Ryan Tannehill

"The Guy wrote:

What I don’t necessarily agree about is whether there is some sensitive developmental period that quarterbacks experience that determine their performances throughout their careers. What evidence is there of that?

And if there is evidence of that, how do we distinguish the quarterbacks whose careers were derailed by deleterious surroundings during their developmental periods, from those who were simply inadequate individually?

Essentially you’re making an unfalsifiable argument, where any quarterback who doesn’t reach his potential can be argued to have been unduly influenced throughout his career by his deleterious surroundings early in his career. How do we know that didn’t happen for JaMarcus Russell, for example?

The fact that something cant be pinpointed doesnt mean it doesnt exist. There is an element in human interaction that doesnt show in numbers. Like I've said this isnt physics....its football at the end of the day, a human sport.

I'm not saying every QB needs perfect development....but if coaching matters at all youd think it would indeed impact the most important position on the field.

"AGuyNamedAlex wrote:

The fact that something cant be pinpointed doesnt mean it doesnt exist. There is an element in human interaction that doesnt show in numbers. Like I've said this isnt physics....its football at the end of the day, a human sport.

I'm not saying every QB needs perfect development....but if coaching matters at all youd think it would indeed impact the most important position on the field.

I didn’t say it doesn’t exist. I asked what evidence of it there is.

Again just to reiterate the issue: Ryan Tannehill and Russell Wilson have both played seven-plus years now, with lots of variation in their surroundings. Wilson has outplayed Tannehill significantly despite that variation.

The argument above as I understand it is that there was a difference between Tannehill and Wilson in how they developed that was determined by their surroundings early in their careers, and that has in turn strongly influenced the entirety of their careers.

The reason why evidence of such a phenomenon is important is because, without it, there is an unfalsifiable argument that can be applied to any quarterback in history who didn't reach his potential -- his development was simply derailed by his early-career surroundings. Give him better surroundings during his supposedly all-important developmental period, and you'd have a different quarterback even years later. You could apply that argument to Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell, John Beck, Chad Henne, anyone.

If the person espousing that position can't or doesn't want to supply evidence of that, that's sure fine, but realize that unfalsifiable arguments are inherently weak because they can be neither proven nor disproven. They're akin to religion.

Yet WITHIN the variation, the Seahawks provided Wilson with a stability generated from a great run game, and all time great defensive play for at least the first 3 years. Yes, QBs need development, especially a guy like Tannehill. He was incredibly raw. So what do we do? We throw the kid out there with no oline, no run game, and a defense that despite some gaudy stats in one year, were still terrible defenses that couldn't cover a tight end or get off the field on third down. Oh, and we had him throw the ball like 25 or more times a game. And then we gave him Zack Taylor (WTF) as a QB coach, and changed coaches and OCs almost every year.

Sounds like a recipe for success, if you ask me.

This cracks me up... Lol...

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"The Guy wrote:

I didn’t say it doesn’t exist. I asked what evidence of it there is.

Again just to reiterate the issue: Ryan Tannehill and Russell Wilson have both played seven-plus years now, with lots of variation in their surroundings. Wilson has outplayed Tannehill significantly despite that variation.

The argument above as I understand it is that there was a difference between Tannehill and Wilson in how they developed that was determined by their surroundings early in their careers, and that has in turn strongly influenced the entirety of their careers.

The reason why evidence of such a phenomenon is important is because, without it, there is an unfalsifiable argument that can be applied to any quarterback in history who didn't reach his potential -- his development was simply derailed by his early-career surroundings. Give him better surroundings during his supposedly all-important developmental period, and you'd have a different quarterback even years later. You could apply that argument to Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell, John Beck, Chad Henne, anyone.

If the person espousing that position can't or doesn't want to supply evidence of that, that's sure fine, but realize that unfalsifiable arguments are inherently weak because they can be neither proven nor disproven. They're akin to religion.

