Ryan Tannehill

"PhinFan1968 wrote:

Sure, Sherman. You shoulda done something about it, and not let him (Tannehill) get demolished early (read below).

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2020/01/02/given-miami-ryan-tannehill-thriving-tennessee/uyignFKGwsORtIP8ueFeJP/story.html

“It doesn’t surprise me — he always had talent,” said Mike Sherman, who coached Tannehill for four years at Texas A&M, then was his offensive coordinator with the Miami Dolphins for Tannehill’s first two seasons. “That’s the great thing about football — it takes 11 , and the 11 he’s playing with now are probably better than the 11 he was playing with in the past.

If we go back and check the league and check the quarterbacks that had those type of consistent changes, they’ve usually struggled,” Sherman said. “Tom Brady has been in the same scheme since Day 1. You can’t overburden a quarterback with different systems.

He was thrown to the wolves right away and never had a chance to grow as a quarterback,” Sherman said. “It always felt like, ‘We need an offensive line here, we need to be able to protect this kid.’"

I'd have to look it up, but sometime in 2012-13, I recall Sherman saying something to the effect that he'd argued with Philbin, trying to convince him of the importance of a balanced offense and ground game, and upgrading the OL.

Instead, Sherman was fired and Philbin experimented with his disproportionally pass heavy philosphies, which is part of why Lazor was brought in.

Dan Campbell got "it" and results were evident in his brief tenure, but he wasn't a young up n comer like Gase.

Gase gets a lot of hate, but he only had a completely healthy Tannehill for like his first 9 games, then the OL he'd inherited from Philbin allowed Tannhill to get wrecked.

I still remember Philbin defending Dallas Thomas' "stance". Phlbin was the worst.

Bill Barnwell's recent article:

How they got here: Looking for a spark, the Titans turned their offense over to offseason acquisition Ryan Tannehill in Week 7. They've gone 7-3 since. Tannehill has posted the league's second-best passer rating and fifth-best QBR, and the former Dolphins starter has averaged 9.6 yards per attempt, more than a full yard ahead of anybody else in the league over that time frame.

How they're worse than you think: It's difficult to imagine this offense staying as good as it has been over the past three months. I wouldn't write off the Titans as a flash in the pan, but there's no way they're going to be as effective moving forward in the red zone. Since Tannehill entered the lineup, they have converted 86.7% of their red zone trips into touchdowns. To put that in context, the second-placed Buccaneers are at 71.9%, and they're closer to the 49ers in 16th than they are to Tennessee at the top.

I get that Derrick Henry is a load to bring down in short yardage, but the Titans were 18th in the same category before Tannehill took over, and there's no track record of any team sustaining that for a meaningful amount of time. The last time a playoff offense was anywhere near that hot in the red zone over the final 11 weeks of the season was the 2012 Patriots. They scored touchdowns at an 80.5% clip from Week 7 on, only to score five touchdowns in 10 red zone possessions during the playoffs. The Titans have created lots of big plays with Tannehill throwing to A.J. Brown, but they can't count on virtually every red zone trip resulting in six points from here on out.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28403463/barnwell-guide-2019-nfl-playoffs-how-all-12-teams-win-super-bowl

"cuchulainn wrote:

I still remember Philbin defending Dallas Thomas' "stance". Phlbin was the worst.

But he had high moral character, which was what Philbin often prized over actual talent in players.

"KeyFin wrote:

But he had high moral character, which was what Philbin often prized over actual talent in players.

With the way Gase tossed both of the dreadful dreadheads off the team mid-season, i was under the impression he wanted them gone to start with, but was asked by the FO to try and salvage them.

I was ecstatic when he cut them and Douglas all three after the Titans' game. AFAIK, the only team to look at Thomas was the Eagles and the cut him quickly. Douglas is a backup with the Titans' now. Go figure.

@TeresaMWalker
How good was #Titans’ Ryan Tannehill in December? 124.6 passer rating with 1,333 yards passing and 12 TD passes - all franchise bests in December.

"cuchulainn wrote:

@TeresaMWalker
How good was #Titans’ Ryan Tannehill in December? 124.6 passer rating with 1,333 yards passing and 12 TD passes - all franchise bests in December.

Lies...he can't play in December.

"cuchulainn wrote:

@TeresaMWalker
How good was #Titans’ Ryan Tannehill in December? 124.6 passer rating with 1,333 yards passing and 12 TD passes - all franchise bests in December.

