It is. And, I have zero faith that Dolphins fans will show up down there. I expect a heavy Bills crowd.
there is a point and time when injuries do matter. Was 80% of their OL out ? 30% of their defense? Were they missing a star WR or star RB?
It is a fair question on all teams really. I don't know the answer. It seems every year each team loses a star, the Dolphins have lost more then their share. Perhaps that is really the difference in winning and losing. They lost their QB and their RB is all I am aware of. One could argue their QB was the least valuable player on their team. Their OL is apparently really good as many RB's look good with them.
I truly.think this team is cursed.I was thinking Super.bowl just before the titans game and now we more than likely will.lose the division despite a 3 game lead and then get.smoked in rd 1 like usual
Yes, I'll grant you Baker and Howard, not Holland though — he played. Either way, that's not responsible for 33 extra points allowed from our average. 80% of our OL was out against Dallas. Didn't matter. Tua and the offense did well. We've also seen Tua put up huge numbers without Waddle. Our running game was fine without Mostert: Achane had 107 rushing yards. Easy dropped TDs and Tua not making a good decision on an INT aren't due to injury. Importantly, none of that explains the defensive collapse — 33 more points than our average. We didn't lose because of injuries. Yes, there is some point at which injuries are too much. It wasn't "too much" against the Ravens given how huge the point differential was. If we lost by 7 points I'd be willing to entertain injuries as an explanation. Lose by 37 when the team had previously demonstrated the ability to play well with many key injuries and no, injuries are no excuse whatsoever.
Doesn't matter, does it? Should we put an asterisk beside the box score? We lost Tua at the crunch point of last season. All of the crying in the world doesn't change how the season ended and it doesn't change Sunday's game. This is something that happens and injuries definitely impact results. It's not like we got cheated. Call it an explanation if you don't want to consider it an excuse, but in the end, it is what it is. The milk is spilled; it's time to clean it up, not cry about it.
Who is crying? How is stating facts crying? Would the outcome have been different if we had been 100% healthy? if so, then it does matter. Certainly does not change the out come of this game, but to say injuries don't matter is just ridiculous.
My apologies, friend. I didn't mean for my post to be taken as an attack. "Cry" was just part of the metaphor and not meant to be taken literally.
So I just looked it up and the browns lost and if I am reading it right 13 players for season and 6 being offensive lineman
Exactly, every year people here are crying about injuries and using it as an excuse. Every team has injuries, you need to have depth and resourcefulness to overcome those, and also staying away from players with injury histories in the first place helps a lot, something Grier has not figured out.
Every team does have injuries, but do they have winning season regardless? How would the Ravens do without Jackson? Would the Dolphins backups beat the Dolphins starters?
It's not an excuse when you are missing 9 starters out of 22. That's a fact. You can only dig so far into the well of backups before you are at a talent disadvantage. Look at the Ravens game, it was Riley and Apple who got abused all game, both backups. They are backups for a reason. I really hate the "everyone is injured at this time of year" when you have some teams missing nearly half their starters and others missing 2 or 3. That puts you at a massive talent disadvantage.
OK.. answer a few questions: 1. Our offense performed flawlessly the first 2 drives except for Hill not catching an easy-to-catch perfectly thrown ball. What's your argument that all the injuries we had on offense didn't matter for those first 2 drives but did afterwards? Makes no sense. No, the Ravens defense adjusted while we didn't. 2. On defense we were missing Howard, Baker and Phillips. How does that account for giving up 33 more points than we on average give up? There is no defensible argument to say that those 3 are worth 33 points allowed. Injuries for the Ravens game are no excuse. Yes, at some point they help explain the outcome, but as I pointed out many times before statistically speaking injuries are very poor predictors except at QB. But start by answering those two questions.