We know that bad coaches can impede the development of QBs. There are examples of QBs getting away from bad coaches and their careers taking off. However the number of times it has happened is small. Rich Gannon comes to mind, but I don’t know whether it was coaching or a change in how he prepared for games. Jim Plunkett definitely turned his career around in good surroundings. Trent Dilfer and Alex Smith went from trash to sort of adequate. Steve Young and Jared Goff had bad first years then blossomed when connected with a good coach.

However that list pretty well covers most of the known examples. The fact it has happened shows it might be possible with Tannehill (or any other QB not reaching the desired level of performance). The fact it happens rarely suggests that the set of circumstances required for it to happen are very uncommon, and it should not be the first hypothesis seized upon.

"The Guy wrote:

I didn’t say it doesn’t exist. I asked what evidence of it there is.

Again just to reiterate the issue: Ryan Tannehill and Russell Wilson have both played seven-plus years now, with lots of variation in their surroundings. Wilson has outplayed Tannehill significantly despite that variation.

The argument above as I understand it is that there was a difference between Tannehill and Wilson in how they developed that was determined by their surroundings early in their careers, and that has in turn strongly influenced the entirety of their careers.

The reason why evidence of such a phenomenon is important is because, without it, there is an unfalsifiable argument that can be applied to any quarterback in history who didn't reach his potential -- his development was simply derailed by his early-career surroundings. Give him better surroundings during his supposedly all-important developmental period, and you'd have a different quarterback even years later. You could apply that argument to Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell, John Beck, Chad Henne, anyone.

If the person espousing that position can't or doesn't want to supply evidence of that, that's sure fine, but realize that unfalsifiable arguments are inherently weak because they can be neither proven nor disproven. They're akin to religion.

I totally get where you are coming from.

My question is more how do you pinpoint something with data that cant be pinpointed?

As far as I'm concerned and know, there isnt really a way to quantify the impact coaching has on a player. Yet we do know it has some form of impact.

I will say, it isnt turning Jamarcus Russel into Peyton Manning. I think the impact is far less than that and most would agree I'd hope.

I think coaching has more potential to ruin a QB than to build him honestly but that's just my two cents.

That said, you are right it cant be quantified which makes it something annoying that we know, or at least I feel, impacts something but you cant tell exactly where or what exactly.

Measuring a player and the impact of coaching is like the uncertainty principle in physics measuring particles kind of joking here.

"AGuyNamedAlex wrote:

I totally get where you are coming from.

My question is more how do you pinpoint something with data that cant be pinpointed?

As far as I'm concerned and know, there isnt really a way to quantify the impact coaching has on a player. Yet we do know it has some form of impact.

I will say, it isnt turning Jamarcus Russel into Peyton Manning. I think the impact is far less than that and most would agree I'd hope.

I think coaching has more potential to ruin a QB than to build him honestly but that's just my two cents.

That said, you are right it cant be quantified which makes it something annoying that we know, or at least I feel, impacts something but you cant tell exactly where or what exactly.

Measuring a player and the impact of coaching is like the uncertainty principle in physics measuring particles kind of joking here.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be quantified. There can be a study of it like the one done in the post above yours.

"The Guy wrote:

It doesn’t necessarily have to be quantified. There can be a study of it like the one done in the post above yours.

Youd also have to quantify how much bad coaching instills bad habits and whether those habits are easily overturned or removed.

In other words...if Coach A drills bad habits into you can Coach B drill them out and how long does that take? It still wouldnt provide much insight into the development cycle without knowing that, because you are sort of looking at a damaged product already by the time the QB moves to coach B.

I'm not sure it can be easily figured out just by looking at players who had success with new coaches. Though it's a start.

"AGuyNamedAlex wrote:

As far as I'm concerned and know, there isnt really a way to quantify the impact coaching has on a player. Yet we do know it has some form of impact.

Of course you can quantify it, at least in principle. The only question is whether the necessary data exists – whether you have sufficient examples of the different possibilities you are interested in comparing.

