Sure.
1. Tannehill made good on his promise to "let it rip". Every deep throw was thrown with more power and distance than the tendency he'd shown in Weeks 1 thru 10.
2. A note on throwing distances. Football games are not some distance throw competition where you've got a light breeze at best (or you're in a dome) and you're in your sport shorts and a t-shirt, where you're able to run up to a line at your leisure and shotput the ball anywhere onto a 15-yard wide landing strip. Football conditions are different. You've got pads on, you've got a pocket, you're in a drop back, you can't throw the ball at your leisure, you can't run up to the throw like it's some javelin throw. There may be wind. Even in the DISTANCE THROW setting (which is not a football setting), I've seen tons of pro level QBs fail to get the ball 60 yards. For example recently in a competition featuring pro prospects like Mike Glennon, Ryan Nassib, Jordan Rodgers and E.J. Manuel, only Manuel managed to get it 60-plus yards (63 yards as I recall) and Glennon only got it 54 yards (and he's known as a guy that has a strong arm). Drew Brees couldn't get it 60 yards in a distance throw competition. I believe his ball fell down at about 56 yards. As I recall, Jake Delhomme won a distance throw competition one year against the likes of Brees, Palmer and someone else with a 63 yard throw. Those were strong arms he was competing against. In a football game, connecting on a 60 yard throw is INCREDIBLY rare. It's rare you ask your QB to throw that far in a functional football setting. Dan Marino sure as hell rarely, if ever, did that. Hell Ryan Mallett has a freakshow arm and I tracked every deep ball he threw in his final year and never found one that exceeded 52 yards, and that was just one throw. Everything else was 45 yards or so.
3. The first deep throw, the one for a TD, ended up underthrown but again this was a timing issue as Tannehill waited for a point in his roll-out at which he was comfortable he could get under the ball. He threw it about 53-54 yards thru the air at a dead run to his right side. That's a throw that would have pushed every quarterback in the league to his limit, given the roll. The reason it went for the TD is because Wallace located the ball in the air early and adjusted to it very well, then finished the play. He hasn't done those things very often in 2013. And if you REALLY watch all his deep throws from 2012 in Pittsburgh (I'm sending you a PM), then you'll notice he didn't do them that year, either.
4. The second deep throw for a 57-yard bomb was 60 yards in distance. A RARE throw distance for any QB of any arm strength, in pro or college football. Yet the ball was underthrown. Why? Look at the backfield action and then look at the route. This was not just any ole play-action. This was a play-action from under center with a half-roll that was a result of an off-center mesh point between the quarterback and running back. The play-fake delayed the football from coming out of Tannehill's hands tremendously. Meanwhile Wallace runs a simple "out and up" that was a heck of a lot more "up" than "out". I'm not blaming him, he's probably coached to run that route exactly as he did and it faked the HELL out of Captain Munnerlyn. He ran it perfect. The problem is he's too damned fast. He's way up the field by the time Tannehill can even throw that ball. Tannehill throws him a downright RARE distance, and it's still a big time underthrow. That, my friends, is an issue of play design.
5. There was another deep throw that Tannehill missed on the overthrow. I still haven't gotten the chance to break this one down. There's rumors Wallace stumbled on the play and that could certainly explain an overthrow. But even aside from that, people do not realize how COMMON it is to not connect on guys that deep down the field. Completion rate league-wide on throws 41+ yards beyond the line of scrimmage is in the 20 to 30 percent range. All week Tannehill has had people giving him crap for underthrows, including the coaches who instructed him to "let it rip" this week. Is a 1 or 2 yard overthrow REALLY not expected to happen at some point, given that?
6. The final throw was a real beauty. Ball traveled about 63 yards through the air and Tannehill could barely even step into it because he was about to be MURDERED with a hit. Wallace got his head around to look for the ball late (he does that a lot) and so he traveled left-to-right a little too far before figuring out where the football was and twirling back to the other side to catch it. This was was an incredible throw, and it would have taken an INCREDIBLE catch effort by Wallace to make the catch, because of the situation. If he goes down short of the end zone, the game is over. He needed to make a great adjustment on the football, finish the catch, stay on his feet and go the rest of the way into the end zone. It's just not something you see players do often. But then, you also don't often see receivers making $12 million a year.
