anything because that's solely due to small sample size. You have 8 games vs. 8 games. That's rarely going to be significantly different for almost any situation. Simple example: choose games 1-8 instead of games 4-11 from 2014 and you'll also get no significant difference (and it's even less so once you properly adjust ratings).

That's why when you apply the t-test you have to keep in mind that at least one of the sets (and ideally both) needs to be large enough so that the result of the test isn't just due to small sample size. So when I test for significance between Tannehill's games in Miami vs. Tannehill's games in Tennessee I'm including all 88 games in Miami vs. 8 in Tennessee. That "8 in Tennessee" might still raise some eyebrows in terms of small sample size, but we're talking passer ratings here that I know tend to be normally distributed as opposed to something like the distribution of serum samples from people infected with malaria (not even close to normally distributed), and since the t-test assumes normality in the differences between samples I'm confident enough in applying the test to 88 vs. 8.

That's the math answer.

The science answer is that you can't just select any subset of the data without there being some independently identifiable difference in that subset, and I don't see how you can show that in this case. Can you really show which games were the games where "the running game was the defense's focal point"? If you can't show that then it's just cherry picking data.

Given the data above that show the peak in the graph in 2014, similar to the one this year, and given my post I copied above, I'm still stuck wondering what the problem would be with comparing his most recent eight games to any other eight games in his career.

I hear what you're saying above about how there isn't an identifiable difference in those previous subsets of games, but that implies that we need to use deductive rather than inductive reasoning in this instance.

Why can't we use the data to induce that, because Tannehill's current eight-game performance isn't significantly different from those previous ones, whatever conditions that are causing his current performance aren't significantly different from the ones that existed during the eight games in both 2014 and 2016 (in my post above), despite that he was on different teams?

Certainly there is overlap among teams in the NFL. Simply being on a different team doesn't necessarily cause a significant difference in one's surroundings of import.

"The Guy wrote:

Given the data above that show the peak in the graph in 2014, similar to the one this year, and given my post I copied above, I'm still stuck wondering what the problem would be with comparing his most recent eight games to any other eight games in his career.

I hear what you're saying above about how there isn't an identifiable difference in those previous subsets of games, but that implies that we need to use deductive rather than inductive reasoning in this instance.

Why can't we use the data to induce that, because Tannehill's current eight-game performance isn't significantly different from those previous ones, whatever conditions that are causing his current performance aren't significantly different from the ones that existed during the eight games in both 2014 and 2016 (in my post above), despite that he was on different teams?

Certainly there is overlap among teams in the NFL. Simply being on a different team doesn't necessarily cause a significant difference in one's surroundings of import.

Yeah what I was trying to convey in the post you quoted is that you have to be mindful of the reason a statistical test says two sets of ratings aren't significantly different from each other. The reason could be entirely due to small sample size in which case it's kind of meaningless to use the statistical test.

For example, let's compare two sets of ratings: {70, 80} and {100, 110}. The t-test says the probability those two sets come from the same QB is 5.13% and is therefore not statistically significant.

Now watch what happens when we increase sample size a bit: {70, 80, 70, 80} and {100, 110, 100, 110}. Now that same test says the probability those ratings come from the same QB is 0.0324%. Huge difference due only to sample size.

Where is that coming from in the math? Look at this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student's_t-test#Assumptions

That n in the denominator represents sample size, and it goes into the estimate of the standard error. When n is small, the SAME difference in means is much more likely to occur, which makes total sense: the less data you have the more uncertainty in your estimate.

Point is.. you want to get to a sample size large enough with these statistical tests so that the result doesn't depend on adding one or two more data points lol. It shouldn't really change with 10+ more data points. Otherwise you're just talking about the effect of sample size. So if you were to make the argument with those 8-game stretches, I'd just simply point out the test is kind of meaningless in this case because of the small sample size and interpret the result by saying the uncertainty is too large to make a determination.

Note however that if you do find statistical significance (as opposed to it not being significant) then it's another story.

"Fin D wrote:

I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I meant I don't understand it relative to the discussion. As I said, when Gase was here, surrounding talent (outside of the oline) wasn't bad on offense. We were literally the hottest team in the league until Thill got hurt.

Gase is average, on strategy and scheme. His biggest flaw int hat department is his ego, as it takes him too long to shift gears from something not working. The leader aspect of the job, he was woefully below average at. The team didn't really buy into him and it wasn't he sucked it up and started committing to the run did the team go along with him, because that's when we started winning. The following year, with no Thill, we weren't good and the only thing he had to get the team to follow him, which was winning, was gone.

Gase failed because:

- He was a **** leader. (Sorry, nowhere in the TOS does it say I'm not allowed to type *'s. Stop editing my posts.)
- Thill got hurt.
- He chose Burke to be DC.
- He's likely a coke head.

I believe he failed because while he is capable of creating some great ideas he is too arrogant to admit when one of his ideas isnt working and leave it behind.

If that helps clear my own position any.