I've browsed a few Titans boards and there is evidence the HC and others wanted Tannehill to start game 1, but the GM forced their hand on Mariota...insider reports, etc, like we get in the club here.
Almost like Tannehill didn't need to win anything...lol. I really felt like Tannehill was the better QB the moment he got there, but Mariota is the big name.
If that’s the case, then I would expect there to be a significant decrease in Tannehill’s performance during some portion of the rest of the season, as both he and the team experience the natural diminishing of elevated performance associated with the energy and excitement of having their preferred quarterback finally be selected to lead the team. Of course Tannehill is very likely to regress to the mean either way, so it won’t be fully possible to attribute that pattern of performance to that particular dynamic with certainty.
Good point. To be called elite, he needs better pressure management/pocket maneuvering/escapability...no doubt. Unfortunately, he'll probably never fix it. That's the ONLY thing separating him from elite QBs right now IMO. Other areas of his game are certainly elite. He's not perfect, nobody ever claimed he was, but he is a DAMN good NFL QB...certainly franchise.
I understand what your saying and I would agree in most cases, but I don’t think it applies with Tannehill, his weakness is very clear at this point and u til he proves that he can overcome it I can’t believe in the guy, that’s just me, and why I personally feel like that is because early on in his career the weakness was clear to me and what was happening over and over was very predictable over the 6 year stint.. Imo to be a championship Qb, you don’t have to be an elite thrower of the football but you do have to make a few individual plays within the pocket to escape pressure, feel the pressure peripherally and reset, multitask within the chaos, in a clutch type situation on the road.. I have no doubt Ryan can make beautiful throws if he has time, but ultimately that’s not gonna always be there as the intensity increases, A Qb’s ability to navigate the pocket under pressure is going to determine his and his teams fate.. So if we get to that game, and we see those type of plays, and he converts, then he will have proven that he has all the goods to be that guy you should trust.
Ya anything's possible...but the one thing that keeps me from expecting it to decline is the quality of pass defenses he has faced and will face through the end of the season...he's already gone through 4 top 10 pass defenses and done great against them. He came into that Denver game just before the end of the 1st half down 13 points, and was lighting the yardage up against the #5 passing defense, 13/16 for 144 yards, but an interception. The run game with Henry was completely shut down, and they lost the game. Of course, he wasn't the starter, didn't have 1st team reps, etc, which may or may not have helped, but a loss is a loss. Throughout the next 5 games as a starter, he had the one below average game against the Panthers, but on the way to 4-1 in that stretch, he had 3 4th quarter game-winning drives (something his detractors here have said for YEARS he couldn't do), one against the #4 pass defense (LAC), and another against the #9 pass defense (Jax). Then, at Indianapolis (#10 pass defense), had a game-sealing, nail-in-the-coffin drive/TD pass to close out the game (another facet he "could never do" according to many). Looking ahead, they have the Raiders (24th pass defense), Houston (28th pass defense), Saints (16th pass defense) and Houston again to close out the season. I don't expect his play to decline. I believe he's helped partially by only having to have played 7.5 games compared to a full season...less wear and tear, etc. He and the Titans are currently #1 in passer rating, #1 in redzone TD percentage, #1 in YPA, #2 in completion percentage (behind only Drew Brees)...mostly against top 10 pass defenses. Those are some great numbers for "just a guy."
Oh, and lest I forget another facet that he was incapable of sustaining (long plays), the Titans are #1 in the NFL in both passing and rushing explosive plays (20+ yards) since he has been the starter. The kid is doing so many things well, that he would never be able to do, according to many. Now if he could ever improve his pocket/pressure awareness and adjustments...he'd be insane. It just feels like he'll never get that part down...sadly.
In the Panthers game, Henry was only given three carries in the first half and Dion Lewis had more touches. Fans were outraged at the OC over that. Tannehill had 2 INTs and 4 sacks on almost 40 pass attempts. Looks like a lesson learned for the OC, who has keep his pass attempts to roughly half that since.
Yes and since then, even when down 2 scores, they don't abandon the run, even later into the 2nd half...and it's paying dividends. The OC is calling very good games and making ample adjustments for RT / Henry.
Amusing that Tannehill has one less sack (24) than Mariota (25) after both started six games. With almost 50 sacks, Titans fans are far more critical of their OLmen than many Dolphins's fans. As a team, they're on pace to have ~65 sacks on the season. Lewan in particular draws a ton of criticism and ridicule. Many want Conklin gone/replaced. The Titans are actually at the bottom of the league with the Dolphins in pass protection rating.
Oh no doubt...their OL sucks too. We can see how Tannehill can do with a great run game...but we're still left wondering how he'd do with a average+ OL. I wonder what teams will make a play for him this offseason, if he keeps this play up and the Titans don't tag him.
I like that Tennessee is in full control over their own destiny with playing the Texans twice in a two-week span. They're a virtual lock at 10 wins, but even if they don't, 9 wins might get them in since there's very few competing for that last wildcard slot (Buffalo or NE is basically locked for the 1st wildcard at 9-3 and 10-2). So it's the 7-5 Steelers and 7-5 Tennessee with the 6-6 Raiders and Colts playing catch-up. The Steelers still have the Ravens and Bills left to play (plus Cardinals and Jets) so I don't think they'll get to 10 wins. I broke that down so folks can see that Tennessee/Tannehill is in excellent shape if he can win in December...although that playoff berth will definitely have to be earned. A sweep of the Texans + 1 win gives them the division, or any three wins should give them the wildcard. But they still have to win AT LEAST 2 of the last 4 in any order.
