The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

At least for the first time in awhile this could happen after a playoff game.

Take your pick.

The Dolphins' front office, for building around Tannehill offensively for years, without any evidence that it would pay sufficient dividends, while letting the defense dwindle to the embarrassment we saw out there today.

Mario Williams

Big surprise coming from you. Of course, Tannehill hasn't limited the Dolphins' ability to spend on defense in ANY way (yet). And I would argue he's also a good quarterback with huge upside. He hasn't had much stability in the system around him (4 OCs in 5 years), so it'll be interesting to see what 2017 brings in terms of improvement. The big problem at quarterback has been an absolutely horrendous offensive line, but then we've had this discussion on-and-off for most of the season.

I'm not talking about spending here.  I'm talking about drafting.

Since 2014, when it should've become evident to the front office that Tannehill was no more than an Alex Smith type, the team has spent 75% of its draft picks in the first three rounds on offense.

I could be wrong of course, but the thinking by the front office seems to have been that Tannehill was just a supporting offensive cast away from being a top-tier talent.

In my opinion the thinking should've been that he'd proven himself to be no better than average, and so the effort should've been to bolster the defense through the draft, maintain control of the scoreboard by defending other teams better, and keep Tannehill out of must-pass situations.

This is the formula the Chiefs have used with Alex Smith, and the formula any team must use with an average-level QB, to have the best probability of achieving a passer rating differential associated with winning in the NFL.

What the Dolphins appear to have been thinking, on the other hand, is that Ryan Tannehill was only X away from becoming top tier, and so the defense has been neglected in the past three drafts, culminating in what we saw out there today.

Looking at rounds 1 and 2:

2016: Tunsil, Howard (2xD1O+1D)
2015: Parker, Philips (1O+1D)
2014: James, Landry (2xO)
2013: Jordan, Taylor (2xD)

So the year after drafting Tannehill, the Dolphins went with DEFENSE for their top two picks. Whoops, turned out the O-line sucked and the receiver situation was bad. Tried addressing both (hit big with Landry, IMHO). The year after that they split the picks and last year both top picks again went to the DEFENSE.

In other words, WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

I'm not surprised the bolded portion above is your question, when you've truncated my post to only the portion you quoted, and then created your own point from a different data set, covering a different time period.

Tunsil doesn't play defense.

Can't take him seriously. He's sick in the head. Has some sick anti-Tannehill agenda he pushes and will turn every thread into. He ain't all right and its now obvious to everyone

You come off as completely revisionist here and when called on it, you try to bluff your way out or just plain deny.

I wasn't explicitly comparing your draft picks to mine, I was looking through the list I had on hand, which listed the top two rounds, since talent is generally considered to drop off very sharply (as also indicated by the "Draft Trade Chart").

If you include round 3, sure you get more picks on the offensive side, but if you go with round 4 as well it flips again. So what? That's not where you find talent to build around, which is what you were talking about.

You decided to pick the EXACT years (2014+) and the EXACT rounds (1-3) that supported your assertion. That's called CHERRY PICKING. And that's pretty much what you do around here.

You are right, sorry, fixed it.

The Andy Reid/Alex Smith Chiefs have exactly one more playoff win than the Dolphins.  Furthermore, in the same time period they also have exactly 1 more playoff win than the Bengals, who have 1 more division title than KC.

The Chiefs are not a team worth emulating.  Their strategy, much like CIN's, is just good enough to get you an early playoff exit.

2014 was when Joe Philbin wanted Derek Carr and was overruled, hence the time period I specified above.  The head coach of the team at the time -- who certainly knew Ryan Tannehill better than any of us -- had seen enough of Tannehill and wanted to move on.

The team brass responded not by drafting Derek Carr -- which was an obvious mistake -- but by allocating 75% of its draft picks in the first three rounds to the offensive support of Tannehill, at the expense of the defense.

And again, that culminated in the mess we saw out there today.

You have an average-level QB on this team, whom the team has done any- and everything to coax maximum potential from resource-wise, rather than realizing that an average-level QB would need a stellar defense for the team to be highly competitive.

