Make no mistake

[DenverFinFan]

If you examine a hundred games at random in which both teams scored in the 30s and one of them beat the other by about 3 points, you'd find a very small percentage of them in which one of the two teams benefited as much as the Dolphins did today by plays with a large random component.

You don't have a very lowly 3.3 yards per play and score 31 points very often.  The scoring under those circumstances is typically more along the lines of about 10 points.  The Dolphins benefitted today from a tremendous number of non-replicable plays.

Didn’t you say the same thing when we beat the bills in September?

Lol man ok, have fun zapping any joy out of this game.

I’ve always said your analysis has value and you’re not even wrong but fuck dude, things happen. The world doesn’t exist in your math equations and neither does this game.

No shit bro, having a good QB with a good pass rush and shut down corners is typically the formula to success. No one needs  to analyze 300 games to realize that but a lot of times the game in question comes down to human beings taking what they have in front of them and I’m sure that challenges your world view at large but here we are.

Football season is over as HST famously said.
Basketball season is here so go Denver.

But always, go Miami. I’ll be here next years as long as Brady isn’t.

[Dolfanalyst]

Didn’t you say the same thing when we beat the bills in September?

Lol man ok, have fun zapping any joy out of this game.

I’ve always said your analysis has value and you’re not even wrong but fuck dude, things happen. The world doesn’t exist in your math equations and neither does this game.

No shit bro, having a good QB with a good pass rush and shut down corners is typically the formula to success. No one needs  to analyze 300 games to realize that but a lot of times the game in question comes down to human beings taking what they have in front of them and I’m sure that challenges your world view at large but here we are.

Football season is over as HST famously said.
Basketball season is here so go Denver.

But always, go Miami. I’ll be here next years as long as Brady isn’t.

The issue is what's predictive of future performance.  If Buffalo and Miami play 100 games in which there is a yards per play differential between them of 5.9 to 3.3, more than 80 of those games involve defeats of Miami by 20+ points.  Today was one of the other fewer than 20 of those 100 games in which random non-repcliable nonsense made it much closer.

So, what I'm getting at here is that it's very difficult to extract from this game some part of the team's performance that means it'll be good in the future or has somehow reached some new echelon of performance in the league.  And in fact the coach's performance called him into sharp question, which doesn't bode well.  McDaniel looked like an utter moron in terms of game management.

[DenverFinFan]

The issue is what's predictive of future performance.  If Buffalo and Miami play 100 games in which there is a yards per play differential between them of 5.9 to 3.3, more than 80 of those games involve defeats of Miami by 20+ points.  Today was one of the other fewer than 20 of those 100 games in which random non-repcliable nonsense made it much closer.

So, what I'm getting at here is that it's very difficult to extract from this game some part of the team's performance that means it'll be good in the future or has somehow reached some new echelon of performance in the league.  And in fact the coach's performance called him into sharp question, which doesn't bode well.  McDaniel looked like an utter moron in terms of game management.

K, a Flores blowout was preferred, so sorry,

[Dolfanalyst]

K, a Flores blowout was preferred, so sorry,

A Flores blowout would've been no different, unless he would've likewise benefitted from the same degree of randomness we saw in this one.  Then he too could've lost 34-31.

[DenverFinFan]

A Flores blowout would've been no different, unless he would've likewise benefitted from the same degree of randomness we saw in this one.  Then he too could've lost 34-31.

Your whole world view is a house of cards man

[dolphins4life]

Anyway, there's no indication of what next year will bring, so we have to be happy about having made the playoffs, while being disappointed that they blew a shot at victory

[dolphins4life]

We need defensive help, too

[Spider-Dan]

Take a look at yards per play differential to determine which team was dominant, aside from the random fluky nonsense.

Didn't we go through this after week 3?

If you consider the data above, you have to consider that Buffalo would very likely beat the Dolphins the vast majority of times they played them, with yesterday's loss representing an unlikely outcome of a game between them, and certainly that should factor into any sort of power ranking of this nature if it's utilizing the objective data most strongly related to winning in its formulation.

In other words, if the Bills would beat the Dolphins let's say 80 times of every 100 times they played (theoretically, based on the important data), and yesterday's game represented one of the other 20, then the Dolphins certainly shouldn't vault ahead of Buffalo in a power ranking that utilizes the important objective data.

MIA and BUF have played 3 games over the last year.  Over those three games combined, BUF's score differential is one point over home field advantage.

How many games do they have to play before you stop ignoring the actual outcomes?  How many times are you going to keep returning to this "If they play a hundred more games the Dolphins should get blown out" silliness when the actual games are extremely close?

Under this bizarre theory of football, Brett Favre "shouldn't" have lost a bunch of games to worse teams in MIN and DET because his offenses were much more productive.  It was statistically unlikely!

[Dolfanalyst]

The Dolphins had 3.3 yards per play to Buffalo's 5.9 today.

In the past three years of NFL play there have been but 35 teams average 3.3 yards play or fewer in a game.  It's so poor it happens in only about 4% of NFL games.

Since the year 2000 there have been 34 NFL games in which a team had between 3.1 and 3.5 yards per play, and its opponent had between 5.7 and 6.1 -- like today's game.

33 of the 34 teams that had between 3.1 and 3.5 yards per play lost those games, by an average margin of 18.4 points.

Doing what the Dolphins did today -- in terms of the non-fluky areas of the game that are strongly predictive of winning (yards per play) -- almost always results in a loss, and very typically results in a blowout loss by NFL standards.

[DenverFinFan]

If you examine a hundred games at random in which both teams scored in the 30s and one of them beat the other by about 3 points, you'd find a very small percentage of them in which one of the two teams benefited as much as the Dolphins did today by plays with a large random component.

