Draft Winds - Ryan Tannehill

[Conuficus]

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/spor...down_ryan.html

There were supposed to be 2 videos, but they are not there. I'll contact Dave to see if he can drop them in.

Before moving on to looking at what Ryan does and doesn’t do well I thought it might be a good idea to have a look at how the offense is spread out while he was the quarterback. I charted four games; Texas, Baylor, Iowa State and Arkansas. I broke the throws down into the following categories – Screens, 5 yards and under, 10 yards and under, 15 yards and under, 20 yards and under and finally 25 yards plus. I took note of how often Tannehill was asked to operate under center or out of the shotgun. I also only recorded the yardage of each pass only to where the receiver caught the ball. Any yardage gained by the receiver afterwards I disregarded as I did not feel it was relevant in determining the distance the ball actually travelled through the air. The information is as such:

Screens: 15/19 (78.9%) with 1 TD and 1 INT. Ryan Tannehill operated out of the shotgun on 12 of the 19 throws (63.2%).

Five Yards and Under: 23/44 (52.3%) with 4 TD and 0 INT. Ryan Tannehill operated out of the shotgun on 24 of the 44 throws (54.5%).

Ten Yards and Under: 16/31 (51.6%) with 1 TD and 1 INT. Ryan Tannehill operated out of the shotgun on 16 of the 31 throws (51.6%).

FIfteen Yards and Under: 24/38 (63.2%) with 2 TD and 0 INT. Ryan Tannehill operated out of the shotgun on 16 of the 38 throws (42.1%).

Twenty Yards and Under: 4/9 (44.4%) with 0 TD and 0 INT. Ryan Tannehill operated out of the shotgun on 7 of the 9 throws (77.8%).

Twenty Yards Plus: 3/24 (12.5%) with 2 TD and 2 INT. Ryan Tannehill operated out of the shotgun on 19 of the 24 throws (79.2%).

Overall Ryan operated out of the shotgun on 94 of 165 total throws, or 56.97% of the time, he threw 6 of his 10 touchdowns and 2 of his 4 interceptions while operating out of the shotgun. Ninety-four of his 165 throws (including screens) were 10 yards or under, or 56.97%. Nineteen of his 165 throws were screen passes, or 11.52%. Twenty-six of of 165 throws utilized play action, or 15.76%. Ryan Tannehill completed 15/26 pass utilizing play action, or 57.69%.

[Yetanotherfan]

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/spor...down_ryan.html

There were supposed to be 2 videos, but they are not there. I'll contact Dave to see if he can drop them in.

Nice work Con ... Gonna read for sure!!

[jdang307]

Awesome read. Judging by those stats, is it safe to say ... he wasn't all that great with the deep ball>?

[Conuficus]

Awesome read. Judging by those stats, is it safe to say ... he wasn't all that great with the deep ball>?

Thanks.

To be honest I don't think he's very accurate with it. Some of it may be mechanics as his arm slot varies, but he would put balls out of bounds, underthrow them or basically put the ball in spots that I wouldn't describe as ideal. He didn't always give his man a chance to make a play, but, mind you his receivers didn't always help either. But, honestly it needs work as it is an issue moving forward.

And, I hate to say it, but that part of his game along with the propensity to put the ball half a beat behind where it should be does remind me of Chad Henne. Not much else does, but those two things stick out to me.

[Lloyd Heilbrunn]

I assume Five Yards and Under equals 1 to 5 yards, and Ten Yards and Under equals 6 to 10 yards etc?

Or did you intend to include the former in the latter as it reads.....?

[Fin-Omenal]

Great article, looks like Miami is looking at CB a little more than many of us thought.

[Conuficus]

How did I include the former into the latter? I don't think it reads that way, (it certainly wasn't meant to) there are different sections each pass can fall into. They are divided by 5 yard incriments and it only refers to the length of the pass itself, not any YAC involved.

5 yards and under refers to any throw in that range that isn't a screen pass. 10 yards and under refers to 6-10 yards. If they were connected together it would be easier to just do 10 yards and under, but I wanted to separate them into different lengths as the passes are different. If the pass was a shade over 5 yards say, it went into the 10 yards and under category.

None of the numbers are combined unless we are talking about in reference to his total number of passes for the 4 games I listed.

[Destroyer]

I dont think he's worth the 8th pick.

[Lloyd Heilbrunn]

How did I include the former into the latter? I don't think it reads that way, (it certainly wasn't meant to) there are different sections each pass can fall into..

Because 10 yards and Under can also mean 1 to 10 yards, which is inclusive of Five Yards and Under. I guessed you did not mean that from the numbers but it was somewhat ambigious.....


Thanks for the hard work though!!!

[ToddsPhins]

Con, with Tannehill having limited experience at QB, how much of his deep ball accuracy issues do you feel rests on lack of repetition?

What I'm saying is, with Ryan being inexperienced and playing "catch up" at the position, wouldn't coach Sherman want him working more on specific aspects of his game to get him up to speed [at the expense of the vertical game], namely the 15 yard and under throws that are the staple of his offense? That's what I'd think at least.


Great write up by the way, brother.

[Conuficus]

Con, with Tannehill having limited experience at QB, how much of his deep ball accuracy issues do you feel rests on lack of repetition?

What I'm saying is, with Ryan being inexperienced and playing "catch up" at the position, wouldn't coach Sherman want him working more on specific aspects of his game to get him up to speed [at the expense of the vertical game], namely the 15 yard and under throws that are the staple of his offense? That's what I'd think at least.


Great write up by the way, brother.

Thanks. I try.

