Ryan Tannehill

"The Guy wrote:

He’s definitely played at an elite level during this stretch of games. The questions now become 1) what are the reasons for that, and 2) for how long can it be sustained. The fact that he’s playing at that level, in itself, answers neither of those questions.

Actually it does answer one of those questions. If he played at an elite level, then during that period of time he was elite!

"The Guy wrote:

The question for me is whether Brady’s performance in 2018 was significantly different from his own career average, not from the average in the league.

No, the only year in Brady's career that is statistically significant is 2007 with a p-value of 0.0083. Exclude 2007 and no year is statistically significant: p-value is 0.0784. Also, so it's clear, when I said "statistically significant" in the post you quoted I meant statistically significant relative to Brady's own career ratings, not league average (the z-scores themselves are the only relations to league average).

"cuchulainn wrote:

Dude, go back to your pint and call me "RONG" when he's played at the top 5 level for multiple seasons, including playoffs and taken teams to the AFCC or SB. I'd welcome it. Till then, just bide you time and don't entrench on untenable positions. The only guy who's going to prove anyone right or "RONG" is Tannehill himself.

I like Ryan Tannehill as much as the next guy, and think he was screwed over from the start by Philbin, but we've seen him play at a high level for spurts in the past. That doesn't make him elite as a pro, nor for his career, but I'm enjoying his success in TN and hope it continues.

As for arguing that well the beat writers and media said so... LMGDAO. These are the same clowns that called him a "bust" a few years ago, said "he can't throw deep", labelled him a "coach killer", and heavily blamed him for things that went wrong in Miami under Philbin and Gase. They can fk right off.

So many words with so little meaning. If someone plays at an elite level, then they were elite players during that period of time.

If you are looking for an "all time great" kind of status, then pick a word that has that meaning.

Spek Engrish, use a damn dictionary Mr. RONG.

"The Guy wrote:

The question for me is whether Brady’s performance in 2018 was significantly different from his own career average, not from the average in the league.

It seems unlikely that a player who has been near the top of the league his entire career seemingly would be jumped by a bunch of other QB while still playing to the level of excellence he set himself.

I'm not saying it's impossible and I am interested in your question being answered as well, but logically it wouldnt make sense to me to work that way.

I suspect you actually believe that. I'll take it into account as I read your spewing.

"AGuyNamedAlex wrote:

It seems unlikely that a player who has been near the top of the league his entire career seemingly would be jumped by a bunch of other QB while still playing to the level of excellence he set himself.

I'm not saying it's impossible and I am interested in your question being answered as well, but logically it wouldnt make sense to me to work that way.

I don’t think you can make a case for a player’s irreversible decline in performance without using the comparison of his current performance and his typical performance to make the case. Assuming a sufficiently long career, his career average is his most typical performance.

If the player is still performing within the range of how he typically performs, you can hardly make the case that he is irreversibly declining.

"Stringer Bell wrote:

Jared Goff played at an elite level for a while. Playing at an elite level does not necessarily make you elite. Consistently playing at an elite level makes you elite.

Playing at an elite level ALWAYS makes you elite during that time.

Consistently playing at an elite level makes you one of the all time best. Those two things are different. Don't use the word elite if you mean consistently one of the best. It doesn't get the job done!

"Irishman wrote:

I suspect you actually believe that. I'll take it into account as I read your spewing.

Have you noticed that you’re the only person here who is insulting others?

"The Guy wrote:

I don’t think you can make a case for a player’s irreversible decline in performance without using the comparison of his current performance and his typical performance to make the case. Assuming a sufficiently long career, his career average is his most typical performance.

If the player is still performing within the range of how he typically performs, you can hardly make the case that he is irreversibly declining.

That is fair enough, but either way you can say his play compared to his peers is declining and that is kind of what matters at the end of the day.

When you eliminate the impossible, what ever remains, however unlikely must be the truth...