You don't have a very lowly 3.3 yards per play and score 31 points very often.  The scoring under those circumstances is typically more along the lines of about 10 points.  The Dolphins benefitted today from a tremendous number of non-replicable plays.

Alright man. Maybe those non replicated plays happened because of individuals WANTING it which is what makes sports worthwhile not your autistic analysis.

[Dolfanalyst]

Alright man. Maybe those non replicated plays happened because of individuals WANTING it which is what makes sports worthwhile not your autistic analysis.

You can want it all you want, and if it equals a win in only one of every 34 games of that nature, good luck.

[Spider-Dan]

The Dolphins had 3.3 yards per play to Buffalo's 5.9 today.

In the past three years of NFL play there have been but 35 teams average 3.3 yards play or fewer in a game.  It's so poor it happens in only about 4% of NFL games.

Since the year 2000 there have been 34 NFL games in which a team had between 3.1 and 3.5 yards per play, and its opponent had between 5.7 and 6.1 -- like today's game.

33 of the 34 teams that had between 3.1 and 3.5 yards per play lost those games, by an average margin of 18.4 points.

Doing what the Dolphins did today -- in terms of the non-fluky areas of the game that are strongly predictive of winning (yards per play) -- almost always results in a loss, and very typically results in a blowout loss by NFL standards.

You keep saying this while ignoring the outcome of the game.
Back in September your excuse was that it was only one game.  Now it's three games, and your tune still hasn't changed.

How many games have to be played before you consider the scoreboard to be a more important indicator of team performance than yardage?
5 games?  10 games?

Under your theory of football, turnovers don't count because they're "fluky," red zone success rate is apparently irrelevant, and just gaining a bunch of yards is more important than the score.  Somehow, if the Dolphins were regularly driving down the field and throwing red zone interceptions on the way to a loss, I doubt you'd be praising their high volume of yardage as "proof" of how dominant they are.

edit: This entire argument is a galactic waste of time.



This is the coach whose job you are currently calling for, based on the team's performance TODAY.  With a rookie 7th-round QB.
And you have the nerve to talk about "fluky performance" when discussing the team with the #2 yards-yer-play in the league over the season.  Your chosen metric.

[Dolfanalyst]

You keep saying this while ignoring the outcome of the game.
Back in September your excuse was that it was only one game.  Now it's three games, and your tune still hasn't changed.

How many games have to be played before you consider the scoreboard to be a more important indicator of team performance than yardage?
5 games?  10 games?

Under your theory of football, turnovers don't count because they're "fluky," red zone success rate is apparently irrelevant, and just gaining a bunch of yards is more important than the score.  Somehow, if the Dolphins were regularly driving down the field and throwing red zone interceptions on the way to a loss, I doubt you'd be praising their high volume of yardage as "proof" of how dominant they are.

edit: This entire argument is a galactic waste of time.



This is the coach whose job you are currently calling for, based on the team's performance TODAY.  With a rookie 7th-round QB.
And you have the nerve to talk about "fluky performance" when discussing the team with the #2 yards-yer-play in the league over the season.  Your chosen metric.

The outcome of the game was a loss.  As it would be in 33 of every 34 games of that nature, by an average margin of 18 points.

And the metric is yards per play differential, not offensive yards per play.  And we're talking about a single game, not a season average.

The overall point is that there is very little to take from that game that indicates anything about what to expect from the Dolphins in the future.  Very little of what was positive in that game reliably translates to any sort of future performance on their part.

The game isn't a statement about the season as a whole -- the game simply says very little about what to expect from them going forward.  You can't look at the game as some might and say something like "hey they lost by only 3 points to Buffalo on the road in the playoffs -- they're now a league contender."  The way that game unfolded doesn't permit that conclusion -- too much non-replicable randomness accounted for their performance.  And it leaves the glaring question as well regarding McDaniel's ability to function executively in his role.

The week 3 game was no different.  Notice the outcome of that game isn't consistent with the 9-8 finish that ensued.  What's consistent with the 9-8 finish that ensued was how that game was played, not the final score.

[EDGECRUSHER]

This is the same kind of logic that people used after the game in week 3.  "Look how many yards the Bills got!  Look how much time of possession they had!"

You say the game wasn't close but then proceed to list all the unforced errors the Dolphins made.  You think it "wouldn't matter" if they had their starting QB, SS, CB2?  It "wouldn't make a difference" if they had the RB that gained 136 yards against them in BUF 6 weeks ago?  The game "was never really in doubt" when MIA had a third-quarter lead and Josh Allen was turning the ball over on almost every possession?  Miami "isn't that close" to Buffalo after beating them in Miami and losing on the road by 3 points twice?  OK, man.

I don't know what the goal of this post is.  "Don't be encouraged, this team is still trash"?

100% agreed. With all those guys out, we lose by 3 with a lot of self owns on our part. Don't tell us we aren't their equals when we played 3 close games against them and won one of them. Have Buffalo start their 3rd stringer yesterday and see who wins.

[CF DolFan]

Pappy has some good takes at times but if there are two ways of looking at things he is going to choose the negative moany of the times. We were in position to win the freaking game and that's really all that matters. Ask Jacksonville if you don't believe me. If we had made one or two more plays we would be preparing to fly to KC right now.

Playcalling was really slow but you cant argue with the game plan. Waddle and Hill make those catches early in the game and they may not have gotten off to such a large lead. We gave up a long run to end the game when it shouldn't have been close as the defense played very well overall. Lot's of things to gripe about but in reality we had a chance to win with many, many, obstacles giving us the excuse not even be in the game.

3 games against one of the Super Bowl favorites and we have a point differential of -4. Not too shabby if you ask me.