Some quotes from Philbin and Coyle worthy of discussion.

Lamar Miller looks good with no pads on...shocker.

I like the bit about watching Seattle's defense for a lot of reasons. First the attitude, certainly. But second, those dudes cut down the passcatcher immediately. That cuts down on the RAC and big plays, obviously, but it also gets that fire going. Allowing a catch and smacking the guy right away can be an intimidation/fight victory for the defense, imo.

Remember Kam Chancellor popping Julius Thomas over the middle at the start of Super Bowl? That was on second down. And yet it felt like the defense had just won the battle of that posession.

 

This note said a mouthful:

And so did this one:

I'll withhold commentary.

 

You're going to get attacked with a strawman shortly (rah rah coach blah blah blah)

 

Yes, as in, I'm not so sure about this newfangled motion stuff. and get off my lawn.

 

Would have been appropriate.

 

It isn't the venue, it is the coach. There have been plenty of non super emotional teams playing in this stadium.

 

My feeling is that Philbin's comment regarding the amount of pre-snap motion was an attempt to protect Sherman.

 

It's tough. I'm not going to sit here and claim I know that Philbin is wrong. There's two sides to this as he says. You could argue one way or another.

But I think when you start to be different from what the rest of the league is doing you have to realize you're either outsmarting everyone or outstupiding everyone. And if what you're doing is not working then the chances of the latter increase.

The reason I think that blurb says a mouthful is it becomes clear that when Philbin has explained the lack of motion in the past he wasn't just speaking on behalf of Mike Sherman. He was speaking his beliefs. And now the Dolphins are adding more motion to the offense and I think it becomes pretty clear (if it wasn't already) that this is a Lazor thing. Philbin even tried to make it clear that the turtle could go back into the shell if they feel the motion and movement is just confusing the players.

 

PEDs too.

 

I don't believe so at all. This isn't the first time Philbin has talked about it. And notice that he left it open as in they're going to evaluate what the increase in motion is doing for the team and if they find it's detrimental they're putting the cat back in the bag.

This is a Philbin thing.

 

Those that assume pre-snap motion is a no-brainer just remember this.

Only 13.5% of Aaron Rodgers pass snaps involved a receiver in motion. That's significantly LESS than Tannehill's 20.3%.

I don't think it's as big a no-brainer as others believe it to be. However I will say that consistently from 2012 to 2013, Tannehill has had a higher passer rating on snaps that use pre-snap motion. I don't have the 2012 numbers anymore, I just remember seeing them prior to 2013. However the 2013 numbers show a 91 rating on motion plays and a 79 rating on non-motion plays.

On the other hand Aaron Rodgers has a higher rating on plays with no motion as opposed to plays with motion. So a part of this probably involves adapting to your talent which many coaches talk about doing but in reality don't do that often.

Even with Lazor installing more motion...is that because of Tannehill's idiosyncracies? No. It's because it's something Lazor has always favored.

 

Interesting point of order here but there definitely seems to be a disagreement in the way certain stat sources track motion.

ESPN has only 2.5% of Tannehill's snaps utilizing offensive motion. And last year only 1.3%.

But another source I've used has 20.3% of Tannehill's snaps utilizing offensive motion. They don't offer historical splits so I don't know about 2013.

The point kind of still stands though because according to ESPN, Aaron Rodgers did not have a single pass play that involved offensive motion.

Probably the difference is that one tracks pre-snap motion while ESPN designates motion as only plays where the guy is moving laterally as the ball is snapped. The latter seems kind of a useless thing to track although it probably is a nice proxy for read-option usage.

Incidentally Nick Foles utilized motion 31.9% pre-snap and 11.3% during-snap.

Know what I find interesting about that? The delta is primarily the during-snap percentage. The data suggests Tannehill used pre-snap motion about 17.8% of snaps and Foles used it about 20.6% which isn't really all that big a difference. But the Eagles had guys moving during the snaps 11.3% of the time versus Miami's only 2.5% of the time and that's a much bigger difference.

 

Hopefully Delmas can fire this defense up. He plays with a lot of emotion. We really have no one else stepping up. Wake is a lead by example guy. Ellerbe and Wheeler....nope. Misi and Odrick are just a quiet focused type. We need some, and I hate to say this over played word, but we need some swagger! Who is going to step up? It may even be Finnegan. It WILL NOT be Philbin. That is as certain as death. Unless...maybe.....Philbin writes the Al Pacino speech from Any Given Sunday on a cue card or something.

 

It sneaks out every now and then.

 

LOL

PS: you had a shot to use gobbledygook too and you blew it. So for that I have to drop your post to 8.9/10.

 

I thought we were all ready for game time.

 

Well anytime we suggest our coach is milquetoast we're attacked, that you don't need a rah rah coach, look at Tony Dungy etc. But I'm not calling for our HC to grab some pom poms and hit the sideline. There are intense coaches who are not jumping up and down the sideline. Ever seen the Bill Belichick stare? It's ice cold. Do you see Mike Tomlin doing cart wheels along the sideline? No, but you can feel his intensity. Whatever they got, Philbin doesn't. And even the defensive coach is trying to do something about it, and more than one veteran has said exactly what we're saying.

 

Well I haven't watched any practice videos so I don't know, but something is missing when a player says this:

 

Good luck since that reporter will NEVER give up his source.

 

That something being respect for his head coach.

 

I agree with this to an extent, but is it possible that he's just being overly cautious with Tannehill because his future is hitched to his success? I mean, maybe he thinks Tannehill will take too long to learn and that could cost people their jobs.

Personally, I say "let her rip!"

 

Given CK's stats, any excess caution with Tannehill isn't about Tannehill. That doesn't mean the excess caution doesn't exist, but the numbers are interesting.