1. The Ravens defence adjusted as you said. Miami couldn't adjust though as the OL can't hold up in passing blocking for 2.5 seconds. The first 2 drives were mostly quick, short passes like screens and passes to the flat. The Ravens adjust to them, Miami started trying to throw quick passes over the middle which the Ravens then adjusted to and then by that time the game was getting out of hand. The offence doesn't really have a plan B at the moment with this OL, it needs to throw way more screens that McDaniel wants to, he gets frustrated and tries to go back to the quick glance/slants over the middle but everyone is playing to stop those now. The OL doesn't allow for longer developing plays. 2. Miami definitely got out-schemed on defence but again, it was backups that got victimised. Maybe the starters would have been better at covering wheel routes/passing off receivers in zone, maybe not. One thing though is that Fangio refused to adjust, especially up front, he should have started letting the DL get after Lamar instead of containing him. That's on him. As I've said, if people think that having 5 starters missing on offence isn't an excuse and the team should just be able to overcome then fine. What's the point in paying the starters the big bucks if you expect the backups to play just as well?
The offense not having a plan B is one of McD's weaknesses. He generally does not have a plan B. He goes in with one plan and then tries to improvise when necessary. He needs to learn that he needs to plan for contingencies from the get-go. The reason we couldn't adjust in-game isn't because we were missing 80% of the OL. It's that McD didn't properly prepare for the defense adjusting to his plan A. We beat the Cowboys with 80% of the OL missing. It's not the crucial component you think it is as long as you game plan well. Also, our OL is pretty weak even when healthy. More importantly, the defense giving up 33 more points than average obviously is not something you can ascribe to the injuries we had. I think you're implicitly admitting that through your post. That debacle is primarily on Fangio. As I said before, if we lost by maybe one TD then you can bring up injuries, but not when we lose by 37. This loss was not due to injuries.
Miami’s 3rd offensive drive is where the wheels fell off the proverbial wagon on the offensive side of the ball. I’ve always…ALWAYS advocated a balanced offensive play call. The first 2 drives, we were pretty balanced run to pass ratio. The first drive resulted in a touchdown, the 2nd WOULD HAVE resulted ina touchdown had Hill not dropped the ball so we got a field goal. The 3rd drive…the first play was a run for 5 yards and then we just threw, threw threw. You have to have balance and we abandoned the run for the most part. I still give McDaniel a little latitude being a young head coach, but he has got to place more value on the run.
I keep reminding myself it is only his second year as a head coach. He has to clear up some things for sure.
Chubb was a noncontact injury. That could have happened on any play, at any time. Blaming McD for noncontact injury is just stupid.
For #1, Hill was playing hurt and Waddle was out. We can win in that scenario but the offense is clearly not the same without both homerun hitters on the field. Mostert was also out, but I don't think it's as much of a decline there. For #2, it felt like Baltimore threw to whoever was being covered by Duke Riley. They were running Tyreek-like motions straight at Riley all day long and we never adjusted- he was always 2-3 steps behind. That's partially talent (Baker is faster) but to me, that ultimately comes down to coaching. Once Riley was beaten a few times, we should have had a safety over there to shut that down. That "exploit" alone was a big part of those 33 points...the shallow right side of the field was wide open all day long. I don't think injuries were an "excuse" as much as highlighting the true problem with this team- when you pay huge money for a handful of superstars, you're in trouble when those superstars aren't on the field. We could say if Howard and Baker and Phillips and Waddle played, maybe we could have competed. But we can also say that the team should have had more quality depth so the drop-off wasn't that obvious.
I really like McDaniel and hope he's here for years to come but leaving Chubb in that late in a blowout loss was irresponsible. It doesn't matter how it happened. If he was pulled earlier like he should have been he wouldn't have torn his ACL and our defense wouldn't be on life support for the remainder of the season. On top of that we almost lost Tua right before Chubb went down.
That's not really answering the question because we played fantastic the first two drives. Hill was fine. He wasn't showing signs of injury during those 2 drives. The average points allowed per game is 22. The worst defense in the league is currently giving up 30 points per game. There is no scenario in which 3 injuries leads to 33 extra points allowed, not even close. It's important to emphasize the point I've been making: it's very difficult to predict outcomes looking at injuries. If you think injuries explains a "big part" of the 33 points, then you should try predicting outcomes by looking at the injury report prior to the game. If you do this diligently you'll find out that your predictions will come out wrong close to half the time. Let me put some actual numbers behind this. From 2010-2019 the correlation between number of games missed by offensive and defensive starters and win% is -0.226, which translates to 5% of the variation in win% due to injury (and this includes injury to QBs which have an outsized influence). That's VERY small, and nothing close to what is necessary to explain double digit changes in points allowed per game.