Belichek has certainly shown interest when RT went off in that 35-34 loss a few years ago (where Parker dropped the game-tying TD with nothing on the clock). I've sort of expected him to end up there all along and it's really going to ruin pro football for me. The good news is that at the level he's playing, there's no way Tennessee lets him walk UNLESS he completely self-destructs and doesn't make the playoffs. And hey, we know it's entirely possible...but I'm crossing my fingers for the time being and hoping he stays on his current trajectory.
Actually there is a crazy theory out there that Titans might let Tannehill go if they think they can get Brady... I have had this sense of doom that this might come to pass ever since we decided to let go of Tannehill.
Oh, I think he would have an incredible career there and probably end up breaking records. I just don't want to be a Pats fan so I'm hoping it doesn't happen.
You don't say how you're measuring pass defense, but I would encourage you to measure it with passer rating surrendered because of its correlation with winning. Here are the z-scores of the teams Tannehill has played against in terms of passer rating surrendered -- the higher the number the worse the pass defense as compared to the current league average: Denver: -0.03 Chargers: 0.54 Tampa Bay: 0.41 Carolina: -0.73 Kansas City: -0.47 Jacksonville: 0.07 Indianapolis: 0.55 Two of those teams are top-10 in the league in passer rating surrendered, Carolina (6th) and Kansas City (8th). Tannehill's own passer ratings against them were 82.3 and 133.9, respectively.
What I'm leaning toward personally to explain Tannehill's success is a synergy between Tannehill and the team such that Tannehill has to play very well to remain the starter, more so than at any other point in his career, while the team (if the above rumors are true) wanted Tannehill to be the starter out of camp and finally got their wish. Put those two variables together and you have a very determined individual player and a team determined to play well enough to keep him the starter. That's a very strong team dynamic that elevates the play of everyone involved.
Because that doesn't restrict the measurement to pass defense as well as does passer rating surrendered.
Finally someone else calculating z-scores!! It's about time because raw ratings are just misleading, especially across years. Only thing I'll add is that I always use positive z-scores for "above average ability" and negative z-scores for "below average ability" whether it's offense or defense because that makes interpreting things easier (without extra disclaimers).
Am I the only one that finds it amusing that so many posters who are glad Tannehill is no longer a Dolphin are upset by his doing well with the Titans? If you didn't like Tannehill to begin with, why are you even posting in this thread?
z-scores (transformed so that the lower the score the worse the performance, like cbrad said above): Oakland: -1.16 (30th in the league) New Orleans: 0.43 (10th in the league) Houston: -0.82 (25th in the league) So he has an easy go of it from here on out. If and when he faces New England in the playoffs -- z-score of 3.27 (1st in the league by a country mile -- next-highest team is at 1.67) -- we'll see what happens. The passer rating New England has surrendered this year is 57.
We must've been typing that at the same time, but for some reason we're getting slightly different results.
Interesting.. might be a rounding error? Anyway, if you want to do this manually (I have a program that scrapes the data automatically and does the calculations) all I'm doing is literally copying the passer rating column here: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2019/opp.htm#all_passing Then I calculate both the mean based on that column and the standard deviation and calculate the z-score. You can't trust pro-football-reference's own calculations because I think they round off before averaging. For example, they list the average passer rating allowed as 91.1 but if you actually do the calculations it's 90.9969. Anyway, not sure where the small discrepancy is coming from but I'm doing all the calculations from that column of passer ratings in that link.
Hell, that top 10 list is a who's-who of playoff teams...seems to be a correlation maybe? Minus the Saints, ya, should be smooth sailing this last month...of course, they have to play the games. Could you please fill me in on how those scores are determined? And what site did you get the "passer rating surrendered" info from?
Correlation between offensive passer rating and win% across NFL history is 0.633 meaning that 0.633^2 = 40.07% of the variation in win% is explained by passer rating. For defensive passer rating the correlation is -0.593 so 35.16% of the variance in win% is explained by it. For passer rating differential it goes up to 0.7951 correlation and 63.22% variance explained. So it's a very important stat. Data are from pro-football-reference: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2019/index.htm#all_passing https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2019/opp.htm#all_passing To calculate a z-score take a given rating, subtract the mean from it, then divide by the standard deviation. That's it. So for example the Dolphins have a passer rating surrendered of 105.3, the mean is 90.9969 (see my post above) and the standard deviation is 10.5444. So you get (105.3-90.9969)/10.5444 = 1.3565, and since it's defense we just multiply by -1 to put everything on an "ability scale". So the z-score for Miami's pass defense is -1.3565.
Definitely a correlation. And if you throw in offensive passer rating and use passer rating differential (offensive passer rating minus passer rating surrendered), and order teams from best to worst, you'll also have a very good approximation of the ordering of the records (win percentages) of all the teams in the league.
That's weird. I just manually checked this in Matlab (usually I use a scraper in R) and it comes out the same. I deliberately formatted so that it can output up to 16 significant digits but PFR's data is only out to 3 past the decimal point, so we should be getting the same thing. What program are you using? Just curious.
I took stats TOO long ago, and didn't really do well / pay much attention...how do you get standard deviation again? In simple terms that I can understand lol? Edit: Oh wait...that's a calculation in Excel and other spreadsheets right? Comes built in?
In Excel it looks like the command is =STDEV(). I say "looks like" since I googled it. I almost never use Excel.. way too cumbersome and can't do more advanced stuff. Here's a link that takes you step by step through the calculations of standard deviation: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/pr...a/calculating-standard-deviation-step-by-step And once you understand that, note that for samples the standard deviation actually divides by N-1 not N as in that link (technical reason). And normally you'll see the formula with parentheses instead of absolute values (same result).