For example, if you had enough examples of coaches with rookie QB's that started most games their first 2 years, you could look at the distribution of the increase in era-adjusted passing stats from year 1 to year 2 as a function of their stats in year 1 (conditioning on different starting points) and determine whether that coach is above average or not with respect to the average rate of improvement, and whether that's statistically significant. Same approach can be taken for anything, whether it's rate of improvement from year X to Y or whether it's rate of improvement when you start with a QB that already played X years with a different coach etc...

So all this is quantifiable in principle. Whether you have the data to do this in practice I have no idea because it's really hard to find out who the coaches of different QB's are from publicly available football databases (they usually never list the QB and coach together) so you'd have to write a separate program to match them based on who knows what databases out there and that's just a lot of work. I still don't think there will be enough cases where the same coach works with different rookie QB's that start most games their first few years to answer the type of question that was posed earlier, but it's definitely quantifiable.

"cbrad wrote:

Of course you can quantify it, at least in principle. The only question is whether the necessary data exists – whether you have sufficient examples of the different possibilities you are interested in comparing.

For example, if you had enough examples of coaches with rookie QB's that started most games their first 2 years, you could look at the distribution of the increase in era-adjusted passing stats from year 1 to year 2 as a function of their stats in year 1 (conditioning on different starting points) and determine whether that coach is above average or not with respect to the average rate of improvement, and whether that's statistically significant. Same approach can be taken for anything, whether it's rate of improvement from year X to Y or whether it's rate of improvement when you start with a QB that already played X years with a different coach etc...

So all this is quantifiable in principle. Whether you have the data to do this in practice I have no idea because it's really hard to find out who the coaches of different QB's are from publicly available football databases (they usually never list the QB and coach together) so you'd have to write a separate program to match them based on who knows what databases out there and that's just a lot of work. I still don't think there will be enough cases where the same coach works with different rookie QB's that start most games their first few years to answer the type of question that was posed earlier, but it's definitely quantifiable.

That wouldn't be an accurate measurement because humans don't; all respond and learn the same. Some people do better being thrown into he fire, some need time to learn the ins and outs.

I don't know that there is sufficient data to accurately measure it. I think some examples you could potentially glean some things from are:

- Gannon in Minny, Wash, KC then Oak
- Brees in SD then NO.
- Young in TB then SF
- The Pats the times Brady wasn't available
- Warner in the Arena then Rams

"Fin D wrote:

That wouldn't be an accurate measurement because humans don't; all respond and learn the same. Some people do better being thrown into he fire, some need time to learn the ins and outs.

That's why you look at distributions of data – you know, where not every person responds the same way to the (statistically) same condition. The approach I described works. It's how everything is done in statistics.

"cbrad wrote:

That's why you look at distributions of data – you know, where not every person responds the same way to the (statistically) same condition. The approach I described works. It's how everything is done in statistics.

Ok.

There's too many variables and room for non-constants. Doing it that way only gives an indication of what may be possibly likely, not what is or isn't. Which is almost always the problem with a pure statistical view.

"Fin D wrote:

Ok.

There's too many variables and room for non-constants. Doing it that way only gives an indication of what may be possibly likely, not what is or isn't. Which is almost always the problem with a pure statistical view.

What statistical analysis does is quantify probabilities of events or likelihoods of hypotheses. So it will tell you whether some hypothesis is less than 5% likely to be true for example. Of course, just because it's less than 5% likely to be true doesn't mean it can't be true (it's estimated to be true one in 20 times in this case), but being able to quantify probabilities and likelihoods is FAR better than not being able to.

So there's no "problem" with a pure statistical point of view as long as you understand what the statistical analysis is saying.

As an aside.. it's actually possible for something to be 0% likely and still be possible as long as there are an infinite number of possibilities (probability is 1 divided by the number of possibilities, and if the number of possibilities is infinite you get 0% probability for something that can actually occur – example: probability of randomly selecting the number "5" from all possible numbers is 0% but it's certainly possible).

"cbrad wrote:

Of course you can quantify it, at least in principle. The only question is whether the necessary data exists – whether you have sufficient examples of the different possibilities you are interested in comparing.

