I don't feel like responding piecemeal in a dozen different threads about why Ryan Tannehill was the reason we lost today by fans blaming receivers, Lamar Miller, or Jarvis Landry. I'm gonna put it all in here in no particular order.
1. 21-43 on the day at least through the actual meaningful portion, I stopped watching to see if he added on garbage in the last two minutes. You can't win the in the NFL completing less than 50 percent of your passes unless you are getting some real chunk plays. We know he is not capable of that. He had 3 actual drops in this game, most early on. Those three don't even begin to help him to respectable numbers.
2. 4.7 yards per pass, and that doesn't even include passing plays where he took a sack. This on a day where his running back averaged 7.2 yet was somehow not fed.
3. 13 first half points through three games, one of those coming on a short field turnover. Tannehill has scarcely played four good quarters of football in any game of his career through 2+ seasons, but now he is giving us 1 good quarter with 3 bad ones. That won us one game so far this year, and that is all it should, because you can't go into the second half of every game having to double the opponent's amount of points while holding them off. Tannehill was horribly off in the first halves of the last two games, and our poor offensive efforts then could really be safely placed on him. Today, it wasn't as easy because the receivers disappointed early. This is still a reflection of Tannehill. Right now the offense has accepted mediocrity and made it a habit and the first one on the team to do that was the starting QB. As the starting QB goes, so does the rest of the team. It's up to Tannehill to set the tempo and to energize the team. Other Miami QB's have done it. Pennington did it coming off a one win season and turned Camarillo into a consistent force. Fiedler somehow managed to do it and that was clearly evident that one game in Washington where he lead a stunning comeback. Moore did it a couple of games after replacing Henne, though he started slow after 3-4 games he was getting better play from nearly everyone on the field than they had in years. He can probably do it again.
4. In his one fine moment of the game, he lead the team to points at the end of the half. But while he should be commended for the fine two minute drill (which is all he seems capable of doing) he also made a critical mistake that took away the opportunity to score a TD. With twelve seconds left he tucked and ran from over ten yards out when he had no chance of scoring. This wasted the rest of the clock. If the pass wasn't there he needed to throw it away and take one more shot which would have hopefully been there. We needed a TD there. This lack of awareness is not something knew, its a pattern for Tannehill, something he showed when he prematurely slid in the Jets game and failed to get a first down, bringing up a 4th and 1 we didn't convert.
5. After a great KO he failed to gain a single yard on two pass attempts from around the thirty. This was exceptionally deflating in the game.
6. With Lamar Miller showing dominant YPC today, Tannehill had the pressure eased off him of carrying the team, which has been something he has unfortunately been asked to do too often. In the second half, with Miller running rampant, he failed to assist the running game in any way by scarcely completing a pass until the desperation drives near the end of the game.
7. The key point of the game came on 2nd and one in Chief's territory after another Lamar Miller run. On second and one we took a deep shot which didn't work, but on third and one Tannehill lost the game in one play by not only failing to get the first down, but also by looking off two WIDE OPEN receivers running out to the left past the first down markers and looking downfield instead, where the receiver wasn't open and he took a sack. Even had he thrown an incompletion we could have tried on 4th down to make the first if Philbin had balls, but he took a sack which forced us to punt. Game over as the Chiefs took the punt to our territory and scored a TD.
Other thoughts
1. Every game Tannehill plays is a game in which his team plays at a disadvantage because even with a deep threat like Wallace a team can take the deep ball away by playing single coverage, leaving more guys to smash the middle of the field and the opponent more at liberty to blitz, which attacks our weak offensive line and exposes Tannehil's biggest weakness of pocket presence.
2. It is three years in and Tannehill still has an ability to throw a full route tree that is slightly better than Chad Henne. Tannehill can throw touch inside the ten, but anywhere else he primarily can throw bullet passes and that's about it. He throws them a lot better than Henne, with much better ability to hit the sideline, but its still a very limited route tree. I thought the point of a first round QB was that he could throw passes that other QB's couldn't, theoretically giving you a chance to win games others couldn't. Tannehill has a smaller route tree than his backup and that becomes painfully obvious without an OC who only calls plays he can do. This offense is a beautiful thing if you can throw accurately and force the opponent to cover the whole field. Matt Moore will probably still throw some passes over the middle that are more inaccurate than they should be, but he can still throw touch passes with anticipation and deep passes that Tannehill just can't touch. That will open up the entire offense.
3. This is a league where backup caliber QB's everywhere seem to be able to have success and be playmakers right away. Drew Stanton is 2-0. Austin Davis had three TD's and over 350 yards. Brian Hoyer was a career backup and even with a weak arm he has the awareness and touch to attack every part of the field, which is with one of the worst receiving corps in the league. Derek Anderson dominated in week one by completing some 80 percent of his passes. Tannehill's best career games are in line with what these backup QB's can do on short notice, and that is not good enough.
4. There is always some reason why Tannehill fails to lead his team to where they need to be. The facts of the matter are that his points per game are amongst the worst among starting QB's throughout his career, and while you can blame player X and player Y for why things didnt happen on a given week, the fact of the matter is that after 30 some starts you will have enough opportunity to even this out. No other good player is this mediocre for this long. You are what you are.
