Unraveling the Mystery of Ryan Tannehill

[hoops]

I could be wrong but haven't the Bills been unimpressive on D lately? They even have players calling out Rex

everyone gets inspired when it's dallas thomas and jason fox week

 

[lil tom digby]

So how do you keep the opponent from stacking the box? By throwing the ball downfield. Unfortunately, the offense that Philbin envisioned (and Lazor runs) consists of mainly short passes with the expectation that the receiver gets yards after the catch. When the box is stacked to stop the run, the defense is also in place to stop yards after the catch from short passes. This offensive style may look good on paper, but in reality it sucks unless you have mostly above-average talent that can execute these plays to perfection. When your offense (with resistance from the opponent's defense) isn't able to do their job, then it's up to the coaching staff to adapt and make changes. Not in Miami! If there are so many defenders close to the line of scrimmage that you can't run, why would you throw a short pass into the teeth of the defense instead of going deep?

If Tannehill is to have any success, Miami must change their offensive philosophy and get rid of Lazor and the offense that he's running. They need to build a dominating o-line (RT can't function without one), commit to a strong running game with play action passes mixed in, and add a vertical passing game. Add in a few runs for the QB. Keep the opponent guessing and make him defend the entire field. As it stands, the opponent only has to defend 10-15 yards from the line of scrimmage, as Miami rarely goes deeper than that. The big question is can Tannehill do this? If not, replace him. I wish that there were stats on the throws made by QBs vs who was open and where. Miami gets into far too many 3rd and long situations where RT throws a 3 yard pass and they fail to convert. I'd love to know if there were open WRs downfield that Tannehill either didn't see (not good) or ignored and went for the short pass (even worse) in these situations. Is RT favoring a 3 yard pass on 3rd and 9, or is that what Lazor wants? Yes, the o-line is a factor, but there are times that the QB has time to look downfield. Even though I'm not a fan of Tannehill, it seems to me that he's been throwing the ball a bit farther at times this year, and I'm inclined to believe that this is probably because Philbin is gone. However, they're still abandoning the run too soon and still throwing short on 3rd and long, so Lazor must be a big part of the problem. As I said, I'm not a Tannehill fanboy, but I'm looking forward to see what he can do next season under a new coaching staff and hopefully with a "real" o-line and a new offensive scheme that is NOTHING like what Philbin and Lazor run.

I'm beginning to think Tannehill takes the shorter pass because he doesn't trust the O-line to hold up long enough for the play to develop.

 

[zach attach]

Mystery is a great word. This is the first post I've written about my lack of confidence in Ryan that I can remember. He can't put the team on his back for a win. He NEEDS that balanced offense. He gets rattled when trailing by about 10 or so. He thinks he has to pass a lot to win.
It's not always the line, and this season, it's definitely not the receivers. These receivers can handle as much as Ryan can dish out and want more. For our team, Ryan must have balance of we don't win. That's bad when opposing D's shut down the run. It's been 4 years for him. I'm not sure where the ceiling is these days.

 

[Sons Of Shula]

Are the bills a primarily man defense? Be nice if Ryan had some third down pickups with his feet. Just can't imagine running effectively against that front

Yes, they are. Rex likes to bring overload blitzes with man coverage over top and staggers some zone drops from front 7 to toss in some confusion for the QB.

 

[AL R]

Mystery is a great word. This is the first post I've written about my lack of confidence in Ryan that I can remember. He can't put the team on his back for a win. He NEEDS that balanced offense. He gets rattled when trailing by about 10 or so. He thinks he has to pass a lot to win.
It's not always the line, and this season, it's definitely not the receivers. These receivers can handle as much as Ryan can dish out and want more. For our team, Ryan must have balance of we don't win. That's bad when opposing D's shut down the run. It's been 4 years for him. I'm not sure where the ceiling is these days.

Well the plays are called by Lazor not Ryan so he is the one who gets pass happy I would assume not Ryan and most QB's need balance to win, well except the select few that we are all aware off. The defense kept us in that Pats game in the first half by getting stops but we got away from the running game early once again.