The problem here is that RT has had 4 head coaches over the past 7 years, 5 QB coaches and 4 offensive coordinators. We know HC # 1 and 3 asked him to do polar opposite things (one said stay in the pocket, the other said run freely). He's also been in 4 different offenses with 4 different routes and alignments, with a turnstile of linemen in front of him. I don't see where you'd ever have enough data to pinpoint benefits/problems surrounding Tannehill...especially when we haven't been able to say across 7 years how much of his struggles have been self-inflicted vs. problems at line, receiver, etc.

But you know what- it's okay that we don't know. In my opinion, his performance next Sunday will always be more important than the last seven years anyway....that's why we turn on our TV's each week. Judging by your analysis the past six seasons, Tannehill is going to crash and burn in December as defenses dial up the pressure and force him into uncomfortable situations. If we're all being 100% honest though- is that what each of us are rooting for? Or do we want to see him overcome that lousy pocket presence and finally get that playoff berth?

I ask that because if a person is rooting for him to succeed, the stat logs of the past six seasons are irrelevant...they can't predict his future growth or achievements. They only matter if someone is hoping he will continue the trend of disappointing Decembers.

"KeyFin wrote:

The problem here is that RT has had 4 head coaches over the past 7 years, 5 QB coaches and 4 offensive coordinators. We know HC # 1 and 3 asked him to do polar opposite things (one said stay in the pocket, the other said run freely). He's also been in 4 different offenses with 4 different routes and alignments, with a turnstile of linemen in front of him. I don't see where you'd ever have enough data to pinpoint benefits/problems surrounding Tannehill...especially when we haven't been able to say across 7 years how much of his struggles have been self-inflicted vs. problems at line, receiver, etc.

But you know what- it's okay that we don't know. In my opinion, his performance next Sunday will always be more important than the last seven years anyway....that's why we turn on our TV's each week. Judging by your analysis the past six seasons, Tannehill is going to crash and burn in December as defenses dial up the pressure and force him into uncomfortable situations. If we're all being 100% honest though- is that what each of us are rooting for? Or do we want to see him overcome that lousy pocket presence and finally get that playoff berth?

I ask that because if a person is rooting for him to succeed, the stat logs of the past six seasons are irrelevant...they can't predict his future growth or achievements. They only matter if someone is hoping he will continue the trend of disappointing Decembers.

If he were to overcome the lousy pocket presence you mentioned, chances are what he does downfield would suffer, because what he’s been able to do downfield has been made possible in part by the attention he takes away from the pocket and puts downfield.

If he were to take that same attention away from downfield and put it toward the pocket, we’d likely see a drop-off in his passing performance. Of course he would likely take fewer sacks, but he would also likely have a decrease in his passing statistics.

"The Guy wrote:

If he were to overcome the lousy pocket presence you mentioned, chances are what he does downfield would suffer, because what he’s been able to do downfield has been made possible in part by the attention he takes away from the pocket and puts downfield.

If he were to take that same attention away from downfield and put it toward the pocket, we’d likely see a drop-off in his passing performance. Of course he would likely take fewer sacks, but he would also likely have a decrease in his passing statistics.

I dont think that is an argument you want to make or an example to use.

You're implying they are somehow linked in a way that one can't be improved without hurting the other. That isnt necessarily true because there are QB that do both.

His skill in one area doesnt need to decline to improve another.

"AGuyNamedAlex wrote:

I dont think that is an argument you want to make or an example to use.

You're implying they are somehow linked in a way that one can't be improved without hurting the other. That isnt necessarily true because there are QB that do both.

His skill in one area doesnt need to decline to improve another.

Certainly there are quarterbacks who do both, but he isn’t one who does them simultaneously. He has to do one or the other at a time, and that’s why I wrote what I did.

What’s unlikely at this point is that you’re going to get an improvement in his performance whereby he has pocket presence and downfield awareness simultaneously. What you’re more likely to get is his robbing from one to pay the other.

In fact the reason why his passing statistics have been so good over the past several games is because he’s probably doing that now. Note for example that he has the highest sack percentage of his career during those games.