I’d be curious to see how that ranks all time

"PhinFan1968 wrote:

Lies...he can't play in December.

3 games under 500 for his career in December, but most TDs and yards and a 63% career completion%. Also the most sacks for his career are in Dec.

Makes you wonder what if he hadn't been drafted by a team as dysfunctional as Miami, nor in the AFCE with the damned Patriots...

"The_Dark_Knight wrote:

I’d be curious to see how that ranks all time

You'd have to adjust for era and z-scores. :shifty:

"cuchulainn wrote:

You'd have to adjust for era and z-scores. :shifty:

You’re not Zorro lol

"The_Dark_Knight wrote:

You’re not Zorro lol

Yeah.. I have the data to do the calculations but I'm estimating it would take me a few hours to write the program (never had to parse by both month and year before and then calculate z-scores) so I think I'll pass on this one, at least for now lol. However, it's a lot easier to do for just 2019, and it turns out that Tannehill came in 2nd to Brees's 137 rating for December 2019.

So no era adjustments or z-scores this time! (but only because of the work required!)

OK so this is some Twilight Zone crap coming up this weekend.....

- Winter Storm "Henry" is due to hit Foxborough right before the game (Jan 4th), bringing slush/snow.
- Derrick "Henry" is the Titans running back, in his 4th year.
- Derrick Henry's BIRTHDAY is this Saturday (Jan 4th)!!!!

What the.....

cbrad...what are the odds of that?

Any bets he'll get 4 TDs?

"PhinFan1968 wrote:

Sure, Sherman. You shoulda done something about it, and not let him (Tannehill) get demolished early (read below).

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2020/01/02/given-miami-ryan-tannehill-thriving-tennessee/uyignFKGwsORtIP8ueFeJP/story.html

“It doesn’t surprise me — he always had talent,” said Mike Sherman, who coached Tannehill for four years at Texas A&M, then was his offensive coordinator with the Miami Dolphins for Tannehill’s first two seasons. “That’s the great thing about football — it takes 11 , and the 11 he’s playing with now are probably better than the 11 he was playing with in the past.

If we go back and check the league and check the quarterbacks that had those type of consistent changes, they’ve usually struggled,” Sherman said. “Tom Brady has been in the same scheme since Day 1. You can’t overburden a quarterback with different systems.

He was thrown to the wolves right away and never had a chance to grow as a quarterback,” Sherman said. “It always felt like, ‘We need an offensive line here, we need to be able to protect this kid.’"

that same scheme thing is a big deal. Big advantage.

Especially if it’s not a neutered qb one.

"PhinFan1968 wrote:

OK so this is some Twilight Zone crap coming up this weekend.....

- Winter Storm "Henry" is due to hit Foxborough right before the game (Jan 4th), bringing slush/snow.
- Derrick "Henry" is the Titans running back, in his 4th year.
- Derrick Henry's BIRTHDAY is this Saturday (Jan 4th)!!!!

What the.....

cbrad...what are the odds of that?

Any bets he'll get 4 TDs?

Wrong question.
“What are the chances of ? The answer usually is one in a very big number.
The better question is “what are the chances of ? The answer usually it will almost certainly happen at some time somewhere.

Every week people win the lottery, yet the odds of someone selecting the right combination of numbers is one in tens (or hundreds) of millions.

"Pauly wrote:

Wrong question.
“What are the chances of ? The answer usually is one in a very big number.
The better question is “what are the chances of ? The answer usually it will almost certainly happen at some time somewhere.

Every week people win the lottery, yet the odds of someone selecting the right combination of numbers is one in tens (or hundreds) of millions.

So Henry needs to buy lottery tickets on his birthday, got it! :)

"The Guy wrote:

Bill Barnwell's recent article:

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28403463/barnwell-guide-2019-nfl-playoffs-how-all-12-teams-win-super-bowl

Soooo they won't stay this good, cause they are just too damn good???

My guess is if you look through Brees, Brady, and Rodgers career you will find more then a few things that "shouldn't" have been sustainable, but have been.

I agree that they may not keep winning exactly how they are currently winning, but with the way Tannehill is playing, its crazy to believe that he is winning purely off of luck and gaming around his weaknesses. I suspect that he will continue to battle for top 10 rankings for the rest of his career as a starter. I also suspect that he will find himself in the top 5 a few more times as a starter.

