walter football is a joke

 

At this time of the year the fans of every NFL team believe their team will make the playoffs and possibly win the SB. All I know is that Tannebaum, Grier, and Gase are going into year three together and they have built the team they wanted by signing older veterans while getting rid of three of their best players.

They are 100% responsible for the players which will be on the 2018 roster. So if they end up picking
anywhere in the top 10 of the 2019 draft, hopefully none of these individuals will be around during that draft.

Anything less than a spot in the playoffs will be considered a complete failure by the front office and coaching staff, IMO.

 

Walter Football is useful. They gather links, organize them, and do a pretty good job of laying out who the best college players are in a very deep way.

However, they absolutely HATE the Miami Dolphins, and have for the years that I've visited the site. They always, always think that the Fins suck and hate whoever our QB is. No matter what the team does, its wrong in their eyes, or at the very least they frame it as if the team got lucky like a blind squirrel finding nuts. That's been the case since Sparano was the head coach. My guess is that they're either Patriot or Jets fans.

 

The local view is much different than the national view. Our locals here see how hard our guys are working, the national people not so much. They focus more on what they think they see on paper. One of the podcasts I listen to is the audible. Yes, he works for the Dolphins, but I believe Bokamper is pretty honest about what he sees. For example, the other day he said he thought Tunsil was a little too heavy. Tunsil has struggled, so it's not surprise that he might be a guy who is out of shape. Another thing is Bokamper and others understand that this is a process. Guys need time to learn and process the offense or defensive system. Take that along with developing chemistry with your teammates and we should all understand it's not going to happen over night. Right now, I am most concerned with how guys are working. If they are lazy and are putting other interests first over football then I don't have high hopes for them.

 

Problem with broad-view/general sports commentary is that they have to spread their time around and can't dig deep where it doesn't get clicks. An overall cursory view is that the Dolphins didn't do well last year, lost a number of the big-name players and now are getting back our two-time injured, "nothing special" QB. Essentially, we've regressed in terms of talent with a liability at QB.

Meanwhile the Browns, those perennial bottom-of-the-NFL-barrel dwellers, got Landry, Taylor and MAYFIELD. So they're not finishing in last place....

At least, that's the theory, right?

 

they havent been wrong about that tho

 

Some people might consider it to be splitting hairs, but it frustrates me when the national media says that the Fins have a 3 win quality team when they actually end up being a 6-9 win team. And that happens a lot, in a lot of different places. Just because the team doesn't make the playoffs doesn't mean that they are awful. Lots of shades of grey.

Walterfootball year after year says that the team is worse than they actually are. Over and over. That's not being objective, and it is simply being wrong.

 

I personally like when the media says we'll win three games and the team ends up winning ten. It doesn't hurt me one bit but proves that they're stupid....why get mad about that?

LOL, it's not nice to hate people just because they're stupid. =)

 

A few reasons. Firstmost, I just expect more from the national media. Its one thing for a beat writer for a team like the Seahawks or Cardinals not to know much about the Fins. That I expect. But when its someone's freaking job to know about the NFL and write about the teams, they should do a better job than a lot of them actually do.

Secondly, it just frankly feels good to have positive pieces written about the Fins. I read a lot about football, and seeing positive, while still realistic, things written about the team brings my spirits up all summer. Even if they're just as simple as saying that the Fins are one of a number of teams in the AFC that will be fighting for two Wild Card spots (reality), that certainly feels better than some numbskull saying that they'll go 2-14.

And lastly, dealing with that crap year after year has gotten so tiresome. They've been beating on us, ragging on the Fins relentlessly - generally without merit, for far too long. The Fins are my hobby, and main interest outside of my immediate family. It just wears on me.

 

I completely agree with you, but we can also flip this conversation around and ask why you're reading reviews from people who obviously know a lot less about our team than you do. We know they're hacks, we know that they're always going to brag on popular teams like NE and Dallas because it gets more views, and we know that they never apologize when they end up being 100% wrong.

Like I said, they can't help being stupid leeches of the journalism world- that' what they're paid to do. You can certainly choose not to read it though and avoid ruining your afternoons. I fully understand where you're coming from but if you know they're going to trash us and you read it anyway, that's your own fault. So just don't read it.

