Every Pass from RT17 in Game 2

The touchdown at around 2:38 was really nice. Looked like he showed good pocket presence, setting and resetting during plays, moving around and buying time.

 

He made some great throws in the redzone that showed anticipation and accuracy but the receivers dropped the ball. It happened three times by my count. That's just nuts, that that many TD throws were flat out dropped.

 

LMAO @ 2:05.

Dallas Thomas dove into that man so gracefully

 

I think the wideouts were playing slow in the endzone. The first Landry throw in the EZ seemed a tad early or Landry wasn't ready. The second one, Landry simply dropped. I suspect if this was the regular season, he would've had it. The one to Cameron, again, seemed a pinch early, but it still should've been caught.

I personally was a little disappointed with one of the Stills' TDs; Tanny had the ball all day and the throw was a tad behind. The second one was a thing of beauty. Perfect perfect perfect. The DB didn't even know it was coming. Love those throws.

 

What I love about the quick slant to the TE on the goal line--the throw that JC dropped--is that you can see Tannehill recognize pre-snap that he's got man on the outside with no help from the guy on the inside. Post snap, Tannehill immediately looks right to guide the LBs in before snapping around, seeing the opening and delivering the ball. To me, that was a real heads up little thing that shows Tannehill is moving forward.

 

Yeah, Tannehill definitely showed some progress in that game. But he still fixates on the intended target too much despite the example you pointed out. Either way, "looking off defenders more often" is something we can add to the list of specific things he needs to improve on during this season.

 

I kind of wonder if Tannehill is still a little gun shy when he stares down a receiver? Moving your head around may take a little time and the O-line hasn't really given him much since he's come in with regard to time. I do think Tannehill has a "holding the ball too long" issue that Gase mentioned to the media after the first PS game. He looked better. I noticed he made an adjustment on his velocity later in the game. He had some heat on some of those. Even the deflection/catch had some pepper on it. Probably why the deflection happened in the first place.

 

I'm hoping the staring down is due to the new scheme, cause it was certainly a thing last night.

Overall very encouraging though. Best sign was him hooking up with Stills, imo. Anything that gets the offense away from force-feeding Landry is a big plus. Hopefully him and Stills build better chemistry this season.

 

What? This silliness about locking on to receivers again. Sigh.

Watch the video from last night. He looks at the receiver for quick gains, his first target was open all of those times that he didn't look anywhere else. That's the point. When its not available he goes through his progressions. That's what a QB is supposed to do. He doesn't go through all of his progressions on every play.

Not like we can truly tell where he's looking at all times anyway.

 

He stared down receivers in his first two drives but did a better job of scanning the field as the game went on.

 

Well, it kind of has been one of his deals. I was wondering if this "locking on" was merely the call; esp during preseason. The notion that Tannehill didn't/doesn't have that trait simply isn't true. It's been well-documented. But I simply wonder if it's more of a "get this guy the ball" scenario rather than Tanny locking on for locking on sake?

You're right, we don't really know where he's looking. Last night, they show the replay of the first TD to Stills and he looked off to the left and then zipped it to Kenny. Was a pretty heady thing. I think he knew he was going to Stills the entire time. So he's growing. But he also had no one in front of him, which makes that so much easier than being behind the LOS. I hope to see more of this behind the LOS. Last night....he was really good.

One thing I've always liked about Tanny is that he will improve in those areas that he is not strong in. He's always done that. Every year, he improves on his play as a QB; those idiosyncrasies, that make QBs a QB. It may not always show up on the stat sheets, but he improves on something every year.

 

Not really.

He's had so little time to throw and has had a very strict coach, that I'm not sure any of us are qualified to say one way or the other. And it hasn't been really well documented. Its been said by people who watch broadcast footage (which as you agree, means we have no idea where he's looking.)

 

No he didn't. His first read was open.

 

Yeah, that's true. But it does seem as if he is locking on. And I think we can safely assume that some of those are the case. We don't know either way.

What's neat, is that he made some in-game adjustments. He took off some velocity later on and made some really nice touch throws. The best being the one TD to Stills. I could watch that all day. I thought the roll out deep pass to Kenny was nice, too. Maybe a tad close to the line, but I'll take it.

 

I do think the locking on stuff has been a small issue with him since college. It's not some horrible thing, but it's tied to his conservative nature that has hampered the offense at times.

It's not a huge deal at this point, second preseason game in a new offense with vanilla playcalls. But it's something to keep an eye on. One of my hopes with Gase is that he can get Tannehill to be more aggressive, take some chances, extend plays, and attack the deep middle more often. So far his footwork looks a tad quicker and cleaner, which is a good sign for a faster process and for pocket movement as we saw last night. Developing rapport with Parker and Stills should help open up some of this too. Really positive stuff yesterday.

