Except they were good, until injuries forced them to patchwork because they had no depth. We were a team with a lot of holes last year, Hickey had to flesh out a starting roster. There's only so many resources in a given off season. Hickey, more than adequately filled out the starting roster based on the amount of holes there were. He did not, however, have enough resources to fill in the depth.
Again, we have 3 1st rounders and 2 3rd rounders on our OLine with a 4th rounder fighting to earn a starting spot...I think part of the problem is no consistency, let's get these starting five out there starting in training camp(yes,Albert may not be in yet, so it might be Fox at first)and let them build some continuity together....if we can do this and quit shuffling these guys all across the line,then,and only then, can we honestly see what our line looks like...so I hope that we lock in our starting five and just let them build chemistry together and then maybe they can operate like a well oiled machine.
I have taken issue with the way that some of these players have been moved around (ie. Dallas Thomas should never have been a T), but I don't think it's fair to complain that the FO hasn't used enough of resources on the OL. And if we add Mathis (most reports have us as the front runners) then arguably this team might have as many resources spent on the OL as any team in the league.
I think next year we pick CB, T and/or DE in the 1st and 2nd. Gotta find an eventual replacement for Grimes, Albert and/or Wake through the draft. Would help our cap situation out tremendously too in 2016 and beyond if we do!
I never said SUH was a bad investment. I question the timing of a "SUH" and the more pressing need we had on the offensive line. My point has been had we not invested so much money in Suh we could have thrown a lot more at the offensive line bringing in guys like Mathis and maybe a few others. shoring up the line would allow our stars to shine. We probably could have and would have kept Clay. I am not down on SUH and agree he makes the whole team better. My point is we didnt need a guy like him yet. We got more work to do. Timing is off.
didnt see it. So because the dolphins drafted players, except Albert, higher then they should by the logic being used we have invested more then other teams. So we should quit trying to fix the unit only 4th and 5th rounders will be allowed.
Dude, don't miss the forest through the trees. The line will be solid this year, just have the faith.
You guys believe we are going to assert our dominance with these guys????? 1/3 of them are being paid league minimum Mickey Baucus $435.000 Jamil Douglas $435.000 Jason Fox $770,000 Donald Hawkins $510,000 Branden Albert $9,000,000 James Ja waun $803,109 Jeff Likenbauch $745,000 Jaques McClendon $745,000 Dionte Savage $435,000 Dallas Thomas $610,000 Billy Turner $548,750 Aundrey Walker $435,000 JD Walton $750,000 Mike Pouncey $6,000,000 This is trying, the best we can do???
Well, you're saying Suh is a worse investment than fixing up the OL etc.. That's what my post was addressing. I don't see how fixing the OL completely is worth more or less than fixing defensive collapses (esp. run defense) at the end of games. Neither makes us a SB contender, but both make it realistic to make the playoffs. So, I guess I disagree with you that you should only get a guy like Suh if that's the missing piece for a SB run. Keep in mind the guy is here to stay for a long time. We'll build the defense around him like we'll build the offense around Tannehill. I see that as a good move for us right now as well as for the next 5 years.
Teams must determine which positions they think are most important for maximizing wins and how to correctly allocate their cap space amongst the different positions. This study will focus mainly on the compensation and performance of three positions generally thought to be of significant importance to a team’s success. These positions include quarterback, offensive line, and defensive line. These three positions were selected over others for a variety of reasons. First, Borghesi (2008) found a significant relationship team between performance and the compensation of quarterbacks and members of the defensive line. Specifically, there was a link between the number of wins a team accrued during the season and the amount of compensation allocated to these positions. Next, there has been a recent trend to select these positions at a higher frequency in the early stages of the first round of the NFL’s first-year player draft.4 First round draft picks are considered to be one of a team’s most valuable resources because of the ability to select and retain an elite player to build a team around. Therefore, general managers use first round draft picks on positions they think are most important to the success of their team. Examining the frequency of players selected at a specific position is thus a good approach of observing the value management places on certain positions compared to others http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2080&context=cmc_theses Found this interesting
so if def line is a position that correlates to winning then why not get the most dominant guy in the game?.