 

Part of it is just routine. I've been reading preseason magazines since I started high school in 1991. Its long been a yearly ritual, and one that I often enjoy. Beyond that, its not as if this or that national sports site has been acting this way. Its all of them. So, the choice is often to read what there is or nothing at all, and I'm not going to tune out of the NFL all summer. Heck, not usually even for a week.

Plus, the Fins local writers almost all suck, so there's nothing to be gained there either. Several are basically openly opposed to the team anyways.

 

I can't disagree with anything you said, I'll read a lot of that stuff as well and instantly regret it. I do keep a mental list of NFL idiots though and if they write a really bad piece, I won't read them again. Or sometimes I'll send a letter to their editor pointing out how incompetent they are, possibly opening the door to legal action against the publication for slander. I'm just an a-hole like that though and enjoy calling lazy people out on that kind of stuff.

 

“If everybody is crazy? You’re the one who is insane”

Hope that’s not us

 

It looks like they have predictions from 2008-2017 at this link (with different years):
http://walterfootball.com/offseason2017playoffs.php

Their predictions for the Dolphins were:
2008: predicted 2 wins.. we actually won 11 games
2009: predicted 5 wins.. we won 7 games
2010: predicted 11 wins.. we won 7
2011: predicted 3 wins.. we won 6
2012: predicted 3 wins.. we won 7
2013: predicted 8 wins.. we won 8
2014: predicted 6 wins.. we won 8
2015: predicted 10 wins.. we won 6
2016: predicted 4 wins.. we won 10
2017: predicted 7 wins.. we won 6

On average, from 2008-2017 they predicted we'd win 1.7 fewer games than we actually did with the mean absolute discrepancy being 3.5 wins. However, those stats are much better from 2013-2017: they're only off by -0.6 games on average and the mean absolute discrepancy is 2.6.

So maybe they're not that biased against the Dolphins in recent (last 5) years.

 

The one thing that stands out to me is that every time they predicted a losing season, we drastically overachieved in every instance except 2014....where we only beat their prediction by 2 games. In other words, the worse they believe we'll be, the better we actually end up doing.

So picking us in last place is actually confirmation that we're winning the Super Bowl folks, just sayin'.

 

Since there is no voting stuff like this does not really matter

 

lol.. yeah there's definitely a decent sized negative correlation of -0.452.

Here's a graph + equation that summarizes things:

 

Thanks a lot cbrad. That really helped.

 

Well, they've certainly gone way under enough for it to be consistantly negative, but its the commentary that's been truly insulting.

 

I take it there's not much to do in troy va

 

Less than nothing! I didn't grow up here though. Where I lived as a kid in West Virginia was even more boring, lol. :lol:

 

I'm in richmond

 

Very cool. Good to meet someone hear nearby! I worked in Richmond from 2006-2011, after originally moving from WV to Charlottesville in 2004 for work. I transferred back to C'Ville when my first daughter was born. For a long time, my wife and I lived halfway between the cities and would go to both to shop, eat, go to movies, ect. But we're moving into a new house closer to C'Ville this month, and its now a 45 minute drive to Short Pump instead of 30, so we've been heading down that way less and less.

 

Sorry do not go on Walter Football. Nor do I plan on it.

 

Walter Football, unfortunately, has been reduced to a Jekyll & Hyde act. Charlie Campbell's and Tony Pauline's reporting gets tarnished by Walt's hot takes through his write ups. Hell, you can just follow Pauline without going on the site and not be more worse for the wear come draft season.

 

fake insiders fake sources

reminds me of a site I used to be on

 

Was it ever better than that? I've been following them since 2008 or so, and its always been pretty much the same.

 

We have the 10th worst win percentage of the last 9 years. How dare they disrespect this juggernaut of a team.

 

Well they are the site that gave the team a C+ draft grade despite 4 of the first 5 draft picks having an A- to B grade. So they are basically knocking us down for Cornell Armstrong #dontknowhowtograde

http://walterfootball.com/offseason2018mia.php

 

Back in 2002, my editor at Yahoo Sports asked me to write a draft critique on the Fins. I spent about six hours on the report and he liked it so much, he asked me to do the Bengals and the Seahawks as well. They had me write various draft reports for the next several years as well, so believe me when I say that you need to take this stuff with a grain of salt.

