What's your barometer for this season? Obviously, there are stats like wins/losses (our record withing the AFC East might be the most important stat this upcoming season), but it's fun to think of some more gauges of success and failure this year. Here are some things I'll be looking for: 1. Yards for Tannehill Will Ryan throw for more yards than Brandon Fields punts? The last two years, Fields has won the yardage battle, but it's been close (4150 v 3912 in 2013, and 3666 v 3294 in 2012). Additionally, if Ryan improves his yardage from last, can he throw for 4,225 yards? If he does, he will have then thrown for more yards in his first three years than Dan Marino did (who is sitting at 2nd most in NFL history with 11,431 yards). 2. Sacks For/Against I think we got something like 13 sacks this preseason while only giving up 4. Our starting tackles did not give up a single one, nor a single QB hit, which is a night and day improvement from last year. Can our deep pass rushing unit get more sacks than our OLine allows? 3. TE production For/Against Our Achilles heels has seemingly been TEs on defense for years now. With our smallish corners, the suspensions to Jones and Jordan, and the new emphasis on penalizing physicality in the secondary, I don't know if we will see that change anytime soon. However, with Charles Clay's emergence last year as one of the best TEs in football, we can combat fire with fire. Just looking at the stats, we were almost even in TE production for and against last year for the first time in a long time. 4. Interceptions Last year, our defense was one of only three that snagged more INTs than passing TDs allowed. Is it reasonable to accept the same result this year? 5. 1000 Yards On the Phinsiders the other day, they said that Hartline has a chance to become the Dolphin to ever record three 1000 yard seasons in a row. Or can we have two 1000 yard WRs with Wallace? (He only needed 70 more yards last season.) How bout Charles Clay? He only needed 32 more yards last year to overtake McMichael for #1 TE season in our annals. How do you think we'll fare? What are some of the barometers that intrigue you coming into the season?
Realistically... 1) 3,400 for RT. Ahead of Fields. 2) Will give up more, but not by a lot. 3) Will trail, but not as badly (much depends on how Gronk performs in 2 games against). 4) No, but that's OK. 5) Wallace and Clay lead receptions. Running game back on track. Hartline doesn't get 1,000 but Wallace does (and Moreno get 1,000 on the ground). Cheers!
Same with Deej. I'm expecting playoffs+1. Anything less would be more disappointing to me than 2013's finish.
I like you a lot man, but I can't comprehend that. For me, individual stats and the minute details of the game are part of the beauty of football. Stats show how well a team moved down the field (or not), and put themselves into a position to score.
Consistency. Dolphins cannot have bad games on offense, where they score 0 and 7 points, or even 13 points. 20+ points every game, consistently. On D, I want to see consistency in tackling and attacking the ball every game. We have a better front 4 than Seattle. Dolphins need to start swarming the ball with back 7 allowing no extra yardage, every game, every snap.
Playoffs would be nice, but you never know how the conference plays out. I do think some individual stats are extremely important. For me, can Ryan get 30 tds, and be in the convo for top 10 QBs? For me this is pretty much the most important thing to the franchise. If Ryan is at the same level as Romo, Rivers, Ryan, Newton, etc., then we are pretty decent at the most important position. We should be always in the playoff hunt and attractive to top tier coaches if Philbin gets canned. The only other stats I would care about would be scoring offense and defense rankings.
I can respect that angle, I'm just at a pivitol point in the evaluation of Qb and head coach, usually in year three and we have some question marks I don'tand can't worry about anything else but outcome. The one barometer I will say is in my head is Ryan's passer rating and running yardage, it's got to improve so I'll say I need 5 more points and 250 yards to feel like he's still trending upwards.
I wish there was a barometer for attitude, toughness, and emotional investment..I wanna see this team play with juice for 60 mins, create some kind of identity of toughness.
Amen brother...hair on fire, etc. We signed a few guys in our secondary that bring that very element...let's hope it translates!
I like the chess match, like watching the moves being made, then watch athletes being athletes and either wrecking the play or making it happen. No OC draws up a play that ends in a sack or int or TFL No DC calls a play that involves a long Td or a plunge into the endzone No STC tells his guys to allow a Td or miss a Fg
Interesting barometers. I don't care about individual numbers when I evaluating a player's potential, but at some point you have to have production. Tannehill is at that point although for me it's more about TD/int ratio and YPA than total yards. I also thought the sacks and INTs for vs. against was interesting. Those are big plays and everybody knows how important TO ratio is to winning. Championships have been won with dominant O and dominant D and with a mixtures of both. The key is to be better than your opponent in passing game efficiency and TO. Last time a I checked there hadn't been a single SB champion who didn't have a better YPA than their opponents and at least a neutral TO ratio during either the regular season or at least during a hot playoff run. I'm sure that there have been many teams that accomplished those feats and didn't win it all, but it seems to be at least a minimum requirement so those are the other barometers I would use.
This is not discussed as much as it probably should be. A couple games, at least, could be won or lost on this issue.
Bad St play will cost you 2 games, great St play can win 3 to 4 Love going round and round with Rafi on that one
