I just saw this from a Bedard link on twitter: http://mmqb.si.com/2013/10/03/tamba-hali-rob-ninkovich-pressure/ Go all the way to the bottom and check out the o-line rankings. See where Miami is at 14! This is based on all kinds of pressure statistics. Yes, we're way up in sacks, but not so much on times when Tanny is not sacked. Now, could part of this be - as has been pointed out in other threads - the fact that Tanny does (on most occasions) try to get rid of the ball quickly, and, therefore, the pressure stats are better than they would be? Or, is our line maybe not as putrid as many of us are thinking? I'm guessing it's the former, more than the latter. I just think this ranking is interesting, considering I would've expected us to be in the bottom five. Interestingly enough, Seattle's is! Discuss, I'm curious what you all think.
It's just a fact that Ryan Tannehill's average time before releasing the football is 3rd-quickest in the league. So yeah I'd say that's bailing the offensive line out quite a bit.
I figured, especially after seeing your stat in the other thread. I suppose a true ranking of o-line would take that into consideration as well somehow.
You can't rate an Oline as a group and get a clear picture. If four guys play at a pro bowl level and one guy lets a rusher have a straight path to the QB every third snap, you could say you had an above average line, but the truth is that the QB would be under constant assault. It really is a unit where the DEGREE of each players individual badness can be so catastrophic as to outweigh multiple individual good performances. Right now Clabo is struggling the worst. Jerry and Martin are tied for second. Pouncey plays so well he skews the grades upwards. But so what? YOur center is protecting while the rest of the line is a sieve. how is that effective?
Seattle's OLine should be ranked last based solely on the game vs. Houston this past week. That was a crucifixion if Wilson isn't as good as he is at feeling and escaping pressure. As for us...when you watch our games, you know for a fact our OLine sucks. So much that we're altering the passing attack. Look at the thread with 'all of Tanny's NO throws'. Hard-pressed to find many that travel more than 10 yards downfield in the air. Still lots of comebacks and horizontal stuff in front of the chains. OL is starting to open nice running lanes, however.
ANd as CK has been saying, Tannehill's doing what he can to minimize the problem by getting the ball out ASAP.
So, ultimately, guys, what is the solution for the rest of this year? Is it simply more of the same - get rid of the ball quickly, and if by chance, on occasion, the protection is good, maybe hit a deep ball or two? Or, do we go with more max protect, or one TE helping on one side or the other, depending on who we're facing? What do we do to take advantage of and maximize this great 3-1 start? We know we're not all there yet w/ this year's squad, but we may as well take it as far as we can, and that's going to take better protection somehow. What do we do? Not sure if any of our back-ups are really any better, unless Watkins can suddenly get his stuff together and can supplant Jerry. No guarantee at this point on that - it may take him a year or more to develop, if he ever does. So, we're essentially dancing with who brought us so to speak. I just don't want to see this very solid, unexpected good start wasted. There's a lot of winnable games on the schedule the rest of the way if we can simply keep our very talented, ascending young QB upright for more than 2.7 seconds or whatever. What do we do??
I haven't seen a SEA game all season, so I wasn't aware. I just "assumed" they were decent. Speaks to the rest of the team and Wilson that they are 4-0.
Seem to remember a year or two ago and the o-line wasn't playing up to snuff. At that point they simplified some of the schemes and the unit pulled together. Would something like that help these guys out, or is it what it is?
It seems to me he's getting rid of the ball pretty darn quickly, so why do I keep hearing this "he's holding the ball to long"?
My guess is that we'll see something Sunday that is designed to help improve the overall protection scheme. I mean, they just have to, right? I would think Sherman and Co. have a plan in mind that they didn't want to implement if they didn't have to, but - suddenly - they do, especially this week against that B-more line. Overall, there defense isn't as scary as in the past, but the D-line is massive and mean. And Buffalo, while not a quality team overall, sports a very good D-line after the bye. Not a bad time to fix this at least a little bit so the rest of the talent on our team can take over and get us to 5-1. After that, I think you play the protection scheme based upon the talent on the opponent's D-line each week. And blitzing schemes, etc. etc.
I think what we're seeing is on most successful plays, RT is getting rid of the ball quickly. But, on maybe a 1/3 of these 18 sacks, he seems to hold it to long or whatever, and that gets amplified. But in reality, maybe that's 6 plays out of 160 or so? It's just those six stick out like a soar thumb.
We're implementing a completely different philosophy on offense..Russell Wilson can get away and make plays no matter how sieve like his oline his, how that's affects the outcome of the game relative to playing from the pocket is the million dollar question for me at least.
