2012

Could you be a little more explicit about the premise of this?

 

The only player selected before RT17 that I would want over him now is AL12... Not too bad.

 

Quite frankly we're not beyond the point at which you could maintain that we don't know whether Luck or Tannehill will be the better pro yet. Luck has been so far, but not by a country mile, and Tannehill has been stupendous this preseason. I could see them both having seasons that see Tannehill pull even with Andrew in terms of career efficiency numbers.

So that's pretty cool.

 

Your 100% right, however, my comment was more in terms of who has been better so far. I mean, at the end of it all, Kalil could be a HOF LT but so far, RT17 has been a better QB than he has as a OT.

 

I forgot Miami had JP Loseman on the team.

 

Oh really?

Because I'm pretty sure that I predicted it many times. And I had good reason to do so. If you watched as much film on Robert Griffin as I did then you saw the guy get smacked hard and frequently by college players to where you constantly wondered how the hell he gets up from these hits. That wasn't a coincidence. He didn't know dick about how to work the pocket to avoid contact, he doesn't have that sixth sense that helps him see hard contact before it comes and protect himself, he had a thin base that didn't help matters, he had a tendency to hold onto the football too long and got sacked a ton of times in college if you really compiled the data (as I did), he had this ultra macho attitude about contact that he was going to absorb and/or deliver hard blows yet didn't have the frame to support it, and he constantly made his bones outside of the pocket where things are a lot faster and more dangerous because he didn't have great vision from inside the pocket. Then there's the simple fact that he'd already torn an ACL and suffered a concussion by the time he got out of Baylor, which is a testament to all the unnecessary contact he took (and still takes).

The other thing I pointed out is that he had a very odd, assertive, bitter, selfish sort of personality which when combined with his overly macho attitude about taking contact could produce some friction with the medical staff and coaches. This ended up being spot on as right away with the Redskins you saw him go back out on the field injured without allowing the medical staff to examine him (he literally would wave them away) and then took more serious hurts because of this. There was a notable flap between the Skins and James Andrews, now another weird situation with concussion protocols and I bet it all boils down to the player just not cooperating with everyone like he should.

And it should be noted, injuries are not Robert Griffin's only issue in the NFL. Most of his teammates have completely sold out on him. There are rumors the OLs don't even care to block for him. He's alienated not one but two separate coaching staffs. Emphasis on the STAFFS and not just one coach each time. Was that predictable? Well yeah, to an extent. If people cared to get beyond his cute Hello Kitty socks and intelligent personality, they'd have found a guy that does his own thing and others be damned, a guy that was coddled at Baylor and whose teammates didn't necessarily think of as highly as the rest of the draft world, a guy who couldn't necessarily get his priorities straight on what he wanted to be in life and who seemingly only chose the NFL because of the money involved. He openly stated that an NFL quarterback is like third or fourth down the list of things he wants to do with his life.

I stated long ago that my career longevity expectations for Robert Griffin were approximately the same as for a 30 year old Brandon Weeden.

 

Oh ****. I forgot about that.

 

Just did a quick count.. from 2000-2011 you had an average of 8.67 pro-bowlers per draft picked between 1-16 in the first round, and an average of 5 pro-bowlers per draft picked between 17-32 in the first round.

That's not bad really. You have greater than a 50% probability that a 1-16 pick will be a pro-bowler, and a greater than 30% probability that a 17-32 pick will be a pro-bowler. So that really highlights the glaring misses (like Dion Jordan!) when picking that high.

 

I don't think I've ever seen you so positive about Tannehill before, CK. Care to share some of the more specific reasons for the bolded?

 

We had JP Losman? How is that erased from my memory?

 

I remember that. Griffin was one of the QB evals we agreed on for some very similar reasons. It was notable b/c most everybody else loved him. I said at the time that I saw Griffin as a huge risk b/c he had almost zero pocket awareness. I thought he was a very high injury risk. I also thought his personality was one that made him unlikely to be fully committed to football. My comment back then was that I could easily see him as a guy who plays a few years, has several injuries and quits football early. I also said before the draft that I preferred Tannehill to RG3. And back then I had much less info about Tannehill's personality. I thought it was likely that he had the dedication and intelligence to improve based on reports and his degree, but that was still a guess. Having watched him for 3 years now I have complete confidence that Tannehill will continue to put in the work.

 

This year Thill is going to make peoples opinions of him change for the better.

A great many will be eating crow when all is said and done.