He might not have gotten hurt. It could have been a ticking time bomb that was about to happen no matter what but either way he shouldn't have been out there
He could have tore it on the 1st play in the next game. That's the thing about noncontact, you play a woulda shoulda coulda but no one knows when that knee was going to pop.
About as stupid as blaming anyone for an injury that could have or even would have eventually happened.
does it happen if he is not playing? the answer is no. same reason coach holds players out of games so they dont get injured further.
This wasn't like what happened to Tannehill when he had a known partial tear that totally tore the very next season. Chubb was totally fine before the 4th quarter and made a move tearing his ACL. I really don't understand your logic. There's a difference between "maybe" it would have torn anyway and the fact that if he wasn't in an embarrassing blowout with three minutes to go he would be starting Sunday night. One is a hypothetical and the other is a fact.
I've asked you many times, you have never answered. Have you EVER played organized sports? You seem to think people are robots.
52% Bills fans is the projected turnout. I'm in NJ so I have an excuse for not going but what the hell is wrong with our fans down there? Hard Rock is our house and we're letting Bills fans take it over in the highest stakes regular season game in decades?
Yeah when I was younger, but not at any high level. What does that have to do with anything? There are many people who play sports at the highest level — far higher than anything you've had experience with — that disagree with you about a lot of things. Worse, they disagree with each other! I rely mostly on data to make my arguments, and 5% of variation in win% explained by injuries (which includes QBs who have an outsized influence) is more than enough to make the argument I've been making, which is that there's no way you can blame injuries for the Ravens loss. But please let's see you explain why it's so ridiculous for someone to argue you can't blame injuries for the Ravens loss.
Because you don't seem to understand basic things that you usually understand when you play organized sports. Like, just because one week the oline did ok even with the injuries, does not mean that should be expected. Guys are second string for a reason. That reason is usually because they are either less talented or less consistent than the starters. If your starters are out, you should not be expecting the same results as when they are in. My issue with the last game was that they just didn't seen to care. You can absolutely get dominated by a superior opponent while still playing with intensity.
You completely ignored my post (the original one). Read it before responding. I pointed out the first 2 drives on offense were fantastic (except for one dropped TD). This isn't about Dallas, it's about the first 2 drives vs. the Ravens. You already have the evidence that injuries weren't an issue on offense right there. What happened? We couldn't adapt when the Ravens adapted. If McD had the right plan B we would have adapted. McD is often very good with his initial game plans, but we all know he's not a great in-game coach (yet). And the 2nd point I made was that there is no way 3 injuries on defense results in 33 extra points allowed. If you claim they just didn't care (which I actually don't agree with), well that supports my point that this was a mental issue not an injury issue. We did NOT lose this game on injuries. If you want to blame injuries, make sure the final score is relatively close. That's the only thing statistical analysis will support. Not when you lose by 37 points!!!
I am not ignoring anything. Again, players are not robots. I'm by no means surprised that they did well the first drive or two. It was early in a big game. However, a couple early drives going well when you're still cranked on hype and adrenaline should not be expected to overcome clearly superior players on the other side. Injuries are not an excuse, they are a reason. You absolutely should not expect a team missing this many starters to consistently beat the best teams in the league.
exactly, that is why you see in basketball all the team lessor teams play well even lead in the first half, then get blown out in the second half.
lol.. you would have NEVER predicted what happened. Of course you were extremely surprised by how the game transpired. Don't act otherwise. But since you think you understand football and sports so well, give us your prediction of how the Buffalo game will transpire. Then let's see what actually happens. Injuries are not a reason when you lose by 37. There is no mechanism that makes sense that would lead to that result given the statistical effect of injuries. Like I said, 5% of variation in win% (over 2010-2019) was due to games missed by starters. That's a fact whether you like it or not, which means that the score differential has to be quite small for injuries to be a plausible explanation. If your intuition doesn't fit the data, you have to change your intuition.
The 5% variation is it taking into account the number of starters missing or is it just "at least 1 starter missing". I'm wondering if there is data on a team missing 8 starters for weeks on end to see how they did.