They bet on Ryan Tannehill and lost, and here's where we are, traveling to Pittsburgh in one-degree wind chill, while the Chiefs are hosting a playoff game after a bye week with Alex Smith, having allocated over 70% of their draft picks in the first three rounds to their defense during the same time period.

Pretty interesting that OAK betting on Derek Carr - who sat on the bench with an injury as his team lost in the playoffs to a team he had already beaten - is treated as an unqualified success, while MIA betting on Ryan Tannehill - who sat on the bench with an injury as his team lost in the playoffs to a team he had already beaten - is considered a total failure.

One more thing:

For the sake of argument, let us take Philbin's highly self-serving hindsight proclamations as fact.

In order for this claim to have any sort of meaning, one must assert that after two seasons, a QB's potential is fully (and accurately!) determinable.  Is this the position you are taking?

More likely than not determinable by the guy coaching him?  Sure!

But wait... the guy coaching him - who was also the guy that argued for him to be drafted (over Russell Wilson, Kirk Cousins, Nick Foles, etc.) - continued to start him for every single game that he was in a position to make that choice.  In fact, during Philbin's time in Miami, the ONLY QB Miami ever drafted was... Ryan Tannehill.  He never even tried to draft a developmental QB.  So are we supposed to believe that he wanted to replace Tannehill, but only with Derek Carr?

Philbin's actual actions seem a lot more relevant than some CYA backchannel whispering after he had been fired; I view Philbin's "I wanted to draft Carr" claims with the same gravity that I view Nick Saban's "I wanted to sign Drew Brees but the Dolphins' medical staff wouldn't let me" claims, which is to say none at all.

More important than all of the above: if Joe Philbin proved anything in Miami, it's that he was a terrible evaluator of which players to keep and which to get rid of; probably the worst this team has ever had.  This is the same guy who repeatedly promoted Billy Turner and Dallas Thomas until the day his coaching duties were stripped from him.  So his opinion of a player is worth less than nothing IMO, and should not be considered at all.  I'd rather go ask the octopus that predicts the Super Bowl.

At the time the information surfaced that Philbin had wanted to draft Carr, Carr's trajectory as a player hadn't yet become significantly distinct from Tannehill's.  That's occurred only this year as a function of the 2016 season taken as a whole, long after the information surfaced.

So if Philbin was indeed engaging in CYA -- which is plausible -- he was taking a risk by doing so in that manner, given that there was no guarantee Carr would ever become distinct from Tannehill.  He would've been better off saying he wanted to draft Russell Wilson in 2012, given that Wilson had distinguished himself from Tannehill long ago.

...except that it's even less credible that Philbin wanted Wilson, since:

a) Philbin passed on him three times
b) nobody else wanted Wilson; SEA was criticized for taking him as high as they did

Immaterial to Wilson, saying he wanted Carr and was done with Tannehill was a risk at the time he said it.  Carr's trajectory hadn't yet become distinct from Tannehill's at the time.

So by saying that, Philbin publicly shit-canned the QB he had vast knowledge of, in favor of one he'd never coached at all and knew comparatively little about, when the players' trajectories weren't yet distinct from each other.  That hardly sounds like CYA.

He could've looked even worse down the road by saying that.  It could've potentially been that not only was he fired, but his proposed solution in 2014 (drafting Carr) wouldn't have made any difference either.

For me, It's Vance Joseph

Part of me thought it should be Vance Joseph, but then you look at the injuries on defense this season and I have to give him an incomplete rating.

It's tough to come up with some "new" shames because the Dolphins outperformed probably every ones expectations. So...

1) Dion Jordan  - I beg of the moderators to hold a special induction for the Ring of Dishonor.

2) Billy Turner/Dallas Thomas - hard to believe how many chances these guys got and just could never measure up.

3) Pouncey - Injuries.  At a certain point you just start to wonder whether its due to not staying fit & in game shape.

Changing mine to the entire Falcons teams now.