 

Well, he's correct. The Skins didn't make the right pick. Do you honestly believe they'd pass on Tannehill if they could do it all over again?

Not to mention, it's common knowledge that our GM at the time had been smitten with Tannehill long before the 2012 draft arrived. Just stop with the excuse-making already. Miami didn't HAVE to select Tannehill. You act like he was the ho-hum de facto pick, when in fact the truth is most analysts believed he was a reach at the time. Miami could've selected anybody with the 8th pick, and Washington wasn't the only team allowed to offer up future picks for the rights to Griffin. Wasn't pure happenstance that RG3 ended up in Washington and Tannehill in Miami.

 

I had to google J. P. Loseman. I remember the pick and all I know was, id rather take a chance on a QB at #8 then select another offense of linemen. Look at Jake Long, he was great for us, but we never got the QB in time for it to matter.

 

Who do you call when you have an erection for more than 4 hours again?


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Whoever was the GM for the Browns that draft should be drawn and quartered.

 

I stopped short of saying that Tannehill would ascend to an elite level this year and future years. That COULD happen, mind you. I'm just not ready to project that, and I have never really been. But I've been positive on Tannehill going all the way back to college. Most of the criticisms of him staring down targets were far overblown. I've said until I'm blue in the face that his deep ball issues are far overblown. My evaluation of him coming out was that he was about as safe a bet as you can get in an NFL draft QB prospect in terms of his ability to become mediocre for an NFL starter (which in perspective means he's among the best QBs in the world). But I didn't necessarily see him shaking his inconsistency issues, using the middle of the field like an elite player, or developing a specific skill that makes him truly dangerous or elite (e.g. elite pocket presence/escapability, elite deep ball, elite level field processing). I felt it was a great bet for him to end up somewhere around the 8th to 16th best quarterback in the league...not a great bet for him to end up among those top 6 guys (elites), though admitting it's possible. I thought he was the third best quarterback in the draft but the second best quarterback prospect/value. People tried to peg him as a high ceiling, low floor guy. I felt the exact opposite. He was a high floor, lower ceiling guy.

It remains to be seen if he's going to do the things that I questioned whether he can do (iron out the stretches of inconsistency, use the middle of the field, develop an elite trait). If he is developing an elite trait, the one I would point to is short accuracy. He can throw the football with absolute pinpoint accuracy in the short areas of the field to Jarvis Landry, who gets open in the short areas of the field very well and catches the football extremely well. The connection is like a consistent 6-7 yards per carry run play at this point. You can't do that unless your guy has elite pinpoint accuracy on certain throws.

He's taken a step this off season and I'm very bullish on the offensive structure installed by Bill Lazor. I expect a triple digit passer rating this season, or near enough to it.

 

I think he is going to beat Pennington's Dolphin record for completion percentage of 67.4%

 

Tannehill should definitely have been evaluated to be above RG3, for sure.

The harder question was Russell Wilson versus RG3. I wavered on that issue several times. I kept insisting that, even when Wilson was being touted as a potential Day 3 guy, there's way way less difference between those two players than people think. They were both boom or bust. Either Russell Wilson was going to be as good as he was in college (which was incredible, his pure quarterbacking skill was second only to Luck's and maybe not second at all), or the history of short quarterbacks was going to sink him. I didn't see much in-between there. He definitely had to adapt his style to adjust for his height and it was either going to work or fall flat. Most people tried to say he was another high floor, low ceiling guy. Again, I saw the exact opposite.

That's what Robert Griffin was. Regarding the personality problems, they were there...but personality is about choices. You can always make the choice to stop being a dick. It happens. And if it did, oops now a major road block in his evaluation just got lifted. Also, he could always get a little bit lucky and stay injury free. Then suddenly another major road block is lifted. Then you're down to the talent, and with his physical ability in the right system (if he wasn't such a dick, Shanahan's system would have continued to be perfect for him, and I speculate Chip Kelly's system could potentially salvage his career), well we did see what his ceiling really was as a rookie in Washington.

So those were two boom or bust players that I'd have loved to roll the dice on IF I had a safe option to rely upon until I see whether I came up snake eyes or not. This is why I proposed that the Dolphins should have had three QB options laid before them, either 1) sign Matt Flynn as a guy that was familiar with Philbin's system and then target Russell Wilson in the 2nd round (or to be fair Brandon Weeden though I was adamant he wouldn't make it to that round and was correct), 2) take Ryan Tannehill at the 8th overall spot, or 3) trade down from the 8th spot or up from the 2nd round spot to get Brandon Weeden.

