Here's what I saw in some of those picks.
Minor mistakes, major consequences. Then you also spice in some major mistakes.
I see a pick where Brian Hartline falls down on a comeback, which is a timing route that Tannehill has to throw with TRUST. You don't blame that on Ryan Tannehill. Not one iota.
I see one pick, looks TO ME like he's trying to hit Hartline in the flat, but he holds the ball just a tad too long and the pass protection is not cooperating AT ALL so he gets slammed heavily while he's throwing, causing the ball to sail on him and voila...ball ends up looking like it was intended for Rishard Matthews in double coverage and it's picked off. Minor mistake, major consequence.
I see one pick where J.J. Watt steers or stunts right into the passing lane just as the ball is coming and he gets his hands up. I know there are things Tannehill can do to prevent that, but I'm not sure it wouldn't hurt more for him to be over-conscious of that. Sometimes, you just have to chalk that up.
On the other hand, I see two more picks (one another J.J. Swatt) where Tannehill had every reason to know that those passing lanes were being covered at the line. What do you chalk that up to? Inexperience. Youth. Sometimes for a young guy there are only so many things you can process at once.
I see a pick where Tannehill probably should have seen the corner squatting a tad bit aggressively on the square-in, but Legedu Naanee ultimately needs to run through that route and shield the football with his body. Legedu did much worse on that play than Tannehill.
I see another pick where Anthony Fasano runs a poor route against Akeem Ayers and then just plain gets out-muscled for a 50/50 ball that he as a tight end should have won. Perhaps it was a mistake of being slightly over aggressive on Tannehill's part, but Fasano's mistake was much bigger IMO.
I see a pick against Jairus Byrd where Ryan Tannehill had the right idea, he just forgot one slight step. He needed to look off Jairus Byrd and freeze him toward the middle. He forgot to do that, so Byrd had an extra step on the ball, and that's the difference between a big catch and a highlight reel interception.
I see a couple of instances where offensive predictability is measurable. There's a corner squatting on Legedu's route at the beginning. Why is that? Predictability. J.J. Watt's pop-ups he got by predicting the passing lane and being allowed free access to get there. Why was he able to do that? Predictability. Zach Brown's fake-blitz where he dropped back perfectly into the hot read passing lane, how was he able to do that? Because the game planning showed a trend with the Dolphins' hot reads and he was able to predict the passing late of the hot route. Adrian Wilson of the Cardinals squatted on the out route and undercut the passing lane, and how did he do that? Offensive predictability.
Other plays, I see Tannehill just guilty of the thing you see out of a lot of strong armed, aggressive quarterbacks. Over confidence. Trying to squeeze a ball into a tight window. He tries to squeeze a ball in to Hartline against the Jets as he's rolling to the sideline. He did the same exact thing against the Seahawks. He tries to squeeze a ball into a real tight window over the middle to Davone Bess against the Buffalo Bills. Like I said before, he tried to squeeze one into Fasano in tight coverage. To some extent, the ball that sailed on him against the Patriots was over confidence as well, sensed the guy about to hit him but thought he could get the ball where he wanted it to go even with odd leverage and an aborted throwing motion.
That's just a quarterback having too much confidence in his throwing ability and throwing aggressively into tight windows. YOU LIVE WITH THAT, if you want good quarterback play, IMO. Unless you've got Peyton Manning or Tom Brady. That's one of the things that makes them so unique. But they're Hall of Famers. Two of the best ever.
