As the season winds to a close, obviously, it is now time to evaluate not only the team, but the front office. Our season began with the unfortunate loss of Ryan Tannehill amongst other injuries and the loss of our bye week. It is fair to say that excuses were baked into the season before it even began. But the question is, does the coach/front office get a pass on the year?
Let's begin with Jay Cutler. I do not fault the front office for paying him what they paid him. All things considered, getting a guy who was a starting QB last season, a history with the coach, system familiarity, and a vet is more than you can reasonably expect when your starting QB is hurt in the offseason. I concede that any team that loses its starting QB is at a disadvantage, but Cutler is far better than Brett Hundley and is a starting caliber QB.
Although the result with Cutler was less than desired, I understand it. On the other hand, I look at the acquisition of Julius Thomas as a total failure. This is a Gase guy that really did not belong on the field. He was slow and lost his athleticism. He is in no way the player that he was in Denver.
We need to also look at our offseason. We brought in Timmons, Larson, and extended Kiko and Branch, and traded for Anthony. Looking at the play of all four of these guys have nothing to do with the loss of Tannehill, and for the most part, has been a tremendous waste of resources. On a positive note, McDonald looks to be a great addition to our defense. Cody Parkey has brought us stability at the kicking position, but Haak has been a liability. It feels like there have been a lot more misses than hits. These misses not only affect this season, but they also affect our ability to sign players in the future.
Next, let's look at player development. Kiko has been a major regression following his promising season a year ago. Harris, although a starter, has been underwhelming, and has been nowhere near the pass rusher we hoped for on draft day. Ajayi regressed to the point that he was traded and Maxwell went from a starter to being released. In the preseason, coaches said that Parker was on his way to something special. Fast forward a year, and there is a real chance that his roster spot in jeopardy. Also in the offseason, Tunsil was hailed as a future Hall of Fame tackle, and after sporadic play, critics are calling for him to move back to guard. Carroo, a player that we moved up to acquire, has been non-factor. I think these are fair criticisms that cannot be blamed on the loss of Tannehill. On a positive note, Drake has really stood out as guy that was properly developed. He is a dynamic player that really can do many of the things that we ask him to do. Howard has been another great success. He has come on lately and has looked like an elite corner at times and has been able to make game changing plays. Grant has been a nice little success story as well. After a year as a special teams player, he has carved out a nice little niche on offense. Although he lacks the size to ever become a full time player, he can log 5-10 meaningful snaps on offense. Phillips and Godchaux have both logged nice seasons and have shown moderate growth.
The offensive line was an area of need going into the season. Albert was traded, and we acquired Larson and Asiata. Larson was hurt and has struggled since his return. Asiata, from my recollection, has not been active on game day all season. The offensive line has looked atrocious at times, and I truly think that even with Tannehill (or any other QB for that matter) would have struggled behind it. The line has been undisciplined and has been called for too many pre-snap fouls. Again, I do not think that Tannehill's absence had anything to do with these early struggles. As the year progressed, with the help of Jesse Davis's development, it appears that the line play has gotten better. All things considered, the line was not properly addressed in the offseason, and it again will be area of concern in the offseason.
The play calling has been up and down as well. The first half of the season was disastrous with an inexplicable reliance on WR screens that never really worked. It seemed like Gase was never able to get sustained offensive production from his team. Much of the season, the Dolphins were at the bottom of total offense. At no time did I think that we have had a bottom offense in terms of talent. In 10 games, we failed to score 21 points. In 6 games, we scored less than 17 points. In four games we scored less than 14 points. In 3 games, we scored under 7 points. As far as the defense goes, we started out really well. In the first 5 games, we gave up no more than 20 points in each game. After the hot start, we only held the Broncos to under 20 points. We gave up 28 points or more 5 times. We gave up more than 30 points 4 times, and over 40 points twice. It is easy to say that without Tannehill, the defense's job was much harder, but in reality, the defense was playing at its best when the offense was playing at its worst.
Just looking at the hits and misses, it appears that this season had far more misses than hits. Moreover, the misses were much bigger than the hits. The offensive line, which has been an issue for several seasons now, is nowhere closer to be fixed than it was last season. To me, it is clear that Tannenbaum should be out. Additionally, regression of our defense in terms of player development and scheme is likely cause to send Matt Burke on his way.
