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Why is Kevin Coyle still here?

Discussion in 'Miami Dolphins Forum' started by Phins Up Wins Up, Jan 11, 2015.

  1. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    I haven't seen a change in Tannehill's accuracy so I can only conclude that his mechanics are largely on the level they were last year.

    I haven't noticed a change in the quality of the routes either. Wallace was basically the same guy--sloppy as all get out. Hell, we more or less removed our best route runner from the offense in Hartline so I'm not sure how you're seeing an improvement. I think we're all hoping for that stuff, but I don't see any real evidence for it. :)

    The passing game--in terms of net production--is basically the same as it was last year. The running game is better. That's the one big improvement that I see, however, that's obviously been made possible by the improvements to the line (Albert, James, Satele).
     
  2. Dol-Fan Dupree

    Dol-Fan Dupree Tank? Who is Tank? I am Guy Incognito.

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    I don't know that. I always thought that was a very wrong way of looking at the passing game.
     
  3. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    They're actually getting a little pressure on Peyton who hasn't played out of his mind today. I had a bad feeling about Denver going in.

    Still, I think it's a done deal that NE is going to win next week. Am I right or am I right? :)

    Get ready for the love-fest about Brady being the greatest QB ever, haha!
     
  4. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    I don't know what you're saying. Sorry. Care to elaborate? :)
     
  5. Dol-Fan Dupree

    Dol-Fan Dupree Tank? Who is Tank? I am Guy Incognito.

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    I don't believe that Lazor padded Tannehill's stats. I always thought that complaint to be silly.
     
  6. Piston Honda

    Piston Honda Well-Known Member

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    I don't think padding stats was the motive, it was more about replacing the production lost when Moreno went down but the effect was the same, more short, safe passes. Landry caught 70+ for a 9.8 avg for example. Wallace became an over priced possession WR. If we're going to stick w that philosophy we need receivers who can turn those short throws into big gains. If not we need a more consistent run game that will create more play action and down field opportunities.
     
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  7. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Ok, let me rephrase it to be clear...Lazor increased the efficiency of the passing game by calling more conservative plays. Does hiding your flaws look better? Yes, on the surface it does. Does it represent actual improvement? Not really.

    In the back of your head you have to be asking yourself...what do these stats really tell me? How effective are they in describing the ability of our offense in all situations?
     
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  8. rafael

    rafael Well-Known Member

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    I don't think anybody has ever argued that Luck isn't better than Tannehill. Luck is the highest rated draft prospect I've ever graded. But that's unrelated to the fact that this offense had one of if not the largest improvement in the league by the basic measures of points and yards. Calling that improvement marginal is just inaccurate.
     
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  9. Piston Honda

    Piston Honda Well-Known Member

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    We're talking about how much of the increase was due to talent vs coaching.
     
  10. Dol-Fan Dupree

    Dol-Fan Dupree Tank? Who is Tank? I am Guy Incognito.

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    Great coaches hide flaws. Only fools call plays that are not the strength of the player.

    Tannehill played better this year. The stats show it and the eye test show it.

    Also where is the proof that Lazor was more conservative than Sherman. it is not like Sherman was running a constantly deep passing offense.
     
  11. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    This is another reason to stick with whoever the hell you have at HC/oC and let enough time pass that the guys who are actually on the field are the guys the coaches picked to perform in the roles called for by the scheme.

    We signed Wallace when Sherman was the OC. Now we have Lazor. As you point out, the plan involved Moreno and probably a limited role for Miller early on. Lazor probably wanted to go as easy on Miller as possible after Moreno went down which explains the limited number of carries.

    I just hope one day we all understand how impossible it is to sort of our a roster when the coaches and coordinators are always getting fired and replaced.
     
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  12. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Yes, and Lazor by and large hid Tannehill's flaws very well. Congrats on that I guess. But I want to see real progress as well--not just compensations being made. Great coaches do indeed develop players.

    Look, it goes both ways. We can argue generalities all day. I'm not dumb, nor are you. That's an infinite cycle.

    I know what Tannehill's basic stats are: http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/stats/_/id/14876/ryan-tannehill

    Most of them don't represent Tannehill improving as a player, they represent a more QB-friendly offense. They represent more short passes, more completions, fewer interceptions, etc.

    But as the offense becomes more predictable and less explosive, defenses begin to play us better. That's natural. We were notorious this year for only showing up in the 2nd half, right? We'd have a decent opening drive and then do nothing for the remainder of the first half.
     