I mentioned this in the other thread but I expanded the study to include QBs that played significantly in 2011 as well as 2012, in addition to 2013. There's a definite relationship between average amount of time a QB takes before he throws the football, and the percentage of his dropbacks where he faces pressure (hurry, hit, sack, scramble, etc). The relationship has a 63% correlation over the three seasons and can be expressed by a predictive formula based on a linear regression through the data points. Using that formula you can sort of predict how often a quarterback should be pressured, based on how long he's holding the football. If you subtract the amount he actually IS pressured, it basically tells you the extent to which something is different for that quarterback (most likely the protection) as opposed to the general league trend. Out of 105 data points over the three seasons, Ryan Tannehill's current 2013 premium ranks 94th. What that means is the formula predicts he should be pressured only 26.6% of his drop backs based on how quickly he's getting the football out of his hands. But he's actually being pressured 33.5% of the time. That deficit of -6.92% is the 12th-worst of the 105 readings from the three year period. Is that the offensive line? The curious thing is that the number completely flipped from 2012 to 2013. In 2012, there was a premium of +3.34% instead of a deficit of -6.92%. What is different? Since anything Dolphins is going to be argued to death maybe it's more instructive to look at other cases of big flips like this. One such case happened with Brandon Weeden in 2012 versus 2013. In 2012 he had the 2nd highest premium in the sample at +8.42%. By 2013 he had the 7th worst at -8.88%. What changed? According to Pro Football Focus' Pass Block grades in 2012 the Browns' pass protectors had a cumulative +41.9 pass blocking grade, 5th highest in the league. Thus far in 2013 they have a cumulative Pass Block grade of -11.8, which is 8th worst in the league. Another example of a QB with a big one year change is Eli Manning...went from +3.54% in 2012 to -7.96 in 2013. The Giants' pass block grade in 2012 was +14.3 (18th in the NFL) and in 2013 thus far has been abysmal at -23.4 (31st in the NFL). Jake Locker is another example, +3.98% in 2012 and -8.20% in 2013. Titans' pass block grade went from 8th in the NFL in 2012 to 23rd in the NFL in 2013. Big change in pass protection. In 2011 Joe Flacco had a +3.35% and thus far in 2013 he has a -6.33%. What's been the difference? In 2011 the Ravens pass blocking graded out +20.9 which was good for 12th in the NFL, and thus far in 2013 it's grading out -9.8 on PFF which is good for 24th in the NFL. Matt Ryan was +3.04% and +2.99% in 2011 and 2012. He's now -11.06% in 2013. What's the difference? The Falcons pass blocking is now -18.4 on PFF, good for 29th in the league. In 2011 and 2012 it was +21.4 and +35.1, 13th and 9th respectively. Matt Schaub was +3.40% in 2012, now is -11.33% in 2013. What's changed? Houston's pass block grade was +26.9 (11th in NFL) in 2012 and is now -27.2 (32nd in NFL). Matt Stafford was +6.76% and +5.40% in 2011 and 2012. Pass block grade for Detroit was +51.7 (3rd) and +47.8 (3rd). It's still 7th in the NFL in 2013 but the total grade has fallen to +7.7 (which is pacing for +30.8) which is a pretty big swing. Phil Rivers has seen a pretty big swing from 2011 (+7.43%, -2.0 pass block grade) to 2012 (-3.53%, -27.2 pass block grade). Russell Wilson swung from 2012 (+2.14%, +21.3 pass block grade) to 2013 (-5.02%, -17.4 pass block grade). What is curious to me is that out of all these situations where a single quarterback's premium (deficit) swung heavily from one year to another, quite literally the only case where this was not accompanied by a SIGNIFICANT swing in Pro Football Focus' pass block grade for the team...is in the case of Ryan Tannehill. Miami's pass block grade in 2012 was +0.2 and in 2013 is +1.0. But now that I see that, it starts to make a lot of sense why I have been noticing even in preseason that Miami's pass protecting grades have seemed inflated. For example, I think our eyes have been telling us that John Jerry has been a consistently poor pass protector. His Pass Block grade on PFF is positive, at +0.7 for the year. Jonathan Martin's is +2.1 as well. If you look at the season grades, Tyson Clabo has a -4.4 pass block grade while the other four combine for +8.9 without a single one of them negative. This is part of why I do not trust PFF grades as opposed to PFF statistics. The statistics are objective. The grades are not and IMO they've been inconsistent over the years.
That's a very LOGICAL theory if you hold the predetermination that Ryan Tannehill must be at fault for many of his sacks. But the fact of the matter is PFF has a statistic of average seconds before the QB is sacked and at 3.62 seconds that is also 7th quickest in the NFL right now. So he's not necessarily getting rid of the ball until all the sudden he doesn't and then he hangs onto it way too long and is sacked on those occasions. He's just...sacked. A lot. I realize you're saying it's really only a few of Tannehill's sacks where you theorize this might be the case so I'm not necessarily picking on you.
I get that, I actually really appreciate your breakdown of these things. I consider myself a football knowledge guy, but I have a weakness on some of these finer points, and it helps to read your stuff ( as well as others). I do only think it's a handful of plays where he at least appears to hold onto the ball too long. And - like you say - perhaps that's not even really the case, and he just needs better overall protection.
When you're primarily using the quick game defenses will adapt and sit on the shorter routes. I've seen quite a few sacks where RT is ready to throw but holds the ball waiting for a receiver to uncover and then WHAM. People blame the OL all the time but rarely do you hear someone say RT was sacked b/c his receivers didn't do their job. IMO a few things need to improve. The OL needs to do a better job of giving RT a pocket, RT needs to do a better job of feeling the pressure and reacting to it, the receivers need to do a better job of uncovering, Sherman needs to use more draws, screens, and move the pocket to vary RT's launch point more, and of course the run game needs to improve so that we're not in obvious passing situations.