 

How would you prefer to address it? He needs to confront the team about being unfair to him? Or he needs to try and change his demeanor?

At this stage of the game you are what you are. If Philbin tries to pull off "fiery" and "inspirational" he's just going to look like a comic book version of himself and it will be even worse.

He needs to change within the constraints of what he is and what he's not. Bill Belichick is practically stone faced most of the time anyone sees him, including on game days. But he coaches players pretty hard in the film room on their energy and what they're putting out emotionally. Or at least he did in moments captured on that one Football Life special. That's coaching within your strengths and weaknesses.

I think the bigger story is just that the guy isn't pulling it off. That's what it's all about. Perhaps it's just a reflection of the team's 15-17 record during his two year stint but he's not pulling it off, the players know it, and they're acknowledging it.

And now we're installing offensive principles that run counter to what he wants to do offensively. He was hired as an offensive archetect and the story of the off season is all the ways Bill Lazor is going to reshape the team's defunct offense.

So why's the guy here again?

 

I'm sure its just purley coincidence that your examples are of Super Bowl winning coaches but to be sure why don't you give us some examples of non super bowl winning coaches that you know have fire even though they don't show it outwardly. Its easy to see negatives of non winning coaches and some of those same negatives magically become positives if that guy wins the SB. Go back to 2012 and look at some fans opinions of Pete Carrol if you want to see an example of this phenomenon.

 

Bill Belichick also has a QB thats a leader, that never says never and may be the best 4th quarter QB of all time, that might have a little something to do with team morale, don't you think?

 

No I really don't think.

The feeling I've gotten, which I think actually has a fair amount of evidence backing it up, is that most of the players on the team respect Tom Brady but don't really like him at all.

I think smart coaches realize players don't play for their coach. It's pretty rare when players do play for their coach and it's usually short-lived, and the result of some kind of temporary circumstance. Some play for money, some play for glory, most play for recognition, many play for their teammates. Not many play for their coach.

Figuring out a way to keep players motivated is an art form, not a science. It's not about being fiery or being calm. It's about whether you're pulling it off or you're not. Have you set up an environment that makes players feel enthusiastic and rewarded for success? Have you set up an environment that makes players fear failure like a root canal? Have you managed to pull off both things, somehow?

We've had indications from very close to the start that Philbin has had a tough time with those things.

 

Huh? I think you're just purley confused.

My point is to take down a strawman. When we point out that the players themselves think Philbin is milquetoast, his defenders prop up a strawman to point out you don't need rah rah coaches to be good. I'm pointing out coaches who have won it all, are not rah rah coaches, and are not going to the media to tell them their coach is unemotional and detached. When players tell you their coach is detached, you have a problem. When your defensive coach shows you tape of another team, and tells you to play with emotion like them, you have a problem.

The Seahawks aren't showing tapes of us playing that's for sure.

 

Plus two things:
1. The Eagles. It's like Philbin is acting as though this is the first time such a concept has been introduced and has had no history of success. After Miami's offense averaged an ankle-grabbing 18.9 pts the past two years, if Philbin is apprehensive about leaving his unproductive comfort zone to mimic a Philly offense that averaged 32.2 pts/game during their final 9 games, then he needs to be shown the door. Philbin should be conveying nothing but the utmost confidence in his team's ability to execute a new scheme. Instead we've got our head coach sending messages of doubt, almost like he wants to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. We're beyond turning back at this point, Joe. Lazor is hired. The offense has been designed and implemented. That emotionless potato head needs to STFU and stop spreading seeds of fear and doubt.

Here are the facts, Joe, since you seem to prefer a pessimistic mentality: Philly boasted 8 games of 30+ points last year, and amazingly NONE of their final 9 games saw less than 24 points. That sputtering Miami offense you seem so protective of saw just 3 games of 30+ points in two damn years, 23 games of less than 24 points, and 13 games with 17 or less. Stop living in the past. This ain't Green Bay; it's Miami, so stop protecting the prior offense as though it's Green Bay. Even if Lazor's scheme fails, it can't possibly be worse than the product Sherman and yourself conceived.

2. The self-fulfilling prophecy thing. There's probably a part of Joe, even if it's subconscious, that doesn't want to see this new offense succeed, because when you break it all down, Lazor having success where Philbin and Sherman couldn't would be quite telling. If Lazor's offense fails, at the end of the day Philbin can say [even if it's to himself], "see, it wasn't just me". To me it seems his years of being entrenched in an offensive coordinator's mentality is influencing his head coaching psyche b/c there's no rationalization for his excuse-making of Sherman, his continued support of a floundering offense, nor his hesitancy toward Lazor's offense. He needs to be a goddam head coach right now and do the things head coaches do, like showing nothing but confidence in the team's new Offensive Coordinator and newly implemented scheme, as well as give the appearance that he cares more about the team and its success rather than emphasizing support for Sherman and their failed offense together. A real head coach with a head coaching mentality would've roasted the offense of the past two years and the brain trust behind it, would confidently be welcoming this new exciting scheme, and would be giving the impression to his players and staff that he's 100% in support of it and believes his guys are every bit as capable as Philly's squad to make it succeed.

 

No, Tom Brady doesn't bench his #1 running back because he fumbled in the first game of the year, and again later in the year. That's Bill Belichick. Stevan Ridley doesn't immediately go to the media after the game in an attempt to salvage his starting job, because of Tom Brady.

ck, I'll point out Tom Coughlin who changed his style up a little before their first superbowl win in NY. Of course, he did it within his confines. We don't want Philbin to become Harbaugh or Carroll. But he's clearly not connecting to his players.