I don't know about that, but given that he was likely throwing a ball as well sitting in on meetings I find it doubtful that he didn't throw the deep ball at all. It just seems odd that that would happen given the other work being done. What I mean is why work hard on everything else but exclude that, when all signs point to Ryan being a hard working detail oriented kind of player. Just seems like that would a big oversight.

Hey, you could be right, I can't say you're definitely wrong by any means, but I think that his mechanical issues (arm slot) will only be magnified as the throw is longer. Because being a just off on a short throw is a lot easier to hide - shorter distance to travel means any trajectory or aiming issues will be minimized - compared to when you throw 25 yards down the field. If you're a little off at the start, you'll be way off at the end. There's just more time and distance involved which allows for any variances to show up as in the end the affect of such inconsistencies will be magnified.

Basically if the ball is off by 2 inches at the start, it's going to be more than that at the end of the throw. What the ratio is in terms of how exponential the distance will increase on a longer throw but I can't see it getting more accurate if you're off at the start.

If you like baseball look at A. J. Burnett throw, he can't find the same arm slot and watch what it does to some of his pitches - he'll be over a foot off target from just 60 feet away.

[Conuficus]

Because 10 yards and Under can also mean 1 to 10 yards, which is inclusive of Five Yards and Under. I guessed you did not mean that from the numbers but it was somewhat ambigious.....


Thanks for the hard work though!!!

Thanks.

See here's the thing if I do 5 yards and under and then 6-10 yards where would a 5.5 yard pass fall? It isn't 6 yards long and its over 5 yards. One throw you can kind of fudge, but when you're dealing with 165 of them, fudging means you're likely way off on any information you'll gleam from that examination.

Plus as you can see one section can see a big variance in completion percentage, lumping them together would only indicate that someone had issues, or success at that length and would hide some inefficiency or efficiency as the numbers would be blended.

[ToddsPhins]

Thanks. I try.

I don't know about that, but given that he was likely throwing a ball as well sitting in on meetings I find it doubtful that he didn't throw the deep ball at all. It just seems odd that that would happen given the other work being done. What I mean is why work hard on everything else but exclude that, when all signs point to Ryan being a hard working detail oriented kind of player. Just seems like that would a big oversight.

Hey, you could be right, I can't say you're definitely wrong by any means, but I think that his mechanical issues (arm slot) will only be magnified as the throw is longer. Because being a just off on a short throw is a lot easier to hide - shorter distance to travel means any trajectory or aiming issues will be minimized - compared to when you throw 25 yards down the field. If you're a little off at the start, you'll be way off at the end. There's just more time and distance involved which allows for any variances to show up as in the end the affect of such inconsistencies will be magnified.

Basically if the ball is off by 2 inches at the start, it's going to be more than that at the end of the throw. What the ratio is in terms of how exponential the distance will increase on a longer throw but I can't see it getting more accurate if you're off at the start.

If you like baseball look at A. J. Burnett throw, he can't find the same arm slot and watch what it does to some of his pitches - he'll be over a foot off target from just 60 feet away.

I was a pitcher and QB for a bit so I completely understand what you're saying. That's why I'm wondering if much of his deep ball stuff was simply from lack of reps. I didn't mean to say that Sherman & Tannehill didn't practice the vertical game; I'm just thinking they took away from some of those reps in order to spend more on the aspect of the game that would be utilized the most (short to intermediate). In the games you charted, he had 132 passes from 15 yards and under compared to 33 passes of 16 yards plus. So, 80% of his pass attempts were in the 15 yard and under range. With an inexperienced QB, I'd think you'd want him as sound as possible in that 80% range, which might mean taking reps away from the vertical game to help get him up to speed faster.

What you're saying about his mechanics is one reason why I was thinking the above to be true b/c in my eyes there's a noticeable difference between his deep ball mechanics (consistency-wise) compared to the short to intermediate game.

Isn't that what pass rushers do?---- work on and try to master the most important moves before adding to the repertoire?

[gilv13]

This is by far the best article on Tannehill I've read. I appreciate the honest review of the good and the bad. I am in agreement a lot of the bad can be corrected through coaching and time. If he puts the time in to improve on these areas, he could be a solid starter for a long time in this league.

I can't remember exactly, but weren't there questions about Aaron Rodgers deep ball accuracy coming out of college as well? I could be wrong about that, but he turned out to be ok.

[jdang307]

This is just one scouting report, but no, his deep ball wasn't an issue.

http://www.draftinsiders.com/node/1288

Jeez reading that thing how did he not go first. Why the draft is such a crap shoot.

The Skinny: Talented junior passer made fast progress over his short starting career and has as much upside as any QB in recent memory. Though he played in a QB friendly system, his production and big game performance is undeniable. He is remarkably similar to Joe Montana in many ways, especially his footwork, accuracy and his ability to take an entire unit’s performance up a level. At the combine, he ran a 4.71 time, had a 34.5” vertical leap and 9’2" broad jump, but did not throw. He has definite NFL starting ability and could become an elite QB within a short time in the right setting. He needs to learn to pick up more sophisticated defensive coverage and how to respond to it. As a collegian, he learned to take what defenses gave him, something few young passers grasped until much later in their career. He is a good athlete with the live arm and intangibles including poise and leadership to become a top flight NFL starter. As a rookie, he may not be ready to start and probably needs some time to learn a system in addition to working with a good supporting cast. He should be the 1st overall pick with the 49ers foolish not to take him there and begin a new era.

[KingMotion]

I know I'm going to enjoy reading this.

[Aqua4Ever04]

I can't wait to read this. But for now, I'm off work and heading to the beach for the weekend (yes, Washington state has a beach.)

Thanks, Con, I know I'll enjoy it.