Obviously in a make-or-miss league, if you'd done the third of those options then you end up looking like a complete doofus. But I'm pretty happy with how I set up two of the three options. And my preference, probably for lack of patience if nothing else (free agency comes before draft) since I was indeed a proponent of signing Matt Flynn, was for the first option.

 

I think I did a piece a long time ago saying that Ryan Tannehill was the absolute perfect quarterback for Mike Shanahan and the Redskins, that he was going to be their guy. I don't know who the hell in that organization pushed Robert Griffin onto Mike and Kyle Shanahan but that was such a bad fit from a personality and playing style standpoint, with the only saving grace being how well Shanahan tends to do with mobile quarterbacks.

If the Skins had taken Tannehill then either Mike or Kyle Shanahan is the head coach of Washington today and they'd probably be a successful team. So going back to the original premise of the thread, yes the Skins made the absolute wrong choice. When I was assigned to write an article for Bleacher Report about all 32 teams' worst draft nightmares, I wrote that Washington's had already occurred by their own hand because they traded a fortune up to #2 overall where they were certain to take Robert Griffin.

 

He may. He very well may.

 

I wasn't a huge fan of Flynn's (Something reminded me of AJ Feeley). But I did trust Philbin then (???). My stance was very much, "if Philbin likes him, I'll trust his judgment." I didn't scout Wilson until late in the process, but when I did, I loved him. I had him as a first rounder, but behind Tannehill. I believed then, and still do, that his height limits him. That was why I've always had Tannehill's potential as higher. I love Wilson's passing ability, his leadership and run/pass decision making, but I don't think he fits as well as a pure pocket passer. I think that if Miami had drafted him we might have forced him into an ill-fitting box. I think Wilson is in the perfect place for him.

 

Ghostbusters?

 

Am I the only one that seen a big step forward for Tannehill when Marino started working with him ?

 

That's fair. We don't know if Ireland, Philbin, etc would have picked RG3 if he were available. But I had heard there were several teams that liked Tannehill more than RG3 and considering how locked in Miami seemed on Tannehill, I wouldn't be shocked if Miami were one of them. I was really down on Ireland and still am but he made a good choice with Tannehill.

 

Sounds kind of poetic actually.

Maybe we actually HAD to suffer through the Ireland years so that we could come out with a top-notch QB. If out of all the Ireland years we eventually end up with one of the best QB's in the league (hopefully this will be true), then I guess it will all have been worth it.

We can all then stand up and say: I went through one of the roughest patches of Dolphins history, but damn, was it worth it.

 

How did he leap forward before Dan?

 

Nope. I saw that earlier in the season. There seemed to be a swagger there that wasn't there before. Not to mention he seemed to be more likely to be more bold in his passing when Marino started working with him.

 

Although Pennington is known for being extremely accurate, my memory recalls Pennington being a dinker and dunker. So I did a quick search and was surprised that Pennington's career YPA is 6.08, good enough for 17th highest of ALL quarterbacks, past and present. Tannehill currently sitting at 59th of 151 total. Data below, it's a pretty cool collection of data.

Dan Marino is 11th with 6.55.

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/pass_adj_net_yds_per_att_career.htm

 

If he can do it while raising his YPA then we are DEFINITELY in the playoffs.

 

Yup. Which is why I'm shocked teams don't follow the Jimmy Johnson model of drafting. Trade down in the first round, acquire extra premium picks in rounds 2-3, trade up in those rounds at discounted value if need be, and walk out of the 3rd round with 4-5 top 100 players.

More picks equals better odds of drafting future starters and helps mitigate misses. It's by far the best strategy and only Belichick seems to get it.

 

I mean, it's Ireland and Philbin. Like you said, kind of poetic. We had to suffer them both to get Tannehill because Philbin brought Sherman with him and who knows what would have happened if they weren't here with Ireland as I think Tannehill was a consensus pick from everyone. Personally I'd just assume tell all three, thanks for the parting gift now kindly leave.

 

Griffin got destroyed by his coaches. I personally hope he gets a real shot somewhere .

 

Pennington was a dinker and dunker but he had a very accurate deep ball that would float on him at times. His accuracy netted him lots of yards after catch, generally. The knocks on him were health and that with his lack of arm strength defenses could concentrate their fire a little better. But he was such a good decision maker it often didn't matter.