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  13. Dol-Fan Dupree

    Dol-Fan Dupree Tank? Who is Tank? I am Guy Incognito.

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    The last offense was quarterback friendly.

    Also, you are wrong. We were notorious this for showing up in the 2nd half. In fact, before the last five games, Miami had a chance to be one of the teams to average over 10 points in the third quarter for over 40 years.
     
  14. rafael

    rafael Well-Known Member

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    Tannhill's comp % improved for passes thrown behind the line, 1-10 yds, 11-20 yds and 21 - 30 yds each by an average of almost 5%. This obviously constituted the majority of his attempts (as it does for every QB) and his overall comp % improved as well. That's a significant improvement. And that's not where I thought the mechanics improvement were most obvious. They were most obvious in Tannehill setting his feet in the pocket and how he squared his shoulders on passes on the run.

    Wallace's short routes were far crisper this year. Wallace rounded off less on the short routes and and exploded better out of breaks. Across the board (after the first few games) the routes were being run at more precise distances.

    And the passing offense improved it's yards production by about 5% with just one more pass attempt. The TDs improved by 12.5% and the INTs improved by 37%. And as you admitted, the run game improved. Overall our offense went from one of the worst in the league to a top half offense. These are all significant improvements. You have to really stretch the facts to pretend that they weren't.
     
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  15. 2socks

    2socks Rebuilding Since 1973

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    He can't fire Coyle for one simple reason:

    Philbin would be admitting openly that the two most important choices Offensive and Defensive Coordinator were bad choices.

    Couple that with getting rid of players that oppose him and you have a clearer picture of what happened with Jeff Ireland. I am not saying Jeff Ireland did not have his own problems. What I am suggesting is the ole Obama syndrom - Never let a good crisis go to waste. And Philbin used it to his advantage.

    Philbin aligned himself with Aponte and others in a play to mask his poor decisions and blame all the teams woes on Talent. Except Ross is now probably on to him, hense the entry of Tannenbaum.

    Everyone knows Ross has trouble with firing people ---Tannenbaum does not.
     
  16. rafael

    rafael Well-Known Member

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    I addressed that in the post above. In short, quite a bit was due to coaching. In this post I was responding to the irrelevant reference to Luck.
     
  17. Tannephins

    Tannephins Banned

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    Tannehill didn't throw a significantly lower percentage of deep passes this year than he did last year. They didn't scale back the offense; he improved a great deal on throws under 20+ yards in the air. Last year he wasn't successful enough on those throws for the team to move down the field and score reliably; this year he was. This year he was far more "Chad Pennington," in that way, than he was last year, and when you coupled that with the success we saw Lamar Miller have in getting the yards he needed to keep the chains moving, you got the significant increase in scoring we saw, from 23rd to 10th in the league in points per play.
     
  18. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Firstly, I'm not trashing Lazor. I thought he made the running game better. But then again, he had WAY more talent on the O-line to work with. My contention is that the hype about him transforming this passing game is a little over-the-top and that people are using slight increases in many aesthetic areas to say, 'Look! Look! Look! Do you see? We're better!'

    All I'm saying is be careful of how you use the word "better" because if we get too technical in trying to argue that 4,045 yards was better than 3,913 or that 27 TDs is infinitely more impressive than 24, we've lost sight of the bigger picture.

    The decrease in INTs is something I respect. Going from 17 down to 12 is pretty solid. It's not life-changing--particularly when the offense was scaled back as it was--but it's definitely good to see. To me that shows a bit of maturity in Tannehill's game.

    My only point is that if I hadn't watched any game this year--let's say I was a fan of some other team--I'd be looking at your argument and saying...clearly Tannehill improved, but the improvements in most of these categories range from marginal to slight. Moreover, I wouldn't be able to tell how much was simply the added talent and/or the natural growth of a QB going from his 2nd year to his 3rd.
     
  19. finwin

    finwin Active Member

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    9 fumbles in the first two seasons, 2 fumbles last year. It all adds up to moderate to considerable improvement in QB play that was offset by declining defense and ST play.
     
  20. Piston Honda

    Piston Honda Well-Known Member

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    Big picture wise Lazor's offense had the same issues as Sherman's. Inconsistency in the run game and poor pass pro. Imo that had more to do with injury this year, Moreno and Albert specifically. However Sherm had to deal with similar if not worse issues on the OL and at RB, plus fewer options at WR.