Anyone who knows me here knows that I do not follow college football and can't tell you anything about the upcoming draft class- but I can read a bunch of other opinions and throw it together to make an interesting article. That's what 90% of the news outlets out there do with these pieces- it's not one guy studying for months and scrutinizing every possible player to give a complete assessment. In most cases, these are $100 assignments that an editor wants on his desk within 24-36 hours. So the writer does as much homework as possible across the span of a few hours and then he starts writing.

Personally, I always tried to find a highly positive scouting report and a highly negative one to present both sides of the coin, but that doesn't mean every writer follows the same pattern. I'll freely admit that I spent much less time researching the Bengals and Seahawks that year because I simply didn't care about their teams. I could have given an A or an F and it meant absolutely nothing to me- that's where most of these "journalists" are coming from when they give a grade.

Their only goal is collecting a paycheck and producing something that will get them another assignment, so as fans you absolutely can't take this stuff seriously. The truth is that our 1st rounder Fitzpatrick may never play a single down in the NFL and could wash out entirely....it happens with highly coveted players every single year and there's simply no way to know. Injury, maturity, personal issues, etc...there's a million reasons players wash out and just as many reasons why a 7th rounder becomes a HOF lock.

So again, take this stuff with a grain of salt from a person who's actually written dozens of reports for a once respectable media outlet. This stuff means much less to the writers than it means to you and the honest ones will tell you that they have no idea what they're talking about. Anyone who says they know exactly how a 4th round pick will develop in 3 years is a complete moron...there's just no way to know. So how can you possibly give a fair grade on that player before he ever plays a single snap? It's impossible.

 

That's good insight, man. But as someone who takes the NFL very seriously 365 days a year, its hard not to want to read some high quality, deep insight from people who are paid to write on it. It does seem that the system is very broken from the point of the fan, though.

 

Besides freak injury, some folks can project better than others.. it’s called being a good GM/ scout, overall you will have hits and misses but the game is to be more accurate overall than the other guys..

 

Thank you for being honest about what takes place in the industry. I was able to get one of our local beat writers to admit that instead of looking at the facts and seeing where that takes you, another strategy is start with the ending you want and then find sources to support it. With so many so-called experts and opinions out there, it shouldn't be much of a challenge to find someone to support what you want negatively or positively.

 

Headline should read...

Wow...zero respect for walter football.

 

It's a draft site and Charlie is top five at his mocks. I remember SonsofShula scoffing at me for suggesting we could get Asiata in the fifth.

I've never sensed anything personal with that site. They just take the most general perception of the media and go from there.

But be warned, Charlie's early mocks look insane. Then, with the grounding force of Walter Scully, he manages to nail it in the final week.

 

I completely agree with you- but you have to look at it from the writer's perspective. I'll pay you $125 to write me a 1,500 word summary of the Carolina Panther's draft this year- how much time are you going to spend on it getting the best possible facts? If you want to feed your family, it's going to be a 1-day assignment where you do your best and then move on.

Walter Football pays a fraction of that amount with a "quantity over quality" approach. ESPN may pay $600-800 for that same piece, which could be very good or very bad. For someone like me or Travis, we might spend a week on it. But if a celebrity analyst or retired player writes it, he's going to knock out some notes in about 30 minutes and then pass it to an editor to make it a real news piece. That's why even major news outlets sometimes deliver crap these days.

The key for you is to find those outlets where people are actually allowed to be journalists- not celebrity writers and not a writing grunt knocking out 10k words a week. They become rarer and rarer each year as companies try to make a buck in the digital era and fail miserably with spam ads and shady tactics.

Who are the truly reputable ones with awesome standards? I have no idea....I just read Travis and others here. Over 90% that comes across my other news feeds is either garbage or stuff we already know. I agree with you- it sucks. But real journalism is dying more and more daily.

By the way, I haven't written professionally on the Fins for almost a decade now. The pay is way too low compared to other industries and the expectations are way too high. The only reason people choose that path these days is because they love it, and they spend most of their career trying to cover teams they actually care about. Most never get there, which is why there's so much turnover.

 

Wow! That is very interesting. I guess I never really thought about how the industry works. I could be wrong but, considering what I will call the new information (or is that disinformation, LOL?) age, just getting something out there, even if it is crap, may be better than nothing. With so many alternatives, maybe the goal is visibility because it keeps you somewhat relevant and the money coming in.

 

Take the negative comments, stick them on the team meeting room walls and start & end each meeting with "this is what they think of you, go & stick it to them" to fire them up.