IF he had a high QB rating but a below average ypa you could argue he is a game manager IF he had a high TD to int rate but didn't throw many TDs you could argue that the coach was shielding him from making mistakes. IF he was throwing 50/50 balls and just had an insane success rate with them you could argue that luck can't be sustained.

Tannehill isn't doing any of those things. He is league best in almost every stat except number of attempts. If you watch the game you can see why he doesn't lead in that stat, Titans are a live or die run 1st team. When the run is starting to fail they then turn to Tannehill to bail them out. This is probably the hardest situation for a QB to come out as a NFL stats leader, and yet, here we are.

Attempting to make an argument that there is a magic number of passes that if he passes turns him from a prince to a pumpkin just doesn't make sense. IF it were true you should be able to clearly show a drop off at the end of every game once he passed that magic number of passes. My guess without going into the game by game plays is that you will see that he was struggling in those games from the beginning of the game to the end, but in Miami especially, the team didn't have any way to really bail out a struggling QB, so instead, we would double down on his passing to try to catch up.

Maybe I'm being too generous giving Tannehill a clean slate as a Titan, and not holding the past against him. If you give him that clean slate and you are going strictly off of his career as a Titan then I don't think you have enough data to come to the conclusion you have. he has 3 games above 30 attempts as a Titan and his QB rating is 92.2, 82.3, 109.8. in 2 of those games we have 2 interceptions that were perfect throws that became interceptions. Against Carolina he hit his WR in BOTH hands and the ball makes a weird bounce and falls into a defenders hands. The other is the more recent one where the WR turns gets hit the ball bounces out and into a defenders hands. If I remember correctly both of those were redzone ending drives with at least 1 going to be a touchdown if the catch stands. Normally I believe that interceptions balance out, but when you are looking at a sample size of 3 games its small enough you need to take these into account.

So serious question, are you watching the Games? And I fully understand if you aren't cause this is a Dolphins fan site, I'm just curious how we are seeing things so differently. Nothing about his game looks like a fluke. He is crisp with his throws, he is throwing into tight windows, he is reading the defenses, he is making incredibly smart decisions with the ball.

I think you have a lot of great insight to the game, but, I'm wondering if you aren't getting a little bit blinded by stats on this one.

"Phins_to_Win wrote:

Soooo they won't stay this good, cause they are just too damn good???

My guess is if you look through Brees, Brady, and Rodgers career you will find more then a few things that "shouldn't" have been sustainable, but have been.

I agree that they may not keep winning exactly how they are currently winning, but with the way Tannehill is playing, its crazy to believe that he is winning purely off of luck and gaming around his weaknesses. I suspect that he will continue to battle for top 10 rankings for the rest of his career as a starter. I also suspect that he will find himself in the top 5 a few more times as a starter.

IF he had a high QB rating but a below average ypa you could argue he is a game manager IF he had a high TD to int rate but didn't throw many TDs you could argue that the coach was shielding him from making mistakes. IF he was throwing 50/50 balls and just had an insane success rate with them you could argue that luck can't be sustained.

Tannehill isn't doing any of those things. He is league best in almost every stat except number of attempts. If you watch the game you can see why he doesn't lead in that stat, Titans are a live or die run 1st team. When the run is starting to fail they then turn to Tannehill to bail them out. This is probably the hardest situation for a QB to come out as a NFL stats leader, and yet, here we are.

Attempting to make an argument that there is a magic number of passes that if he passes turns him from a prince to a pumpkin just doesn't make sense. IF it were true you should be able to clearly show a drop off at the end of every game once he passed that magic number of passes. My guess without going into the game by game plays is that you will see that he was struggling in those games from the beginning of the game to the end, but in Miami especially, the team didn't have any way to really bail out a struggling QB, so instead, we would double down on his passing to try to catch up.

Maybe I'm being too generous giving Tannehill a clean slate as a Titan, and not holding the past against him. If you give him that clean slate and you are going strictly off of his career as a Titan then I don't think you have enough data to come to the conclusion you have. he has 3 games above 30 attempts as a Titan and his QB rating is 92.2, 82.3, 109.8. in 2 of those games we have 2 interceptions that were perfect throws that became interceptions. Against Carolina he hit his WR in BOTH hands and the ball makes a weird bounce and falls into a defenders hands. The other is the more recent one where the WR turns gets hit the ball bounces out and into a defenders hands. If I remember correctly both of those were redzone ending drives with at least 1 going to be a touchdown if the catch stands. Normally I believe that interceptions balance out, but when you are looking at a sample size of 3 games its small enough you need to take these into account.