Tennessee is 6-1 with Tannehill as their QB and Tannehill leads the league in passer rating.

Bottom line, he’s as good as many of us defenders said he was

"Irishman wrote:

It made him elite while he played at an elite level.

Go back and review the meaning of the word elite. It is not defined as an all time great, which is the conceptual argument you are making against his being an elite player.

He was at one time an elite player as even you had referenced.

So Chad Henne is an elite QB because he played elite at times?

"Irishman wrote:

So many words with so little meaning. If someone plays at an elite level, then they were elite players during that period of time.

If you are looking for an "all time great" kind of status, then pick a word that has that meaning.

Spek Engrish, use a damn dictionary Mr. RONG.

Dude, no one said anything different. Not one person said anything about all time great. Don't strawman.

A "period of time" means the same as "stretch of games", "spurts" and "handful of games". In other words he's never sustained an elite level of play for an entire season, so not "rong".

Maybe next year.

And telling some to use a dictionary on a football forum is pretty rich.

"The_Dark_Knight wrote:

When you eliminate the impossible, what ever remains, however unlikely must be the truth...

Tennessee is 6-1 with Tannehill as their QB and Tannehill leads the league in passer rating.

Bottom line, he’s as good as many of us defenders said he was

I can’t tell if any of that means that he will play at this level consistently, or whether his performance is attributable to internal or external factors or both. People’s historical positions regarding Tannehill have been based on some combination of the foregoing.

We’re going to need a whole lot more time before anybody’s position regarding Ryan Tannehill can be deemed correct, unless one’s position was that he could play at an elite level for a stretch of six games and that we won’t be able to determine the cause(s) of that with any certainty.

"Stringer Bell wrote:

So Chad Henne is an elite QB because he played elite at times?

Yes, he was elite while he played at an elite level.

Let me use a non-football example to clarify my position using the root word "fast" in place of elite.

A runner had the fastest one mile time ever recorded during the spring of 1950. At that time he was the fastest miler in the world. Since then that record time has been beaten many times.

He still was the fastest miler in the world at that time. He was elite

He is no longer the fastest miler in the world. He is no longer elite. That doesn't take away from the time he was the fastest miler in the world and was elite.

If you want to argue for good performance over a long period of time you need another word, or better yet, another category in able to make the comparisons you want.

At one time he was the fastest; now that speed might not even qualify you in a competitive mile race.

"Irishman wrote:

Yes, he was elite while he played at an elite level.

Let me use a non-football example to clarify my position using the root word "fast" in place of elite.

A runner had the fastest one mile time ever recorded during the spring of 1950. At that time he was the fastest miler in the world. Since then that record time has been beaten many times.

He still was the fastest miler in the world at that time. He was elite

He is no longer the fastest miler in the world. He is no longer elite. That doesn't take away from the time he was the fastest miler in the world and was elite.

If you want to argue for good performance over a long period of time you need another word, or better yet, another category in able to make the comparisons you want.

At one time he was the fastest; now that speed might not even qualify you in a competitive mile race.

Really don't want to get into splitting hairs or arguing semantics, but in this case, it really sounds like you're redefining the term to suite your own opinion.

The word fast isn't even in the same category of terms. It's an adjective used to describe motion. "Elite" IS the term for a select group of people or things, and widely accepted for those players who sustain a high level of play over a period of years and who have actual accomplishments in the post season. The very word itself exists to differentiate those people or things from other categories.

Otherwise, it's just a guy playing at a high level, and most would agree that Tannehill is playing at a high level. Literally no one here though, apart from you, is calling him elite, while all are in agreement that he's currently playing at that level.

IF he carries this level of play into the post season (IF they make it), and IF he's able to do it for a full season next year, then sure, you may have a case for that. Lot of IFs and unknowns, but I don't think anyone is rooting against him. It'd actually be ironic to see him succeed and make it to the post season and beyond a year after Miami ditched him.