 

I saw at least 3 dropped would be TD passes in that montage.. Cameron. Landry, and Parker (I think?) I haven't seen the full game yet, saw the first two drives "live" as I was on vacation wwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy up north (on vacation) to you yankee's but from what I saw in this vid, he looked good, his guys just didn't make plays for him. I do remember one play, first drive (I think... I was drinking lol) where he held the ball wwwaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy too long and took a sack. But, looks like he did ok the rest of the way through.

Defense though... yikes.

 

this is the first time i have seen tannehill play since the last game of last year. it looks like he is moving around in the pocket a lot better and maybe its just me, but it looks like he is recognizing things and going through progressions much smoother and quicker. not sure what is up with the receivers, hopefully it is just rust but there were 3 or 4 touchdowns dropped. that roll out throw to stills was a thing of beauty, as was that second touchdown. it is also good to see stills really stepping up and getting some chemistry going with tannehill.

 

Exactly this, especially with defenses sitting on our tendencies last year if this was true given how skewed our pass run ratio was he'd be punished to the tune of 20+ picks.

 

Tannehill's definitely had a history of it. I don't think it's helped at all by the fact that the previous OC wanted so many quick-hitters. A lot of modern passing is based on spreading things out, picking the match-up that's most favorable and banging the defense as often as you can with up-tempo play-calling. So you're trying to do that kind of thing but also develop a QB so that he can be a pocket passer that goes through progressions when necessary. It's really 2 jobs in one.

I'm pretty optimistic that mentally Tannehill can handle that. Watching all of Ryan's throws from the Dallas game it's clear that at least 1/3rd of those plays were designed as quick-hitters where Ryan knows pre-snap what he's doing with the ball. I saw throws to both WRs and TEs where that was the case.

The most obvious was the first pass to Landry in the end zone where Landry wasn't quite ready for the ball when he turned around. I think Tannehill made a good read because he had a good receiver man-on-man. A few more reps and the timing of that play improves to the point that it's a reliable option down there in the red zone that probably works just as often as it doesn't. That's an instance where I don't mind Tannehill sticking on his primary read for several reasons. Firstly, it's man and Landry's likely going to get open (particularly on a comeback) and secondly, it's goal line so the coverage is going to be tight everywhere. Nobody's going to be wide open. Favoring a quick and feisty guy who's got room to work against a lone CB is not a sin.

We saw a lot of quick-hitters under Lazor too but to my eyes, the team never executed sharply enough for it to really work. The margins are slim to begin with so there's not a lot of room for lackluster blocking, sloppy route-running or a lack of YAC. The value of those plays just melts. The Patriots seem to make it all look so easy but you need great execution from all components. You can only hope that with time, these plays become more automatic under Gase.


That said, there were also a bunch of plays where Tannehill was asked to sit back and be a pocket passer. What was nice was that on these plays Tannehill worked the pocket as good as ever. In particular, I like his footwork as well as how he slid to his left/right a couple times. The throw to Ajayi down in the redzone that was deflected and went incomplete was a great example of that. Tannehill read right and came back to the middle to find Ajayi who was open.

The biggest issue here is whether or not the line can give Tannehill a pocket. You can't play pocket passer without a pocket. We know that. We saw quick pressure on 3rd down on the opening drive which resulted in a sack. Tannehill's first option wasn't open and he couldn't escape the rusher who'd broken through. After that though, the O-line tightened up a little. I still saw mistakes but Tannehill had enough of a pocket to start getting from one side of the field to the other.

Nevertheless, the Dolphins O-line has to be A LOT more consistent in protecting Tannehill. Right now, Tannehill is as good as the protection he gets.


As a caveat to all that, I'd point out that there were a couple of times when Dallas' defense just swallowed up Miami's receivers. That was disturbing. That happened on the 4th down play in the red zone that went incomplete as well as on the deflected ball that Landry caught. That should not have been thrown in the first place. The window had closed and Tannehill gunning it in there is going to result in more deflections-turned-INTs than it will lucky breaks.

I'm going to be paying close attention to Parker, Landry and Cameron in terms of how well they get off the line and run their routes because they all have something to prove this year. Even Landry gets swallowed up quite often by decent coverage. I saw it happen last night a couple times.

 

Anyone else wonder why we didn't try a fade to Parker in the end zone? I feel like we should be doing this often in the red zone.

 

My guess is that they're practicing it a lot, but don't want to show how effective the jump ball to Parker is during meaningless preseason games.