My final conclusion is that Gase should not be given a Mulligan as well. I understand that losing his starting QB was a big blow. I understand that this did cause the offense to regress. This is what kind of failure I would have been okay with. I would side with Gase had the offensive line been disciplined and showed improvement, play calling was solid, but Cutler simply couldn't get the ball to his receivers. At times, I saw ugly Cutler outright missing WRs, but I consistently saw uninspiring play calling and awful play calling. I saw Parker, who coaches raved about in the preseason, causing INTS. I don't think it is at all fair to make Cutler the scapegoat for the season. I think far more problems occurred away from him.
The silver lining with this bad season is that we could very easily finish the year with a top 10 pick. Almost certainly, a coveted QB will be on the clock with the Dolphins' pick. The jury is still out with Tannehill. This moment will likely be a turning point in our franchise.
I just don't trust the front office/coaching staff to make this pick. Their track record of being unable to evaluate, acquire, and develop talent this offseason does not lend itself to making me believe that this organization, in its current form, can make this pick.
Don't be fooled and give everyone a pass because Tannehill got hurt. It's time to clean house.
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DolphinGreg and roy_miami like this.
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A major reason this season had little to do with Tannehill's absence was because the pass defense regressed considerably.
Believing Tannehill could've rescued this season from what it was is akin to believing Drew Brees could've surmounted the very poor pass defenses that led to the Saints' finishing in the 7-9 range in recent years, despite Brees's very strong performance.DolphinGreg likes this. -
I can't agree with firing Gase. I'm not gonna act like he's infallible, because he's not. At the same time, this season included, he only has two seasons under his belt. First season here, he managed to coach a playoff team out of squad that many expected (myself included) to be .500 at best. Now, that doesn't prove that he's a capable, playoff-level coach since that's only one year. But this year is only one year of him coaching a sub .500 team.
At the very least, he deserves one more year, in my opinion.ChrisKo likes this. -
That was another problem, but the pass defense's performance placed a ceiling on what this team could achieve, that even Tannehill's typical level of play wouldn't have surmounted to the tune of anything significantly different in terms of a regular season record.
In fact if Tannehill had been present and played at his overall 2016 level, the team's expected record would've been 8-8. If he'd have played at the level at which he played during his extended good stretch in 2016, the team's expected record would've been 9-7.jdang307 likes this. -
I think our corners will continue to develop, and the loss of an upward Tony Lippett was a big blow to our depth. I think they'll be fine moving forward, but I've been wrong before. Corners can only cover for so long, there was no harmony with the pass rush this year. Either one position group wasn't covering long enough or the other wasn't getting to the QB fast enough.
The biggest cause for concern for me was the overall defensive play, or lack thereof, the last 2/3 of the year. I believe Burke was outcoached a majority of games. Couple that with the terrible coverage on opposing tight ends and you have week in and week out of maddening 3rd down conversions. Alonso started okay but he's been a dumpster fire in coverage this year. I largely believe, with no credible substantiation, that Burke will be coaching for his job this Sunday. There have been rumblings about a surprise switch to Vic Fangio, should the Bears staff be fired, and I partly believe them.
Honestly, there's no other way to dice it: we were a bad team all year. It's hard to parse which players are totally incapable of carrying out their assignments, and which ones didn't play up to their talent level. Those WR screens might look different if someone could throw a block worth a damn.
It would behoove us to get a coverage linebacker or nickel safety in the offseason so we can cover these tight ends once and for all. But that's tough when you've got TE, OL, RB, and DE spots to fill as well. Should be interesting to see how the offseason plays out. -
It's really easy to sit and nitpick every player acquisition decision after the season, but on some level every single decision in the NFL is risk/reward. There are no guarantees. You have to take chances on guys. You have to find hidden talent. You have to try to see things that other teams missed because hall of fame players don't often hit the open market in the prime of their career.
Players don't always pan out, but unless the failure rate is ridiculous high it's completely unfair to slam the coach. On the contrary, I love when the Dolphins try to think outside the box and find value in guys that aren't all-stars.ChrisKo likes this. -
Uh, perhaps the offensive line was a mess because the OL coach was a mess? Seemed to pick up after he was fired.
The defense was full of underperforming players. I hate this "Tannehill's rating would have correlated with X wins" argument because it really takes blame away from the defense, really all other players, and puts it on the QB. It's silly. Perhaps if the defense wasn't giving out points like an old lady giving out candy on Halloween, whoever our QB is would have a chance to not have score tons of points to win games. I'd love to see Tannehill playing this season alongside Drake. I'm hopeful we get to see Tannehill really abuse defenses next year throwing to Drake and Grant consistently. I'd imagine you're gonna see Tannehill's stats jump a bit just from having those two guys actually involved in the offense.Fin-O likes this. -
This is demonstrably false. Win probability is known to affect offensive stats like passer rating, and obviously win probability depends on both offense and defense. For example, win probability 60% or higher led to an average league-wide passer rating of 95+ in 2016 while win probability of 40% or lower led to an average league-wide passer rating of 75 or lower.
