Building a Super Bowl Team

[Baba Booey]

And how do you know what they believe?

Because you are the only person on planet earth who has talked about Miami cutting Tannehill. It hasn't been reported, rumored, or mentioned anywhere

[Dolfanalyst]

Because you are the only person on planet earth who has talked about Miami cutting Tannehill. It hasn't been reported, rumored, or mentioned anywhere

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

[Baba Booey]

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

Want to bet a Farm on whether Tannehill is back next year or not?

Let's make it more interesting, loser leaves this message board forever?

[Dolfanalyst]

Want to bet a Farm on whether Tannehill is back next year or not?

Let's make it more interesting, loser leaves this message board forever?

Whether Tannehill returns next year in reality doesn't make theoretical discussions like these any less interesting to me.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

The Dolphins aren't "a quarterback away from the super bowl" The need to improve the OL and defense as well. 

So let's assume you cut Tannehill. 

Bang $10 million in dead cap space.  No QB.

What now? 

Use the first draft pick on a qb?  That won't help you build the rest of the team.  And you will need to trade up to rookie ready to start week 1.

Trade for Romo or Jimmy G?  Neither will improve your cap position and both will cost you a draft pick.

Draft a QB in the 6th or 7th of the quality of Brady or Dak?  Maybe you will get lucky but more likely it will result in you having a top 3 pick in the 2018 draft.

Yes, it does make sense to go fishing for a qb in late rounds of the draft.  *If* you already have Bledsoe or Romo. If Daugherty was that guy he would be on the active squad. 

Keep Tanny.  Draft another late round project odds are he won't work out but maybe he will.  Repeat.  That is how to build a championship team. 

Quarterbacks that were drafted when the team didn't need a QB: Brady, Rodgers, Dak.

Quarterbacks that were drafted when the team needed a QB: Ryan Leaf, Jamarcus Russel, Mark Sanchez.

[Pappy13]

Again the point in the original post here is that there are two known formulas for winning big in the present-day NFL:  1) having one of the best QBs in the league and an adequate (but not necessarily exceptional) defense, or 2) having less than one of the league's best QBs, with an exceptional defense.

Or 3) Anyone of a dozen combinations somewhere between #1 and #2. My gut says that if Denver hadn't won the Superbowl last year you would have ONLY been stating #1 above. If the Patriots or Packers don't win the Superbowl THIS year you'll have to add another scenario to your list. Hell if the Cowboys win you'll have to add running back and offensive line to the equation. LOL

[Dolfanalyst]

Or 3) Anyone of a dozen combinations somewhere between #1 and #2. My gut says that if Denver hadn't won the Superbowl last year you would have ONLY been stating #1 above. If the Patriots or Packers don't win the Superbowl THIS year you'll have to add another scenario to your list. Hell if the Cowboys win you'll have to add running back and offensive line to the equation. LOL

Passer rating differential.  0.92 correlation with win percentage in the NFL since 2004.  The two most probable ways you get a league-leading passer rating differential are with a great passer and/or a great defense.

Notice the folks paid the most in the league are the ones most closely involved in those pursuits:  quarterbacks, left tackles, defensive ends, cornerbacks, and stud wide receivers.  Everyone else is a virtually an afterthought by comparison.

The rule changes made in 2004 have caused the game to be simplified a great deal.  There are no longer a half-dozen different permutations of success.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Notice the folks paid the most in the league are the ones most closely involved in those pursuits:  quarterbacks, left tackles, defensive ends, cornerbacks, and stud wide receivers.  Everyone else is a virtually an afterthought by comparison.

The second highest paid Dolphin is none of those positions.

[Dolfanalyst]

The second highest paid Dolphin is none of those positions.

What conclusion do you make on the basis of that?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

What conclusion do you make on the basis of that?

That you are incredible inconsistent in your criticism of the team.  You should be calling on the Dolphins to cut Suh and invest the money elsewhere rather than constantly calling for Tannehill to be cut if you actually followed your own analysis regarding positions and realitive value.

[Tenshot13]

Yeah, don't do that either.

[Dolfanalyst]

That you are incredible inconsistent in your criticism of the team.  You should be calling on the Dolphins to cut Suh and invest the money elsewhere rather than constantly calling for Tannehill to be cut if you actually followed your own analysis regarding positions and realitive value.

Not wanting to cut Suh is consistent with considering cutting Tannehill, given that the salary cap ramifications would be vastly different in each case.

If Tannehill were cut after June 1st in 2017, the team would save $10M in cap space.  If Suh were cut, the team would lose ten million.

[Dolfanalyst]

Another finding here for passer rating differential in terms of the topic at hand (Building a Super Bowl Team).

Since 2004, the average passer rating differential during the playoffs for the 12 Super Bowl winning teams:  26.8.

The average passer rating differential during the playoffs for the other 132 playoff teams during that period:  -11.3

That difference is statistically significant at a p-value of 0.0003.  In other words there is a 99.9997% probability that difference is due to something systematic and not random.

Not only is win percentage very strongly predicted by passer rating differential during the regular season, but a team is much more likely to win the Super Bowl if it has a high passer rating differential in the playoffs.

Here's the good news as it pertains to Ryan Tannehill and the Dolphins, however:  the correlation between passer rating in the regular season and passer rating in the playoffs between 2013 and 2015 is 0.44, which is only moderately strong.

In other words, there is a good bit of potential for a QB's passer rating to change significantly (upward or downward) during the playoffs.

Like we saw with Joe Flacco in 2012, for example, a QB can get hot during the playoffs and surpass his regular season passer rating a great deal.

In 2012 Flacco posted a regular season passer rating of 87.7.  In the playoffs that year it was 117.2, which helped the Super Bowl-winning Ravens achieve the largest playoffs passer rating differential (44.8 points) since 2004.

Here's another possibility, however:  in 2015, Andy Dalton's regular season passer rating was 106.2, second-best in the league.

In the playoffs it plummeted to 73.8, and the Bengals failed to win a playoff game that year, despite that the team's regular season passer rating differential (27.3 points) was among the league's leaders in that area, and was largely responsible for the team's 12-4 record.