So serious question, are you watching the Games? And I fully understand if you aren't cause this is a Dolphins fan site, I'm just curious how we are seeing things so differently. Nothing about his game looks like a fluke. He is crisp with his throws, he is throwing into tight windows, he is reading the defenses, he is making incredibly smart decisions with the ball.

I think you have a lot of great insight to the game, but, I'm wondering if you aren't getting a little bit blinded by stats on this one.

This article does a good job of describing the potential issues in my opinion:

The better question is should the Titans pay him. As well as Tannehill has played this season, the answer is probably no. I say that because a lot of the success Tannehill is having is completely unsustainable.

Let’s start with his play under pressure. Before 2019, this was the one area where Tannehill could have really used some work. His inability to evade sacks (which is still a bit of a problem) and make plays under duress stood out on film and showed up in the numbers, as well. But guess what? That’s changed this season. Tannehill is averaging 10.0 yards per attempt under pressure, which leads the league, per Sports Info Solutions. Second place on the list? Dak Prescott … at 7.4.

In the three seasons Tannehill played before 2019, he had never averaged more than 6.6 yards per attempt under pressure. The big jump isn’t entirely surprising, as studies have shown that “under pressure” stats are volatile.

Almost all of a quarterback’s season-long statistics are far less stable under pressure than they are when clean. This is understandable, since a quarterback’s ability is far more isolated when he is kept clean than when he is pressured. This also explains some outlier seasons for quarterbacks that were not eventually sustained. For example, Josh McCown’s 112.2 passer rating when pressured in 2013 was both more than 20 points higher than any other quarterback that year and a sign that regression was in order… Thus, when discussing a quarterback’s prowess when under pressure, one should therefore consider these statistics as descriptive, and not predictive.

So, no, Tannehill did not become the greatest under pressure quarterback of all-time overnight. Regression is coming.

Another area where Tannehill is thriving is the play-action passing game. Among quarterbacks with at least 40 play-action attempts, Tannehill leads the league in yards-per-attempt (13.4), passer rating (137.5) and only Drew Brees and Russell Wilson have a higher success rate (59.4%). The Titans are wisely leaning into this strategy.

Here’s the problem: Play-action stats are even less predictive than under-pressure stats. Our analysis suggests that, other than positively-graded throws and PACR, almost nothing a quarterback does when using play action has any predictive power year-to-year.

Again, regression is coming.

A lot of those play-action passes are turning into deep shots, and that’s another area where Tannehill is getting the benefit of unsustainable luck, as Sharp Football Analysis’ Dan Pizzuta illustrated with this chart. You can find Tannehill all the way at the bottom…

That chart shows that Tannehill has been the least accurate quarterback in the league on deep throws, but Titans receivers have caught EVERY catchable pass he’s thrown. As you can see with all the red on the chart … that’s not normal. That chart was made before the Raiders game, but Tennessee’s receivers continued to be perfect on deep targets, hauling in all three of Tannehill’s catchable deep targets.

Like Tannehill’s play under pressure or in the play-action passing game, this is not going to continue. And “this” is what the Titans would be paying for if they did give him a new contract. Occam’s Razor needs to be applied here. What’s more likely: That Tannehill turned into one of the league’s best quarterbacks overnight or the six-year sample of play is more representative of his true talent?

The answer is pretty obvious.

Now, as The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin points out, Tannehill has performed well in more stable metrics, as well. He’s been good from a clean pocket in 2019, which typically bodes well for the future. Then again, we’re dealing with a seven-game sample size and Tannehill’s clean-pocket performance in past seasons has been underwhelming. Since 2015, he’s one of only six quarterbacks who have produced a negative EPA from a clean pocket in two or more seasons. The rest of the names on that list: Blake Bortles, Blaine Gabbert, C.J. Beathard, Joe Flacco and Mariota. That isn’t good company.

I’ve always considered Tannehill an underrated quarterback, who was stuck in a bad situation in Miami. He’s solid in just about every facet of quarterback play and can look good in the right system, as we’re seeing now. But he does nothing overly well and will always be the product of what’s around him. What is that worth? That’s a tricky question, but the answer probably isn’t “$27 million.” If the Titans can work out a multi-year deal that allows them to bail at the first sign of trouble, then, by all means, do it. But if Tannehill’s camp is looking to cash in on this hot run on the open market (and it probably should) then a reset at the quarterback position is probably best.

