The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Tua is starting tonight. All reports out of Atlanta is they aren't happy with him and he is in a battle with a guy who just came off IR. Crazy how far he has dropped.

He just fumbled a snap.   

Tua looked like Tua.  Can’t receive the snap but looked ok throwing after that.  I think there’s something wrong with him and I don’t think there’s a place for him as a starter in the league anymore.  I think he broke his brain.

Shame we booed him.  That was classless.

They booed him for the same reason they booed Ray Lucas after he went to Baltimore then came here to play a preseason game.   You're right, his brain is broken now.  He's now a pacific islander version of Chad Pennington

He played like what you would expect a QB with a $1.5 million dollar cap space would play.....not like what you would expect a QB costing $55 million. 

Tua needs Tyreek and Waddle to succeed. He doesn't have the skills to play without elite WR talent. When all 3 were healthy at the same time they had a good thing, haven't seen him do much otherwise.

According to Dave Hyde, Tua averaged 3.38 air yards with his passes Friday and 2.8 for the preseason. That 2.8 average ranks last among 82 quarterbacks this preseason. He really is just about dumping off the ball these days.

Try to think about the last time you've looked up a player's stats in the preseason.  What were Josh Allen's preseason stats last year?

This is beyond pathetic, man.

He went 0 for 0 with 0 yards rushing, 0 yards passing, no ints, no sacks, no fumbles. 

The whole point was to highlight out how Tua's passes are typically check downs and it proved that pretty convincingly. It's not like we Dolphins fans didn't already know that. These stats just confirmed it.  It shouldn't have been a surprise to you unless you've just been ignoring what you've been witnessing.

He has over 75 regular season starts.  Why aren't you using those stats, instead of stats from meaningless preseason games?  It's ridiculous.

My guess is because his career yards per attempt is 7.5 yards and that stat doesn't fit the narrative.   

This is a different stat and finding the yards in the air average for a career isn't exactly the easiest thing to find.

Here you go:
https://screwball.com/nfl/qb-air-yards-per-attempt-2021

Tua was ranked 30th in 2021, 2nd in 2022, 19th in 2023, 39th (last) in 2024, and 32nd in 2025.

To give proper context to this statistic, the leading QBs for each of those years were Russell Wilson, Marcus Mariota, Will Levis, Anthony Richardson, and Marcus Mariota (again).  Patrick Mahomes finished 25th, 23rd, 33rd, 37th, and 18th, as the Chiefs won two Super Bowls and made a third.

So maybe this is a meaningless, bullshit statistic even in the regular season, which makes it unimaginably worthless in the preseason when teams AREN'T EVEN TRYING TO WIN.

I'm not really trusting the source. It shows Tua with 6.7 air yards per attempt last year. ESPN stats give him a 6.9 total yardage average per attempt. Something doesn't sound right.

With a domain name of "screwball" how could you possibly call into question the reliability of a stat that literally nobody else tracks?

What doesn't sound right?  "Air yards per attempt" shouldn't match "yards per attempt."

That would require that every receiver was tackled the moment he caught the ball.

Ding ding

Let us suppose, to simplify the numbers, that all these passes are on designed rollouts where the pass is thrown nearly at the line of scrimmage.

1st down: QB throws an incomplete pass that travels 25 yards in the air.
2nd down: QB throws an intermediate sideline completion for 11 yards that the receiver catches as he runs out of bounds.
3rd down: QB throws a screen pass for 3 yards that the receiver takes for a total of 29 yards.

total air yards: 39
air yards per attempt (average depth of target): 13.0

total passing yards: 40
yards per attempt: 13.33

The receiver was not (necessarily) tackled right when he caught the ball.

I don't understand what the problem is supposed to be with the cited stats.  Let's not beat around the bush, here: is the claim being made that "air yards per attempt" correlates to good QBs?  I'm pretty sure I can find more stats on (say) Mahomes' air yards per attempt, but I'm not going to bother if we can't even agree on what that stat is supposed to tell us.

P.S. Just to address an earlier statement:
This was a mistake by me.  Air yards per completion cannot be higher than yards per attempt, but we aren't measuring air yards per completion.

Three cherry picked  scenarios to prove a season worth of averages .  I love how math works.

Oh.  I thought we were measured completed air yards per attempt.

Yeah, any stat that would be improved by the QB throwing a fifty yard interception is not worth using. 

I provided you stats and you couldn't come up with anything more than "I don't like how those stats look because ESPN has different numbers on a totally different stat."

You seemed to be claiming that the stat implies every catch is tackled immediately and I explained why that interpretation is wrong.

At this point, you should probably present some actual evidence yourself... either that the stats I cited are inaccurate, or (even better) that "air yards per attempt" is a stat that anyone should even care about in the first place.

That was actually me.  

I am referring to when Phishfan replied "ding ding" to your explanation.
You didn't "seem to" make that claim, you directly made it.

I don't care to look at it any further. It just doesn't feel right. Not worth any more effort.

You weren't making any "it doesn't feel right" objections when preseason stats were saying the noodle-armed mushbrain (who, uh, previously led the league in passing yardage) is ACTUALLY the biggest checkdown merchant in history.

so maybe people are just seeing what they want to see

Because that isn't what was said . You could have been a character in Wizard of Oz,  the Strawman.

Unlike Spider, Atlanta clearly was not impressed with Tua's performance. They waited until the last minute to see if Penix would physically be able to play. The guy was in a QB battle with someone not even competing. Hahaha

Holy strawman!  Spider never said Tua had an impressive pre-season.  Just that your bullshit stat was a bullshit stat. 

Hahaha ... OK. Not sure how I could mistake him posting supposedly good stats as being supportive of his performance. My bad.

I don't know how you could mistake anything Spider posted as posting good stats or being supportive of Tua's performance.   Either you have really bad reading comprehension or didn't read it. 

In case my own position is unclear:

Preseason "stats" don't matter.

This has been my position all along.