 

[AgentXof12]

Even when the run is not working, you still have to run the ball occasionally. Running a balanced offense is as much about being successfull on the ground and in the air as it is about keeping the defense honest/guessing/off-balance (you choose). When the Dolphisn have lost, the defenses have practically known what play was coming. You can't blame the o-line for that. Even against the Patriots, it sometimes appeared that Tannehill would hold onto the ball too long, but that isn't just about Tannehill making a mistake or the o-line not holding back the rush. It's also about the offense being predictable.

What a really good offensive coordinator would do with this offense is aim to hit some home runs. Maybe Lazor is doing some of that and it's just coming out flat. But when the line can't support a consistent run game, you have to invent ways to pop the defense in the mouth or they will stack up in the box and generally find ways to cheat on the defense. I don't pretend to know what these coaches aren't doing, but I just know that the good ones keep some plays at the back of the playbook that are specifically designed to keep a defense honest. If they stack the box, then that has to mean that they've fallen asleep elsewhere in the defense.

With the Patriots, it felt like they had about 15 guys on the field. Of course, it also looked like Miami was dropping passes on every drive--that doesn't help anything. I also saw a misdirection play that got obliterated by the Patriots defense. Sometimes you just can't surprise a cheater, because cheater's gonna cheat and was probably thumbing your playbook while listening to you over a headset. :idk:

 

[Avalanche of Wins]

flash back to the sparano days, if only we could find a happy medium between tony's approach and lazor's offense

 

[Awsi Dooger]

Run the ball!!!! Even if it is only 70 yards at the end of the day on 25 carries....you have to run it.

I agree with you. That was the theory of the late Bud Goode, that rushing attempts keep you in the game. He was the one who discovered that rushing attempts are more meaningful than rushing yards. I owe a big thanks to him for that knowledge, after Dick Vermeil mentioned it in a 1987 issue of Inside Sports magazine.

The coaches continue to be rather clueless. I wish some reporter during a press session after the game would bring up the stats regarding win percentage associated with low number of rushing attempts. It wouldn't matter where they broke it off, whether it was below 20 or below 25 or below 15, etc. The numbers are devastating. Obviously you'd have the desperate claim that it all stems from who leads late, that from the conventional wisdom type who never actually chart a game.

Coaches seem to be aware of basic stuff like turnover differential and passer rating differential and how it associates with winning, but not with rushing attempt numbers. At the very least, if those numbers were known it might make some of them pause a little bit when stuck with 10 or 12 rushes deep into the second half, after winging it non stop after the early rushes did not work. Lazor, for all his strengths in creating cheap spacing against teams not familiar with his schemes, still foolishly abandons the run when things are going poorly, especially in division games. We conceded against New England more than they stopped the ground game.

The problem in this era is that the rules allow ultra elite quarterbacks to all but abandon the run and abuse the passing game. It's easy to find examples of very low rushing attempts yet wins in big games, like Green Bay in the Super Bowl several years ago. They had something like 10 or 11 rushes in that game. Idiots like Aaron Schatz use those numbers to declare that running is no longer necessary, which is amazingly ignorant since he lumps all quarterbacks together and pretends that the same principal applies to every level. I've argued for more than a decade that Any Given Sunday has become mostly a yesteryear memory, thanks to moronic coaches throwing the ball incessantly with quarterbacks who should be content to hand off, even if it means -- horrors -- punting the football.

Contrast defeated American Pharoah in the Travers, when his rival Frosted unexpectedly pressed the pace for a full half mile in the middle of the race. Contrast no longer threatens elite NFL quarterbacks. They merely can chuckle on the sideline as an inferior quarterback on the opposing team throws it even more often than they do, and then wonders what went wrong.

 

[BlueFin]

I think that is kind of football 101......more bad things can happen throwing the ball than running it.

You also have to consider pass protection into the equation....something Miami has struggled with during the Tannehill era.

But in general...if your quarterback is forced to throw it too much....most of the time it doesn't work out well.