So.. an update on Tannehill: he played real well today and his 2019 rating is now a whopping 111.39 (today's rating was 155.8) compared to a league average so far of 91.5.

And that's with 154 passing attempts so it's passed that minimum 150+ passing attempt reliability threshold I tend to set before using stats like passer rating in a discussion. He still has 5 games more to go, and unlike the past 6 games where 5 of the 6 were against teams with (so far) losing records he's now going to face 5 teams with winning records.

This will be interesting..

Well the Titans are using him the way many posters here advocated using him. Asking him to be Bob Griese, i.e. low volume, high quality passing while a strong ground attack grinds the defense. We’ll see what happens if they start asking him be Dan Marino and carry the team with his arm, but based on his history here I would expect that approach to be just as successful for the Titans as it was for the phins.

"Pauly wrote:

Well the Titans are using him the way many posters here advocated using him. Asking him to be Bob Griese, i.e. low volume, high quality passing while a strong ground attack grinds the defense. We’ll see what happens if they start asking him be Dan Marino and carry the team with his arm, but based on his history here I would expect that approach to be just as successful for the Titans as it was for the phins.

That's just it though Pauly, you're not going to see Tennessee ask him to be a gunslinger like Marino. That's not who the Titans are. They are a run heavy team. The football they are playing the type of football I have been advocating for...run the ball.

Derrick Henry has had a great season, over 900 yards rushing and projected to top 1400+ by the end of the season, barring anything catastrophic. When you're effectively running the ball like Henry is, it opens the playbook for Tannehill. Play action pass becomes a nightmare for defenses as they HAVE to keep 7 or 8 in the box to stop the run. With a quarterback like Tannehill, he's going to tear you apart.

Tennessee's coaching staff understands this and are ecstatic to have Tannehill under center.

I said it previously but I believe it warrants repeating...Tennessee is going to make the playoffs and Ryan Tannehill is going to be voted Comeback Player of the Year.

"The_Dark_Knight wrote:

That's just it though Pauly, you're not going to see Tennessee ask him to be a gunslinger like Marino. That's not who the Titans are. They are a run heavy team. The football they are playing the type of football I have been advocating for...run the ball.

Derrick Henry has had a great season, over 900 yards rushing and projected to top 1400+ by the end of the season, barring anything catastrophic. When you're effectively running the ball like Henry is, it opens the playbook for Tannehill. Play action pass becomes a nightmare for defenses as they HAVE to keep 7 or 8 in the box to stop the run. With a quarterback like Tannehill, he's going to tear you apart.

Tennessee's coaching staff understands this and are ecstatic to have Tannehill under center.

I said it previously but I believe it warrants repeating...Tennessee is going to make the playoffs and Ryan Tannehill is going to be voted Comeback Player of the Year.

I dont disagree with the need to run the ball to keep defenses off balance.

I also wonder though if losing his job and not being "The Guy" anymore also lit a bit of a fire in him. Hes playing the way he was pre knee injury, which he wasnt here even on good days where the rest of the team stepped up.

If he keeps it up it just shows one more way we've sucked.

The Miami Dolphins just haven't known how to play football or build a team.

Here's to hoping that's changed.

"Galant wrote:

If he keeps it up it just shows one more way we've sucked.

The Miami Dolphins just haven't known how to play football or build a team.

Here's to hoping that's changed.

I mean to be fair he is playing the wag he was for us until he was hurt, you know...when we thought he was the guy.

He never really looked as good afterwards and I dont believe it's just his surrounding cast. I feel like taking those weeks to sit, a fresh start and some other factors also helped.

In other words, I dont know if he reaches that level here again regardless.

That said, you can make a case that our staffs may have hindered him.

Fully back to pre injury form. And the titans are loving it.

he’s throwing decisive strikes and showing more off script than he ever did in Miami.

don’t be surprised if he gets a long term extension in Tennessee.

miamis plan? Who tbe hell knows lol

Yeah, that game he played yesterday was damn impressive.