    Meanwhile Coyle went from having a front 7 of Soliai, Starks, Wake, Odrick, Dansby, Burnett, Misi, with Vernon off the bench, to Wake, Vernon, Odrick, Starks, Jenkins, Oft hurt Misi, Wheeler, Trusnik and Sheppard. He lost 5 DBs in 6 weeks, Jordan for 6 weeks and Jones for 4. He had ONE DB play 16 games, and was forced to play guys off the street. I'm curious as to what level of dropoff should be expected under those circumstances if the coaching was up to par in comparison to the actual results Coyle's units produced.
     
  21. FinSane

    FinSane Cynical Dolphins Fan

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    Coyle failed to make adjustments in games. The defense was ran all over in the 2nd half of the season. Stats show a decline every year since he began his tenure. If your department saw profit loss three years in a row you think you'd be able to keep your job?
     
  22. Piston Honda

    Piston Honda Well-Known Member

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    What adjustments did he fail to make? I ask bc adjustments breed adjustments from the other side. For example we adjusted to the Jets' run heavy approach only to make Decker and Smith look like All-Pros so what exactly did u have in mind?
     
  23. FinSane

    FinSane Cynical Dolphins Fan

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    I don't get paid to coach the Dolphins defense, but there were plenty of occasions where the opposition kept doing the same things over and over and Coyle failed to adjust to keep up. Why keep making excuses for our coaches? Clearly we have been outcoached these past three years with the lone exception being Lazor.
     
  24. Piston Honda

    Piston Honda Well-Known Member

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    If it's as clear as you say you should have no problem naming a few instances.
     
  25. MrClean

    MrClean Inglourious Basterd Club Member

    Because he has photos of Philbin and Aponte engaged in coitus, and he told Joe if he gets fired those pix will be mailed to Joe's wife. :shifty:
     
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  26. MrClean

    MrClean Inglourious Basterd Club Member

    How do you figure? Scoring wise this season's offense was the team's 2nd best since like 1995. The defense has steadily regressed since Coyle was hired. The defense was tied for the team's 3rd worst this year since 1993 in points allowed.
     
  27. rafael

    rafael Well-Known Member

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    My point is that what you're calling "marginal" or "slight" are among the largest improvements in the league. And by pretending that the massive improvements are marginal and may be nothing more than QB growth you are saying that Lazor did nothing. That is, by definition, thrashing him.
     
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  28. cuchulainn

    cuchulainn Táin Bó Cúailnge Club Member

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    - Lazor's offense scored 388 points. The 7th most this team has ever scored in it's history and the most points since 1995 (398 pts).
    - We scored 71 more points than in 2013 (388 vs 317).
    - Overall, the offense went from one of the worst in the league at #26 under Sherman to a top half offense ranked #11 in a single season.
    - 2014 was the first season in team history we had both a 4,000 yard passer and a 1,000 yard rusher in the same season.
    - We scored more points than 4 of the playoff teams: Bengals (365), Panthers (339), Lions (321), Cardinals (310).
     
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  29. MrClean

    MrClean Inglourious Basterd Club Member

    Correct you are. When I said this year was 2nd best offense since 1995, I was going by ranking. The 2001 offense ranked 8th even though it scored less points than 2014's offense.
    The previous comment that the case to fire Coyle was no better than the case to fire Lazor, I am sure we both can agree was simply ridiculous.
     
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  30. FinSane

    FinSane Cynical Dolphins Fan

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    When you have Geno Freakin' Smith looking like Joe Montana throwing all over the field, you deserve to get fired. Oh the GB fame when he put Wheeler in coverage when we all know he had no business doing so.
     
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  31. finwin

    finwin Active Member

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    I know of several adjustments he failed to make. The first was mentioned by the players against the Jets in the first game. They said, hey you dolt, why don't we put an extra man in the box to stop the run so he finally did in the second half. In the second Jets game, they ran non stop Pics to get Decker open. He couldn't figure that out. Curious, in the first half of the season, there were great adjustments made, except for the ******ed Wheeler LB coverage in the last play that cost us the GB game. Coyle and the D went on vacation the last 4-5 games.
     
  32. cuchulainn

    cuchulainn Táin Bó Cúailnge Club Member

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    Geno ended the season with the only "perfect" Passer Rating (158.3) by a starting QB in the entire season of 2014. The last QB to do that was Alex Smith in 2013 against the Raiders in week 15.

    Geno is a turnover machine when pressured, which he wasn't on the majority of drop backs.