"cuchulainn wrote:

Really don't want to get into splitting hairs or arguing semantics, but in this case, it really sounds like you're redefining the term to suite your own opinion.

The word fast isn't even in the same category of terms. It's an adjective used to describe motion. "Elite" IS the term for a select group of people or things, and widely accepted for those players who sustain a high level of play over a period of years and who have actual accomplishments in the post season. The very word itself exists to differentiate those people or things from other categories.

Otherwise, it's just a guy playing at a high level, and most would agree that Tannehill is playing at a high level. Literally no one here though, apart from you, is calling him elite, while all are in agreement that he's currently playing at that level.

IF he carries this level of play into the post season (IF they make it), and IF he's able to do it for a full season next year, then sure, you may have a case for that. Lot of IFs and unknowns, but I don't think anyone is rooting against him. It'd actually be ironic to see him succeed and make it to the post season and beyond a year after Miami ditched him.

What I hear you saying here is that the term “elite” indicates something dispositional and stable, versus something situational and unstable.

"The Guy wrote:

What I hear you saying here is that the term “elite” indicates something dispositional and stable, versus something situational and unstable.

You were "that guy" in class, weren't you? :shifty:

"cbrad wrote:

Yeah you really need to learn about continuous distributions. I don't think you understand what that is. You said "average" is defined as a rating of 91. Like I said.. the probability of randomly choosing precisely a 91 rating from an infinite number of possible ratings is 0%.

So.. here are your probabilities GIVEN your definitions for "average" and "above average":

4 out of 5 "average" AND 1 in 5 "above average" = 0%
3 out of 5 "average" AND 2 in 5 "above average" = 0%
2 out of 5 "average" AND 3 in 5 "above average" = 0%
1 out of 5 "average" AND 4 in 5 "above average" = 0%
5 out of 5 above average = 3.12%

And the reason the first 4 are 0% is because it's 0% probability of getting a rating of "average" according to your definition.

Anyway, if you don't understand that you need to first read up on probabilities with continuous distributions. There's no point in continuing the discussion until you do that because this is apparently a completely alien concept for you and your intuition doesn't apply at all.

Is it just semantics we are arguing at this point? I feel like statistics can tell us the likely hood of Tannehill having 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 games above 91 QB rating in a 5 game stretch. and I don't believe the answer to 4 of those equations are 0%. If you are trying to stick it to me cause I used a term average when I shouldn't have... great... I guess...

So if someone paid you for an analysis for just the 5 games wanting to know how rare a QB like Tannehill having 4 out of 5 games above 91 QB rating while also posting a 111 QB rating avg across that same time, would you actually send them an answer of all 0%?

Anybody else want to give me what you think the statistical probability of that is? If Tannehill was the perfect middle I would expect something like:

0=3% 1=16% 2 = 31% 3 = 31% 4 = 16% 5 = 3%

So we are dealing with about 20% that qualify for the 1st part, and we then would need a calculation of that 20% how many would have a QB rating > then 111.

The reason I would use both numbers of games above 91 rating and average QB rating is that I would assume this helps confirm confidence in the rating to not be thrown out of sync with an outlier. For example if a QB has an average rating of 111, but it is based on 2 strangely high games, vs 3 sub par games, then the overall stat becomes considerably less impressive.

I fully except that a different QB might skew the percentages a little bit, but I don't think Tannehill's average here as a Dolphin would skew it too much.

Really team is thriving and glad Ryan found a home and where he can have it to his liking!

"The Guy wrote:

He’s definitely played at an elite level during this stretch of games. The questions now become 1) what are the reasons for that, and 2) for how long can it be sustained. The fact that he’s playing at that level, in itself, answers neither of those questions.

Actually the first part of your post was all I really cared about getting you to state. Some of your posts seemed like you weren't giving him the credit for what he was doing on the field. Its completely fair to have more of a "wait and see mentality" for elite discussion.