Having said that, the correlation between offensive and defensive performance is fairly small, but it's not zero.DHitchens likes this. -
Again, this is the problem with a stats only view.
The best offense in the world can still lose games if the defense and special teams are terrible. I mean if a defense is tired because the offense goes 3 and out all the time....
Once again, you have to watch games outside of Excel. You can determine trends, you cannot determine what happened in specific cases.adamprez2003 and Sceeto like this. -
No this is pretty clear cut. You have different win probability conditions and different performances in those conditions. Nothing more to say. Besides I think most football "experts" that don't use stats much would disagree with you anyway: offensive efficiency affects defensive efficiency and vice versa. The great thing about stats is you can quantify that effect.
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This is sort of silly... Win probability changes all throughout the game. Of course, win percentage is based on, you know, how the players are playing, not the other way around. No player is playing better or worse based on win probability, but the win probability definitely changes when the players play better or worse. Simply put, the players determine win probability, not the other way around.
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This the problem with stats guys...they don't listen. It's like talking to a wall made of calculators.
The problem isn't their math, the problem is their application of the results. They believe their number crunching answers what happened in every instance.....and THAT is the problem.
I mean they would go up to survivor of a lightning strike and say, "according to our numbers, you're dead."Last edited: Dec 27, 2017 -
At any given moment in the game there is a "win probability" defined through historical data. As you acknowledge, that's the result of how players play, both on offense and defense. But.. it is ALSO true that you can look at performance GIVEN a certain win probability. And it's simply true that performance in many offensive (and defensive) stats are better ONCE win probability is higher. So yes it IS true that defense affects offense and vice versa.
That's logic, and it's rock solid. -
Tell you what.. I'll give you one last chance to admit you were wrong and it better be a crystal clear admission. Remember what you said in post #8:
Now.. your latest post basically implicitly admitted I was right because you're saying what I said is a trend.. no duh. Never said or implied it applied all the time. That's a misrepresentation you made up. What IS clear is that what you said in post #8 is flat out wrong.
Last chance to admit it before I'm ignoring you for a few months before we try again. -
You can look at things any way you want, doesn't make it the correct way of looking at it. Win probability is a result of how players are playing. That's it. Players are not consulting analytics during a game, having worse or better performances based on the win probability at the time. Example, the Pats didn't come back to win the Super Bowl because of win probability. In fact, that game blows player performance based on win probability out of the water.
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You two are wearing me out. Allow me to interject with this.
If your offense is consistently going 3 and out, your defense is on the field more.
If your offense is putting together long sustained drives, your defense is well rested and able to play at a more consistent explosive level
This is an accepted philosophy with anyone who knows anything about football. You want your defense on the sideline as long as possible and if your offense is unable to put together those long sustained drives, that's not going to happen.
So with that said, FinD is mostly correct. Offensive effectiveness can have a correlation to defense however...
If your defense is not playing effectively...producing 3 and outs, then your opponent's defense is on the sideline and is well rested to stop your offense.
And this doesn't even take into account creating turnovers which is always critical in putting your offense in a position to be effective.eltos_lightfoot, miami365 and resnor like this. -
Win probability is a result of how players are playing, yes, but there is no a priori reason for performance to be better with higher win probability.
And the reason it's called "probability" is precisely because it's not "deterministic". That is, what the Pats did is just a single data point in a distribution from which you calculate win probability and that one event (or set of events because there were many plays) doesn't somehow invalidate the statistic. At most, it changed the historical win probabilities by a tiny amount.roy_miami likes this. -
I am not contradicting myself and you don't make ultimatums for me.
Nothing about that post admits you're right. Again, your problem has always been specifics versus generalities and this yet another example.
You absolutely imply it is all the time...it is the crux of everything you post with stats and the overwhelming reason you and I argue. I tell you something specific and use generalities to argue against it. -
I'm struggling with how to word this so it makes sense....bear with me...