I don't like what he did at all. I'll explain why because it's actually a nice case study of why you should be careful when people put tables of stats out there without really making sense of the data. In Table 4, he gives the correlations between wins and total amount spent on QB, OL and DL, showing high correlations for QB and DL, but not on OL. So far so good. Now, look at Table 5. He shows the regression coefficients (slopes of the line through the data) if you fit a line between total amount spent on QB, OL and DL (same variables as in table 4) and # of wins. All the coefficients are negative, with the most negative one being that for OL. This means the more you spend, the fewer wins you should expect. OK, here's the problem. Correlation and regression coefficients should tell similar stories. Technically the difference is that correlation is a normalized statistic, taking on values between -1 and 1. This means you lose all information about units, so you no longer know how many units of Y should be expected to increase for each unit of X. The advantage of normalizing is that you now know how good the relationship between the variables is (closer to 1 or -1 means the relation is closer to perfect). Regression coefficients retain information about the units, but they don't tell you how strong the relationship is. In his tables he's got wildly different values for the correlation coefficients and regression coefficients. This is of course certainly a possibility (correlation just looks for a relationship between data, while regression actually fits a line to it), but it requires explanation, and none is provided. It means he hasn't looked at the data closely to see what's really going on, and he doesn't show us the data itself (some nice graphs would help). Also, just in general, one should use regression when one can manipulate some variable. Raw descriptions of data are better handled with correlations. So.. that's the first problem. Second problem is that in Tables 6 and 7 he shows regression coefficients between QB, OL and DL vs. offensive points per game ranking. This idea of using ranking is problematic because you get rid of differences in magnitude between ranks (that is.. difference between rank 1 and 2 = difference between 6 and 7, which is generally not true). Why doesn't he just do it vs. points per game?? Also, this approach is unnecessarily confusing because high rank means the number is smaller (1 is best rank), so you get positive coefficients for all of QB, OL and DL, which means what? It means the more you spend on QB, OL and DL, the worse your expected points per game. Yes, I get it, but why present things that way? Either way, the problem is once again that tables 6 and 7 seem to tell a different story than what you get from table 4. That's all fine if he makes sense of the data, but he's just throwing tons of data out there and claiming the results fit with previous studies that say shouldn't have superstars that get excessive amounts of money on a team. I don't think he's made that case well.
The author is saying the results of his "study" are consistent with those that show you shouldn't overspend on a position.
I know there is a part of the article that says he believes spending more on dline shows that it correlates with better team performance...did he backtrack that statement or did your own findings prove him to be misguided?
Table 3 shows that correlation, and it's pretty high at 0.76. He never goes into how that result fits in with the rest of his analysis, which uses a different statistical technique (regression = fitting a line through data) and shows that the more you spend on QB, DL, OL etc.. the worse you get.
There's to many variables for me to be patient and read thoroughly...good talent evaluating in mid to later rounds offsets a lot of Cap problems.
I think the whole thesis eludes to the more you spend, a team "caps out" so to speak in wins so at some point a team can spend all they want, they are just like every other team in that it boils down to a handful of plays which typically decide who wins and looses. Execution and coaching which are variables not included and ultimately determine who wins and looses. Player skill sets are so close that it makes it difficult to measure if $$$$ paid actually translates into wins and loses. It makes logical sense but is difficult to measure and illustrate. I found it interesting given SUH's salary being triple a normal players salary. Thought maybe we could measure his impact since several have stated he makes the whole team better.
What round guys we have on the offensive line doesnt mean a thing other then some draft guy thought they should be drafted in that position. Guys are drafted all the time and suck. Ryan leaf, Jamarcus russell, Tim Couch, Cade Mcnown, Akili Smith, Jake Locker, Curtis Enis, David Klingler, etc If we got a boat load invested then maybe we need to get some better pickers.................lol
Yeah, the thesis tries (but fails) to do what others have done with better methods: show that high team income inequality (having a few superstars with many average players) is worse than having more above average ones and less income inequality. Measuring Suh's impact, or that of any component of a team sport like football, is really really tough. There are always so many possible things that could have resulted in the observed stats that it's just tough to tell. Nevertheless, I think our 2015 defense should be somewhat of a "natural experiment" to help answer your question. We'll be able to see if the run defense collapses in the 4th quarter, to what degree the opponent's running game becomes one-dimensional (along the flanks), the time afforded opposing QB's, etc.. All those things we have ways of observing if not measuring, so by the time the 2015 season is near its end, I think we'll have a good idea of Suh's impact.