Of course there were a lot of other arguments that have been made on these forums that will be more easily provable.

such as:

He can't lead a team to the playoffs
He is a backup QB that nobody wants
He is already worse then "insert last years rookie here" and its provable
He can't win without having the perfect surroundings
He doesn't process things quick enough to be good in the NFL
He will never break the top 10 list of QB
He doesn't elevate the players around him
He falls apart during big games
He falls apart against good defenses
He can't play well in stretch.
He will never win a playoff game.

and a couple hundred more. I think his current play should at least be turning heads, and making people start to consider giving him a clean slate and letting him prove it to them again.

And did I mention he has been really really fun to watch?

"Phins_to_Win wrote:

So if someone paid you for an analysis for just the 5 games wanting to know how rare a QB like Tannehill having 4 out of 5 games above 91 QB rating while also posting a 111 QB rating avg across that same time, would you actually send them an answer of all 0%?

For that specific question (4 out of 5 games above 91 AND 111 average rating) I'd tell them there's no way to solve it that I know of. If however you restrict it to just 4 out of 5 games above average without requiring that the average rating is 111, then sure that can be solved because that's a binomial probability and it's 15.62%. However, note that the 15.62% is the same whether those 5 ratings were {91.01, 91.01, 91.01, 91.01, 0} or {158.3, 158.3, 158.3, 158.3, 90.9} or ANY OTHER set of possible ratings where 4 out of 5 are technically above average and one is not. Same probability the way you posed the question.

In other words when you try to categorize things the way you're doing you are literally ignoring the actual problem at hand and removing all the information that would tell us whether what Tannehill is doing is statistically significant or not. Your question is simply wrong!!

The way to answer these questions is precisely how I answered them in post #771:
https://www.thephins.com/threads/titans-to-start-ryan-tannehill.94693/page-20#post-3227692

As of right now what Tannehill has done in Tennessee is both statistically significant relative to his Miami years (meaning the Miami years + random variation cannot explain the Tennessee games) AND it's statistically significant on a year-by-year basis: not all years are consistent with the hypothesis they come from the same QB (have the same mean + random variation).

The tests to use are the 2 sample t-test with unequal sample sizes and ANOVA, with both applied to adjusted ratings. There's no more I can tell you dude. You keep asking meaningless questions no matter how intuitive they may seem to you. And no this isn't a semantics issue per se. It's an issue of not understanding probabilities with continuous distributions.

Here’s something interesting in my opinion.

If we toss Tannehill’s first game for Tennessee aside, his average passer rating over his other six games for Tennessee has been 122.2.

There was another quarterback earlier this century who changed teams from one year to the next, and he posted an average passer rating of 112.1 over his first six games with the new team, likewise tossing his first game for that team aside.

Why is that meaningful?

Because as Tannehill has done it, the average passer rating in the league has been roughly 91; when the other quarterback did it, the average passer rating in the league was 78.3.

Four of the other quarterback’s five games featured passer ratings greater than 100, which he had achieved only 12% of the time in his previous 84 games.

Similarly, four of Tannehill’s six games featured a passer rating of 112 or greater (adjusting for era here), which he had achieved 17% of the time in his previous 89 games.

So what we see here is that there is a quarterback who changed teams from one year to the next, following a career of similar duration and quality to Tannehill’s, and then performed strikingly similarly to Tannehill during a similar number of games with his new team.

Would anyone like to venture a guess who that other quarterback is?

"The Guy wrote:

Would anyone like to venture a guess who that other quarterback is?

Pure guess here- Drew Brees?

"KeyFin wrote:

Pure guess here- Drew Brees?

Good guess.

Jake Plummer.

"The Guy wrote:

Good guess.

Jake Plummer.

I have been a long time supporter of Tannehill here, but that is an excellent point. He has to convert this stretch of 6 good games to 10 good games plus some good games in the playoffs before we should jump on any bandwagons.