A defense or an offense can only play as good as they can possibly play or worse. They cannot play better than they are capable of. Meaning they can only play at a 100% or less, they cannot play at anything over 100%. Because of that, a rested defense can only play as good as they can play or worse. The most a rested defense can be is 100%, not over 100%. So an offense facing a rested defense isn't at a disadvantage just by the nature of the defense being rested. -
Considering the fate of Cleveland's moneyball experiment after just one year I would think the stat guys admit football is too complex for them. Too many variables. Stick with baseball and basketball where the variables are limited
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Willingly forgetting how many times I've specifically stated stats are probably not going to be that useful in predicting which players in college will succeed in the NFL? I've said many times where stats need to be applied is in play calling.
And you know I've said that many times. So Cleveland's moneyball experiment has nothing to do with how I use, advocate or defend statistical analysis. -
That was actually a well thought out post and refreshing from the banter we usually hear from select posters here. I appreciate you making the effort since it's actually something that can be discussed. Here are my thoughts-
I agree with you- Cutler was the best selection in a bad situation. Nobody wants to find a QB1 two weeks before the season starts and it's a fool's errand. It was Matt Moore with an undeveloped player as backup or Cutler/Moore...that was the only viable option.
We're already disagreeing though- did you know ESPN has Timmons the 24th ranked LB overall in the league and Kiko at 26th? That's certainly not "OMG awesome" by any means but they were solid contributors. To compare, they ranked Suh 20th and Wake 25th among all D linemen, and William Hayes at 49th.
I'm sorry, but I can't see a "tremendous waste of resources" no matter how hard I try to twist things around. These were journeymen playing hard and coming out slightly above average when compared to the rest of the league.
Let's start with the easy ones, Maxwell and Ajayi. The J-train was still on a rookie contract and showed a ton of promise with three 200 yard games. That's not development? He didn't regress either, we simply got tired of his selfish attitude and refusing to run plays as designed. We rented him for a 5th, cashed in for a 4th, and got three wins last season in the process. If anything, that's a big plus in development and a huge success for Tannenbaum...but we'll get to that more later on.
Maxwell? He was another rental like Timmons that struggled to climb the depth chart. That's football and there's no shame in watching a once-talented veteran get beat out by Tank or Howard....that's a VERY GOOD PROBLEM to have as it points to our young guys developing. And we can say the same thing about Ajayi and Williams/Drake as well- it's a credit to our staff knowing what they have and how to make it work last minute when a guy won't do what the coaches ask. The same can be said about the Parker/Grant situation...one young guy struggles, and other steps up in a completely unexpected way. That's FANTASTIC coaching and development, my friend, and we are very lucky to have it.
Finally, Parker and Carroo....folks need to get over this. Some rookie players start on day one and others don't see the field until year three. Who exactly do you want to see fail so Carroo gets to start? Stills? Landry? Grant? We have one of the most talented, deepest WR corps in the league and you fine folks can't stop complaining because they're not all in the HOF after two seasons- this is very foolish thinking since it's a very good problem to have. Parker struggled this year, yes, but you're making it sound like that was due to poor coaching and development. If that was true though, then you wouldn't see our other receivers shining.
Cutler was tied for 30th this season in sacks, which tops every other QB in the AFC East by a wide margin (Taylor 3rd, McCown 5th, Brady 9th in most sacked). Likewise, Drake is 6th on the year in average yards per carry- I'm not seeing numbers here that say we have a problem at offensive line. Compare that to Dallas, a team widely thought to have the best line in the league- they're 5th in rush per attempt and 11th in sacks allowed. We were better than Dallas in 2017. If you're one of the least sacked teams in football and 6th overall in rushing, you'd have to be a moron to complain about the line's performance. Yet that's what we've heard from folks all year- trade Pouncey, move Tunsil, etc. And let's not forget here...we have those stats with our best overall lineman of 2017 (James) on injured reserve....but folks have said repeatedly to trade him as well.
Now, I do agree with you on the pre-snap penalties...it's been the main issue for our offense the entire season and it's ultimately led to several losses. But once the ball is snapped, the line you folks keep screaming about has performed beautifully.
Let's recap. Brand spanking new QB. Stud Running Back won't listen to anyone. We fire the RB and start the 2nd stringer. He gets hurt and the 3rd stringer looks like the best in decades. Meanwhile, the QB can't direct traffic like Tannehill did because he doesn't know the playbook or the players. Then the darn line can't stop jumping offsides even when we can get the play right. This sounds like a typical Cleveland storyline for a 1-15 team.
I won't lie- this season was ugly on offense. But be realistic...was it really supposed to click from day one? The past three-four weeks have shown us the offense we've expected all along and it's pretty hard to fault Cutler or Gase for it taking a few months to pull everything together. But even now...those damn offsides penalties have been our kryptonite.