    Maybe we're all looking at it wrong and it was a stroke of genius by Philbin/Coyles to help ensure that the jets give Geno another chance and pass on drafting a QB this year while boosting our draft slot. :shifty:
     
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  33. cuchulainn

    cuchulainn Táin Bó Cúailnge Club Member

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    Coyles was called out by his defense several times over the course of the season starting with the Chiefs game. He alluded several times to being short handed all season due to suspensions and injury and playing the defenses he did to protect back up players. There is some truth to that, but regardless, he now has a 3 year trend of decreasing defensive performances for various reasons.
     
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  34. FinSane

    FinSane Cynical Dolphins Fan

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    :lol:
     
  35. djphinfan

    djphinfan Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    couldn't get off the field in most instances, games, against different types of opponents, since the bronco game.
     
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  36. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    I'm calling the 3900 yards to 4000 yards a marginal improvement. That doesn't seem like a big change. Do you disagree with that?

    I'm saying that 27 TDs up from 24 is a slight improvement. That doesn't seem like a big change. Do you disagree with that?

    I'm saying that when everyone's TDs went down except 1 guy that it's somewhat disappointing.

    I'm saying that when we've had a 1000 yard WR each of the last two years and that he only put up 470 yards this year and that no one got more than 870 it's a little disappointing.


    Now if you take that to mean Bill Lazor sucks I can't help you.

    You guys are WAY too sensitive on the issue of Bill Lazor if you're getting upset at what I'm saying because it's just observation. Listen, I'm not saying you're wrong. I do see your points. I've said the same f'ing things dude. What I'm telling you is that you need to stop defending the guy for a couple seconds and be honest with yourself that some of this isn't really all that impressive.

    I'm glad the completion percentage is up and that the INTs are down but I have a real good feeling that as soon as we open things up and start throwing the ball a little deeper, those numbers will go back to where they were and we'll see that this offense for what it really is--one that cannot run the ball well late in games and one that cannot effectively stretch the field.

    You may like these little aesthetic benefits my friend, but avoiding the issue by playing conservative is not the same thing as fixing the issue.

    Bill Lazor doesn't suck. I'm excited to see if the offense makes strides next year. I think Lazor did a good job cleaning things up this year but I don't think we'll be better than 8-8 if this offense can't be more explosive and more powerful in crucial situations.

    This offense might be better than what we had over the Henning/Sparano/Henne years and an improvement over Tannehill's first couple seasons but it's still got a ways to go if we are to consider ourselves play-off caliber.
     
  37. rafael

    rafael Well-Known Member

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    I'm saying that the offense's primary objective is to score points and that going from 19 to 24 per game and from 26th in the league to 14th in the league in that category is one of, if not the, largest improvement in the league. That is anything but marginal. All those less important stats are just part of the whole and the improvement on the whole was significant. And I'm not sensitive about Lazor. I'm sensitive about the inaccurate characterization in this thread that somehow the arguments for firing Coyle and Lazor are equivalent. That was clearly a ridiculous contention.
     
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  38. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    Well, I think it's important to note that Lazor was changing the offense. We all know the Arians' quote, so I won't repeat it. That being said, it takes some games to get comfortable, and Tannehill put up more yards and more TDs. I think when evaluating Lazor, you need to consider the scheme change. You may be right, the offenses numbers may regress once opened up, or they may not. I think if our oline doesn't change, and we don't get an upgrade at receiver, it's likely that a regression happens if we open it up again.
     
  39. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    We went up 3.6 points per game, not 5.

    And I never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever said that I was talking about the running game.

    We're talking specifically about the passing game here. I've said that explicitly several times now.

    It's been my contention that the improvements to the running game are indeed the best thing that Lazor did, HOWEVER he did that with a vastly improved set of offensive linemen so that has to be taken into consideration. Nevertheless, what we're trying to do is quantify whether or not the passing game is better.

    I don't personally see Tannehill doing things that he wasn't last year. Yeah, maybe he's a little better at making reads but every QB in their first few seasons progresses with that stuff. The bottom line is that if things stay the way they are, that is the team continues to go without a more physical running attack--we're not going to see a lot more "improvement." Things are going to level off quite rapidly.
     
  40. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    That's kind of my point.

    It's not "improvement" if you polished the numbers by scaling things back. You could lose Bill Lazor right now and still have all of that.

    In the long run, we can't win when things IN THE PASSING GAME are scaled back so we are going to have to deal with these troublesome areas one way or another.
     

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