Before I begin, I'd like to make the following two statements:
1. QB play has not been good enough to carry the team in the games in question.
2. If we decide to start Matt Moore next week, I'm fine with that. I'd be interested and very curious to see what would happen, to be honest.
If you are going to completely ignore those two statements and/or get offended by a post that attempts to explain why I don't think the team's struggles are 100% on the quarterback, just stop reading now. You will be upset by this post.
Accuracy - this is on the quarterback
They are retooling Tannehill's footwork and asking him to throw on different routes with new timing. His accuracy was off the last two weeks. I thought it was much better today. That's about 90% on the quarterback (receivers need time to get comfortable in the offense, too), and we must see continued improvement here, period.
This was absolutely a big issue that contributed to the loss last week in Buffalo.
Decision-Making - this is on the quarterback
This is one area where Tannehill was lousy in week 17 of last season. QB was the biggest reason for the loss to the Jets last season and I think his biggest issue was making bad decisions with the football.
I think he's reading coverages better this season
But, he needs to use his legs more. This is an area where he is screwing the pooch bigtime. I don't know if it's the way he's being coached, I don't know what the hell it is, but sometimes he just needs to take off with the dang football In short, I am seeing improvement here, but not enough, and not across the board.
Pass Protection and Pressure - this is not all on the quarterback
He has been far worse in this system than under Sherman's. I thought this system was supposed to be QB friendly? It seems like it is exposing some of his accuracy problems. But today, he was actually alright with his accuracy for the most part. But drives continued to stall, and he just crumbled in the 4th quarter.
Do you know what else crumbled in the 4th quarter? The pass protection. It looked a lot like a game I commented on last week: SF vs Chicago. 49ers offense was playing well enough to win and then suddenly everything fell apart. Jonathan Martin (and really, the entire OL) started getting beaten like a drum and Kaepernick was running for his life. As a result, they couldn't do anything right. Now, Kaepernick did a better job of escaping from a crumbling pocket, but he also turned the ball over a bunch, and the result was the same. I actually defended Kaepernick after that game, if you can believe that.
Teams are getting some pretty good pressure dropping 7 men into coverage and we're struggling. Go back to that Patriots game week one -- Tannehill extended a few plays with his legs and still had to throw the ball away because the coverage was blanketed downfield. The last couple of weeks, he's had plays where he's stepped up in the pocket and got dropped by someone else because multiple guys are getting beat. I'm sorry, but you watch what happened up front (especially on the right side of the line) in that game today and you tell me all those sacks and pressures and batted balls and hit throwing arms were all on the quarterback with a straight face. He may not be good at managing the pocket, but he's not conjuring up those defenders out of thin air with some magically bad pocket presence.
I saw one sack against Buffalo I put on the quarterback. I don't know which ones I'd put on him today. The pass protection was bad, man. I saw him trying to step up into the pocket right into another defender. You tell me what you want there, because I can't put those on #17.
Play-Calling - I don't know how much of this is on the QB because I don't know what his options are.
Now, we observe that Ryan Tannehill doesn't throw a good deep ball. But we don't take shots.
We don't take shots. What people forget is that
last year under Sherman, our deep passing game actually wasn't terrible. We took shots, and we got some big chunk plays to Wallace and Clay in particular. Even with garbage pass protection, we found ways to take shots downfield and it helped our offense out immensely. Ryan Tannehill was 1/2 on catchable bombs last week, and yet we're not even trying. He makes one lousy throw to Wallace and Hartline drops another one, and we just give up? Terrible. Bad throws and drops both happen, it's a low percentage play. Can't quit on it.
We keep calling up underneath passes that teams are just sitting on because we don't try anything else. We don't attack the seams and we aren't throwing deep. Some of that is due to poor pass protection (in fact, I'm sure that a lot of it is), but at some point the team needs to find new ways to attack a defense like we thought it was going to this year, and it's not happening. I pin this squarely on Bill Lazor. I was skeptical of Lazor at first, then warmed up to him, and now I'm getting skeptical again. He was supposed to be the QB whisperer, and yet our QB is getting worse results than before? He deserves scrutiny.
Where does he deserve scrutiny? Well, the run game was working today and we went away from it. We passed the ball at a 2:1 ratio despite the fact that we were within one score for most of it, and that is simply inexcusable. We are
not running the Eagles offense. Not even close. If Bill Lazor took anything from Chip Kelly, it was spacing in the running game, but that seems about it. No commitment to the run, no tempo, nothing. No identity, no cohesive philosophy. Nothing.
Playing to Strengths - this is not all on the QB
One other thing I want to point out, because I think our QB is going to get 13 more games as an audition for the next coaching staff: he is much better running an up-tempo, no-huddle type of offense than a slow, clock-eating attack. He just sees, feels, and reacts to the game better. He uses his legs more. Surely our coaches can see that? How can anyone not see that? And yet our offensive tempo might be as slow as I've ever seen it, as we give the defense time to line up, get their calls in, take a breather, drink a latte, and then pin their ears back or clog up the passing lanes for yet another short passing attempt.
So there it is. I don't think the QB suddenly got worse. I think it's a lot of things. Accuracy and decision-making issues are on the QB. But the other stuff? You can't ignore it.