He holds onto the ball too long in the way that as a coach you would look at the player and say, "Well what happened? You got sacked? Then you held onto it too long." Sort of like how Nick Saban's father used to coach quarterbacks and tell them if the ball wasn't complete then you could've thrown it better. There's actually some truth to it. Regardless of the timing you're supposed to be able to feel the rush coming and avoid some of those sacks. I don't think he's GOOD at that. But I also don't think he's being helped to be good at it. I think he's being set up to fail to an extent.
I think you bring up another good point. The receivers unit just isn't playing to their contract value yet. That can take a little time of course especially for a guy like Mike Wallace although Gibson seems to have come on pretty immediately. But when you shell out a $60 million contract to one guy, a $30 million contract to another and a $10 million contract to a third guy to where you're paying them in total like $21 million a year...you expect them to get open quickly enough for your QB to get them the ball.
Tannehills best trait thus far... Poise. Imagine if all these sacks, these inordinate numbers, these time frames to release, the untrusting feelings that come with all of those things, imagine if they are really inhibiting the guy from playing to his potential.. Poise...the guy doesn't give a bleep what happens to him, he just keeps coming.There was a time in that first half where I felt something about him that made me just shake my head in a good way, and it was because he was in that hostile crowd, at its apex, and it didn't phase him one bit..he made the third down completions, and he was accurate doing so..it came apart later, but I don't believe it was because of the environment. I like what I'm hearing from part of the leadership counsel, Richie is gettin in everyone's ***, and I believe that the oline has actually taken this dudes talent, knowledge of the offense, and quick release for granted..They needed the wake up call because he was performing at a high level in spite of their inadequacies.. I believe CK mentioned this earlier, and this applies to myself, but if you have a problem with how he shuffles or deeks in the pocket, which I do, then that's fine, however, this is a different animal..."paraphrasing there but it was something like that.."
Severe lack of throwing lanes doesn't help either. The saints line moving people to open passing lanes for the 5"10 Brees was beautiful. Sent from my LG-MS770 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Isn't this like saying we suck, but not so much on times when we don't suck? I mean, we suck precisely because of the number of times we suck. Suckhood is an overall, aggregate measure. You can't except out the times we suck from overall suckhood and come up with an accurate measure of suckhood. Did that make sense?
Pretty much. If you don't think he senses pressure in the pocket and works it quite as efficiently as he could, I agree with that. I don't think it's lower tier by any means but it's not upper tier either. I can think of quite a few guys that do it better. But if people are suggesting he's holding onto the football too long, that's a very different thing...and it's just not true. Can't put it plainer than that. It's just not true.
I can't wait to see how he assimilates all this info that his coming his way this week, he's shown tremendous discipline in the face of terrible protection, should be interesting as hell to see if he starts to bail early to protect his oline from the rap, or trusts them to do a better job..
LMAO I almost fell outta my chair on that one. Good stuff CK. I'll try to post some examples when I have the time but I've seen probably a handful of plays where Tannehill has enough time to complete his drop then take a hitch or two but he either doesn't have anyone open or doesn't see anyone open and only then does the rush get to him. A coverage sack so to speak. In those spots I'd like to see him do more to extend the play or at the very least find a safe place to throw the ball away. It won't solve the protection issues but it'll definitely help.
Watching Brandon Weeden.... And I would say he holds onto the ball waaaaay longer than Tanny does and he takes a lot of hits. Perspective. Sent from the flappy fap S4
Love the stats! I'd be curious to see these over a longer period of time. I have a feeling that these stats could very well be subjected to a lot of variance when you take a larger sample to look at.
what about the oline snaps have the starters still played all snaps this season ? they did after week 2 but i lost track
Weeden is on his way out in Cleveland. The only reason he is even playing tonight is because the Browns starter was injured. He was a wasted first round draft pick for the Browns in 2012 and I suspect the Browns will do whatever is necessary to move up in the draft in an effort to draft a QB near the top of the 2014 draft. Tannehill and Weeden don't equate in any way except they both played in the same conference in college and they both were drafted in the first round of the 2012 draft. As far as their individual talent as NFL QB's go, it isn't even close. Tannehill has a chance to be a very good NFL QB for a number of years. Weeden will likely end up as a career backup in the NFL. I don't see him ever getting another chance to be a starting QB in the NFL after he is released from the Browns once this season is complete.
K Just simply telling people that are beating the Tannehill holds it too long drum that there are qbs who are way worse Sir. I want to say Weedens Avg is close to 4 seconds (saw it on Nfln the other day) Never was saying they were close in skill level. Sent from the flappy fap S4
Tonight Weeden came in after their starter was hurt with a knee injury. Buffalo's starter Manual also went out with a knee injury. It really makes you wonder how long Tannehill can last with the number of sacks he's taking.