Tannehill’s breakout season is eerily similar to Case Keenum’s breakout season in 2017. Keenum also thrived under pressure. He dominated in the play-action passing game. He had Stefon Diggs and Adam Theilen hauling in every deep pass he threw. The Vikings realized it was a fluke. John Elway fell for the mirage and gave him too much money.

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/12/ryan-tannehill-titans-franchise-qb-new-contract

Ranked 5th best QB of 2019 by Kurt Warner.

[ATTACH:full]

"Phins_to_Win wrote:

Soooo they won't stay this good, cause they are just too damn good???

My guess is if you look through Brees, Brady, and Rodgers career you will find more then a few things that "shouldn't" have been sustainable, but have been.

I agree that they may not keep winning exactly how they are currently winning, but with the way Tannehill is playing, its crazy to believe that he is winning purely off of luck and gaming around his weaknesses. I suspect that he will continue to battle for top 10 rankings for the rest of his career as a starter. I also suspect that he will find himself in the top 5 a few more times as a starter.

IF he had a high QB rating but a below average ypa you could argue he is a game manager IF he had a high TD to int rate but didn't throw many TDs you could argue that the coach was shielding him from making mistakes. IF he was throwing 50/50 balls and just had an insane success rate with them you could argue that luck can't be sustained.

Tannehill isn't doing any of those things. He is league best in almost every stat except number of attempts. If you watch the game you can see why he doesn't lead in that stat, Titans are a live or die run 1st team. When the run is starting to fail they then turn to Tannehill to bail them out. This is probably the hardest situation for a QB to come out as a NFL stats leader, and yet, here we are.

Attempting to make an argument that there is a magic number of passes that if he passes turns him from a prince to a pumpkin just doesn't make sense. IF it were true you should be able to clearly show a drop off at the end of every game once he passed that magic number of passes. My guess without going into the game by game plays is that you will see that he was struggling in those games from the beginning of the game to the end, but in Miami especially, the team didn't have any way to really bail out a struggling QB, so instead, we would double down on his passing to try to catch up.

Maybe I'm being too generous giving Tannehill a clean slate as a Titan, and not holding the past against him. If you give him that clean slate and you are going strictly off of his career as a Titan then I don't think you have enough data to come to the conclusion you have. he has 3 games above 30 attempts as a Titan and his QB rating is 92.2, 82.3, 109.8. in 2 of those games we have 2 interceptions that were perfect throws that became interceptions. Against Carolina he hit his WR in BOTH hands and the ball makes a weird bounce and falls into a defenders hands. The other is the more recent one where the WR turns gets hit the ball bounces out and into a defenders hands. If I remember correctly both of those were redzone ending drives with at least 1 going to be a touchdown if the catch stands. Normally I believe that interceptions balance out, but when you are looking at a sample size of 3 games its small enough you need to take these into account.

So serious question, are you watching the Games? And I fully understand if you aren't cause this is a Dolphins fan site, I'm just curious how we are seeing things so differently. Nothing about his game looks like a fluke. He is crisp with his throws, he is throwing into tight windows, he is reading the defenses, he is making incredibly smart decisions with the ball.

I think you have a lot of great insight to the game, but, I'm wondering if you aren't getting a little bit blinded by stats on this one.

LOL. Don’t bother.....

"Phins_to_Win wrote:

Soooo they won't stay this good, cause they are just too damn good???

Belichek is a master of taking away your best player and making you beat them with "plan B". They do have the league's top defense so if they stack the box and somewhat contain Henry, it's going to be Tannehill's game to win or lose. The difference between RT in Miami/Tennessee is that you can't all-out blitz him (because of Henry) and Belichek already knows what happens when you rush three and challenge him to beat you vertically. So I think it's going to be pretty interesting how they try to slow that offense down.

The match-up I'm more interested in is Tennessee's defense vs Brady- I don't see him having a big game. And if he doesn't, then I don't think this one is even close...Tennessee will win convincingly.

What has me excited is that we always say you have to have x, y, and z to compete for a Super Bowl...but that's not true. To get to the big show, you need to get into the playoffs and win 3 games- it makes no difference how. I don't think Tennessee can beat Baltimore (I don't think anyone can beat Baltimore) but I wouldn't be shocked to see Tennessee take out anyone else in the conference.

