by Chase Stuart
on March 18, 2019
Did you know that Dan Marino and Bob Griese have accounted for over 45% of all pass attempts, over 48% of all passing yards, and over 53% of all passing touchdowns in Miami Dolphins history? The Dolphins are the rare franchise that has just four players with more than 40 touchdown passes: Marino (420), Griese (192), Ryan Tannehill (123), and Jay Fiedler (66). But perhaps here is the most startling stat: Ryan Tannehill has the best passer rating in Dolphins history!
Yes, Tannehill — he of the back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back breakout seasons — has a better passer rating than both Marino and Griese, although of course that’s not true when you adjust for era. Marino ended his career with an 86.4 passer rating, and a 76.9 passer rating when adjusted for era. Griese had a 77.1 actual passer rating, and a 79.0 passer rating when adjusted for era (Griese also took a ton of sacks, while Marino took very few, which is the only reason Greise’s era-adjusted rating comes in ahead of Marino’s). Tannehill, through 2017, had a 65.1 era-adjusted passer rating, and in 2018, had a 66.4 EA PR, but his career un-adjusted passer rating is 87.0.
So while we know passer rating is silly to use when not adjusting for era, as a matter of trivia, it’s pretty interesting to see Tannehill ahead of Marino. But ANY/A — which includes sacks — is a better way to measure passing efficiency. And so today, I thought it might be interesting to look at the history of the Miami Dolphins passing offense and passing defenses, based on trailing 16 game averages.
That’s shown in this graph below. The orange line shows the trailing 16-game Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt average of the Dolphins offense going back to 1966. You can see the Marino-induced spike in ’84 and ’85, as more games from his historic 1984 season is captured by the trailing average. The aqua line shows the trailing 16-game ANY/A allowed by the Dolphins defense: the valleys shown in ’73/’74 and early 1983 are good representations of the Super Bowl defenses that carried the Dolphins in 1972, 1973, and 1982 (of course, the ’72 and ’73 offenses were good, too). [continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Dan Marino,
Ryan Tannehill
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by Chase Stuart
on March 16, 2019
Tannehill is expected to break out of this pocket.
The next
Ryan Tannehill breakout season will be coming in Tennessee, after the Dolphins
traded Tannehill and a 2019 6th round pick to the Titans for Tennessee’s 2020 4th round pick and 2019 7th round pick.
Okay, snark aside, the Tannehill breakout season never actually happened, despite the predictions of sports journalists everywhere. After a nondescript rookie season in 2012, the breakout didn’t happen in his sophomore season in 2013. That prompted me to ask the question: How long does it take great quarterbacks to break out?
Tannehill began his career with two consecutive seasons of below-average ANY/A, and while some excused his poor numbers due to bad coaching and offensive line play, I wrote that if “Tannehill turns into a star quarterback, he’ll be a very unique case.” That line remains true.
Many expected him to break out in his third year in 2014, but that didn’t happen, either. At that point, I wondered whether Tannehill was ever going to break out, and noted that if a quarterback begins his career with three straight years of below-average play, that’s probably bad sign.
Then, prior to his fourth season in 2015, Jon Gruden said the breakout season was coming, and so did… Tannehill himself. It did not happen, and blame wound up being placed on the head coach.
After four seasons, I asked the satirical question: Where Does Ryan Tannehill rank in the Pantheon of Great QBs? At the time, there had been 88 quarterbacks since 1970 who had taken at least 90% of the same team’s pass attempts in every year in any four-year window. Of those passers, Tannehill had the second worst passing stats of any quarterback and was one of just three that failed to start a single playoff game. So, clearly, Tannehill had to be great to be getting all of these snaps despite both a below-average record and below-average statistics. [continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Ryan Tannehill
{ }
by Chase Stuart
on December 28, 2013
Buffalo just sacked Tannehill again.
Did you happen to notice the
stat line produced by
Ryan Tannehill last week? He completed just 10 of 27 passes for only 82 yards in a 19-0 loss to the Bills. A 37% completion rate and a 3.0 yards per attempt average are ugly numbers in their own right, but Tannehill was also sacked seven times for 46 yards. That means on 34 dropbacks, he produced…. 36 yards.
Tannehill did not throw an interception in the 19-0 shutout, so perhaps that’s why this game has gone under the radar. But a quarterback does not get to fare so poorly and avoid coverage of it at Football Perspective. Can you imagine if Tony Romo or Jay Cutler had a game like this? Why aren’t people talking about this? Tannehill averaged One Net Yard per Attempt over THIRTY FOUR DROPBACKS!?! Tannehill’s NY/A average dropped from 5.72 to 5.46, an unheard of drop this late in the season.
To be fair, Tannehill’s lack of interceptions does make the performance less horrible. But today, I want to just focus on yards produced on pass attempts (including sacks). Lots of good quarterbacks have had bad days when it comes to interceptions, but how often does a quarterback struggle so much on nearly every play for 34 plays?
Let’s provide some context. This season, the average pass play (including sacks) has produced 6.217 net yards, which means you would expect 34 dropbacks to produce 211.4 yards. That means Tannehill’s performance produced 175.4 net yards under average. Among quarterbacks with at least 15 pass attempts in a game, that’s the 25th worst performance since 1960, and the 7th worst performance since 2000.
The table below shows the worst 250 performances since 1960, although the only game I calculated for 2013 was Tannehill’s. The worst performance using this formula goes to Green Bay’s Lynn Dickey in 1981 against the Jets in week 16. He completed just 12 of 33 passes for 96 yards (I’ve included the TD and INT numbers even though they are not part of the calculation), and was sacked an incredible 9 times for 57 yards (Mark Gastineau, Joe Klecko, and Marty Lyons each had multiple sacks). So on 42 dropbacks, Dickey gained 39 yards, for an average of 0.9 NY/A. The NFL average that season was 6.02 NY/A, which means Dickey produced 214 Net Yards below average.
[continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Joe Namath,
Ryan Tannehill
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by Chase Stuart
on February 21, 2013
Russell Wilson is too awesome for snide comments.
Since 1990, there have been 48 rookie quarterbacks that threw at least 224 pass attempts, the necessary amount to qualify for the league’s efficiency ratings. There are many conventional ways to measure rookie quarterbacks, but the off-season lets us play around with more obscure measures.
For example, have you ever considered how rookie quarterbacks performed compared to how their teams passed in the prior year? David Carr, Tim Couch, and Kerry Collins took over expansion teams, but we can compare the passing stats of the other 45 rookie quarterbacks to the team stats from the prior season. To compare across eras, I am grading each individual and team relative to the league average each season.
Let’s start with Net Yards per Attempt. Ben Roethlisberger averaged 7.41 NY/A in 2004 when the league average was 6.14; therefore, Roethlisberger was at 121% of league average. Meanwhile, the 2003 Steelers under Tommy Maddox were at 99% of league average. For each of the 45 rookie quarterbacks, I plotted them in the graph below. The Y-axis shows how the quarterback performed as a rookie, while the X-axis shows how his team performed in the prior season. Because it makes sense to think of “up and to the right” as positive, the X-axis goes in reverse order. Take a look – I have an abbreviation for each quarterback next to his data point:
[continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Andrew Luck,
Brandon Weeden,
Nick Foles,
Robert Griffin III,
Russell Wilson,
Ryan Tannehill
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