Throughout your review, you mentioned that replacing Tannehill for Cutler wouldn't deliver different results. I call a major, major BS! We got blown out three times this season- Tannehill likely wouldn't have mattered much there. But games like Tampa, Oakland, the first Jets game, and the other week at Buffalo? Heck yes it would have made a difference. You give us those four wins from poor QB play and we're 10-5 right now....you tell me that wouldn't change your opinion.
Okay, we've now seen that our offensive line was one of the best in the league...so that fallacy is out. We've also seen a pretty explosive offense in the past month with our QB2, RB3 and WR6 finally syncing up. And yes, we also saw a few games where Cutler simply couldn't get the ball to his receivers. If you look at the statistics of the way this team played and face the cold, hard truth, then I think you'd be as much of a Gase fan as a lot of us here. He has done SPECTACULAR under the circumstances and we haven't even talked about hurricanes or missed practice days here. I'm not going to go into that though because if you haven't realized how massive of a factor those things were, then you never will.
The part about Parker though- yeah, the guy stunk this year. I can remember three clutch catches and at least 8 mistakes that hurt us bigtime. But if you're going to ***** about Parker and blame Gase/Tannenbaum, then you have to praise them just as much for Grant and Drake and Tank and Howard and so many other role players that have stepped up this season. You can't have it both ways...they did a hell of a job getting these guys performing on a short season with no bye.
I didn't talk about Harris earlier because it's ridiculous to even consider a rookie a "bust" in his rookie season when he's starting and contributing every game. But this sort of goes back to our "horrible line" that's putting out better metrics than anyone in the NFL- if you want to see a sucky line, then that's what you're going to see regardless. But it's an illusion because the tapes, numbers and performance doesn't lie- we have had two outstanding drafts in a row and young players are contributing.
What you're saying just isn't there though- we have a complete offense with Tannehill and we're not too darn far off on defense if we can control the clock. That's the other thing you ignored here....we got slaughtered the first ten weeks in time of possession. That's certainly on the defense to some degree and the stupid penalties definitely didn't help matters. But when you're asked to log more than double the snaps of the offense? We all know that someone is going to break down and miss a tackle....it's inevitable. And that's been the biggest issue all season- these guys get tired, make dumb mistakes and take stupid penalties.
The only way someone can't see that is if they simply refuse to- and there's only one person I know here in the history of the forum that has taken that stance so extreme. Even though I thought that person was certifiably insane, I've always been happy to talk football with them when they actually reference the plays on the field and specific players.
You did that here and I appreciate it...but I have a feeling I know where this conversation will go now that some "misunderstandings" have been cleared up. A sane person would focus on the debate and disprove the stats I provided, while a crazy person would just start crying, "I'm not Dirty!" So let's see what happens.Last edited: Dec 28, 2017ChrisKo, DolphinGreg, Rickysabeast and 1 other person like this. -
I don't know how we got into a game theory steel cage match there for a bit. Everyone knows I was earlier this year on the fire Adam Gase bandwagon and actually shoveling the coal in it's locomotive. With that said, I have been deeply contemplating the ramifications of firing him. I don't see a better coach available. Yes, I think Gase is a little too emomoody and think there should have been a better plan in place at QB going into TC. I also think he should have known about his OL Coach and I think Burk was a bad decision for promotion to DC based upon his unit's total failure last year (injuries happen). I place the blame for those three things squarely on Gase. Ok so that's three big strikes. But, you can't expect perfection from someone that is in only year two of their HC career I think Gase has learned a lot this year and with no hot alternative, I think we ride the Gase train into next year.
In the offseason we need to upgrade our QB roster. Move up and snag the top post combine QB and give T-Hill mega competition. We need to trade/cut Parker and bring in a replacement and keep hunting for an all world DE (I get Harris is improving and it's year one but we do need depth as Cam is about done) -
I don't think we need to get rid of Parker. You keep him, and see what he wants for a contract. If he wants big money, he's gone, but if ways reasonable money, you keep him as a 2 or a 3. Maybe give him an incentive based contract.
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The main thing to understand here from my view is that Tannehill’s presence this year would have very likely done nothing to improve the Dolphins’ pass defense, owing to the fact that the correlation between offensive and defensive passer rating within the same team in the NFL is almost nil.
In other words, Tannehill would have very likely helped the team win 2 to 3 more games this year, due to how much better he would have played than Cutler, but the performance of the pass defense would have still placed a relatively low ceiling on the record the team could have achieved.resnor likes this.
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