"Phins_to_Win wrote:

Tannehill isn't doing any of those things. He is league best in almost every stat except number of attempts. If you watch the game you can see why he doesn't lead in that stat, Titans are a live or die run 1st team. When the run is starting to fail they then turn to Tannehill to bail them out. This is probably the hardest situation for a QB to come out as a NFL stats leader, and yet, here we are.

The point highlighted above I'll address myself since the article I posted above doesn't do it. Excluding the Denver game, the correlation between Tannehill's number of pass attempts and his passer rating, on a game-by-game basis in 2019, is -0.87, meaning that as he has thrown more passes, his passer rating has plummeted.

That wouldn't be a potential issue if 1) a similar correlation was seen in the league as a whole, and 2) Tannehill didn't have significantly fewer pass attempts per game than the average quarterback in the league. But neither of those things is true.

First, the correlation between pass attempts and passer rating throughout the league, on a game-by-game basis in 2019, appeared to be about -0.03, meaning that there is no relationship between those variables in the league as a whole. Second, Tannehill has attempted roughly 27 passes per game, which is lowest in the league. The league average in 2019 was roughly 35.

In fact, although there is likely a very high degree of error involved given the small sample size (which is another issue in itself), Tannehill's predicted passer rating in 2019, given just a league average number of pass attempts per game (let alone more than average), would be 98.4, about 19 points lower than his actual mark of 117.5.

The league average passer rating this year was 90.4, and so an individual passer rating of 98.4 -- eight points above the league average -- likely wouldn't have been significantly different from how much better he was than the league average in either 2014, when his mark of 92.8 was nearly four points above the league average of 88.9, or 2016, when his mark of 93.5 was roughly four points higher than the league average of 89.3.

So there is some merit to the idea that Tannehill is benefiting from simply being asked to throw the ball a lot less than the average QB in the NFL. And again, the other QBs in the league don't enjoy that same benefit in terms of passer rating from throwing the ball less. The question is, if you're going to pay Tannehill a large sum of money after this season, can you count on being able to ask him to throw the ball just as infrequently, or is that an unrealistic expectation for your team?

Anyway, there are lots of people here with strong feelings and strong opinions. My personal perspective on the issue is that Tannehill is experiencing a "perfect storm" of sorts, in a positive way for him, which is attested to by the info above and the article I posted above. Only time will tell whether his performance is sustainable and whether I'm correct or mistaken.

The Patriots were 5-4 to end the season. I think the defense is not as good as they appear.

"KeyFin wrote:

Belichek is a master of taking away your best player and making you beat them with "plan B". They do have the league's top defense so if they stack the box and somewhat contain Henry, it's going to be Tannehill's game to win or lose. The difference between RT in Miami/Tennessee is that you can't all-out blitz him (because of Henry) and Belichek already knows what happens when you rush three and challenge him to beat you vertically. So I think it's going to be pretty interesting how they try to slow that offense down.

The match-up I'm more interested in is Tennessee's defense vs Brady- I don't see him having a big game. And if he doesn't, then I don't think this one is even close...Tennessee will win convincingly.

What has me excited is that we always say you have to have x, y, and z to compete for a Super Bowl...but that's not true. To get to the big show, you need to get into the playoffs and win 3 games- it makes no difference how. I don't think Tennessee can beat Baltimore (I don't think anyone can beat Baltimore) but I wouldn't be shocked to see Tennessee take out anyone else in the conference.

That New England defense isn't the same monster it was in the first half of the season. Part of that was their cakewalk schedule their first 8 games (PIT, MIA, NYJ, BUF, WAS, NYG, NYJ, CLE...wow), and another part is the league catching up to what they're doing.

Patriots Defense:

1st 8 games: 7+ PPG allowed (1st and insane)
2nd 8 games: 20+ PPG allowed (12th if full season)

1st 8 games T/O diff: +17
2nd 8 games T/O diff: +4

Nobody should fear that defense, outside of some singular great play by Gilmore (who the Dolphins and Bills both showed how to beat in the past few weeks).

"resnor wrote:

The Patriots were 5-4 to end the season. I think the defense is not as good as they appear.

So were the Dolphins.

"Dol-Fan Dupree wrote:

So were the Dolphins.

Exactly.