To our remove going deep speedways.
Peace do hell peas from the Baptist Health Studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex. This is Drivetime with Travis Wingfield.
He's God my.
Havnds in the playoffs.
What is up, Dolphans And welcome to the Draft Time Podcast. I am your host, Travis Wingfield, and on today's show, it is the off season, which usually for me on this podcast means it's series time. We start the off season series with the Exit Interview Series twenty twenty four edition. We'll go QB's first. We're also gonna review the divisional round of the NFL playoffs and what we learned from the Baptist Health Studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex.
This is.
The Draft Time Podcast. May Daffy, I feel like it's become a theme on the show where I get meta off the top about the length of the show. And I was certain the off season would be when the podcast finally did revert back to thirty minute programs. But I put together today's podcast and that ain't going to be the case. And Philip bustering here off the top ain't gonna do any of that either. We're going to
talk about the quarterback position. I have a lot, a lot of two a tongue of Vailoa data to go over here with you guys.
We're also going to talk about the divisional round and what we learn from that.
Let's go ahead and start by doing exactly that with the chronological order of the games. Ravens and Texans kicked a thing off on Saturday afternoon, and it was a one sided affair, as the Ravens have played all year long.
And I'm gonna start here with CJ. Stroud's passing chart in the divisional round, which featured three completions of ten plus yard air throws and everything else was basically under ten yards behind the line scrimmage quick game screen game, and you'll find the exact same thing was true about Josh Allen's game here in just one second. But I thought that was because you know, what do we hear during the wild card round weekend? Why can't you throw
the football deep? Just try it deep, just just throw the ball down there, regardless of coverage. Well, because that's not how it works. But I also want to talk about this because Stroud was great all year long, fizzled out in the Divisional round against a great team. That's sometimes what happens, and you don't have to make a legacy defining take about every single game every single year. But I will say it kind of feels on the other side of the football like the only way to
really get after these Clydesdale quarterbacks. And I've got two new terms for quarterbacks, Clydesdale's and Cyborgs.
I feel like Josh Allen's a Cyborg.
I feel like Lamar Jackson's a Clydesdale And I feel like Patrick Mahomes is somewhere in the middle of that with better processing. But the best way to get after these Clydesdale quarterbacks your Lamar Jackson's, your previously your Russell Wilson's, I would say a Marcus Mariota, you know, to a lesser degree. And Josh Allen fits in this mold as well, especially when it comes to the Mighty Dolphins games, because we know that he burns us with his legs every
damn time. Is blitzing, like blitzing. These mobile quarterbacks go down swinging. Don't put the call on the umpire on that three and two pitch that's just three inches off the outside black of the plate, take a hack at it, try and drive that ball to right field. Don't want to pick you apart with third down scrambles and clock bleeding marches because that shortens the game and it forces
your offense to be perfect. We'll talk about how I guess the converse plan worked against the first bag Nolo and the Chiefs, I should say against the Buffalo Bills. But man, that just puts so much pressure on your offense to be perfect. And I get it when you have Patrick Mahomes and I hope one of these years that's what the Dolphins have at the quarterback position. And for a lot of the year it was that way. In the playoffs and late in the season it wasn't
that way. Hopefully you get that way, but for the Texans and c. J. Stroud, they were not. But I just feel like, if you're going to sit back and let Lamar Jackson have time and then to assess and then scramble, also, you're just never gonna get stops that way, so might as well heat him up, kind of like the thirty zero calls we saw back in the twenty twenty one game down here in South Florida.
And I get it.
He has way more weapons to attack with nowadays, but I just feel like, might as well do that and see if Sammy Watkins can't lose a ball in the lights in the end zone to find you know your stops, and then eventually from there the whole offensive game plan
for the Ravens deteriorated. But my whole point is this, just don't let him sit back and run the ball and throw the ball and do whatever he wants, because then you're almost assured to lose by a lot and that's what teams have done all year long against with
the Ravens offense. I also just you know, to bring it back to the Miami Dolphins again, watching the Ravens presence in the middle of the field with size and physicality I think is informative instructive for how the Dolphins can attack this offseason because even when they have Mark Andrews, Like my goodness, it's the best in the league, but isay A likely might be the second best in the league because I just think that there's ability to force
teams into certain looks, especially for the Miami Dolphins offense and the speed that we have, where you can create these matchups in those positions, and all year long, I felt like we lost those matchups with Cedric Wilson, with Brax and Barrios. You know, sometimes it was River Craycraft, Wo would get cracks in there. It just never really materialized from Miami to have a consistent middle of the field presence.
And I think you have to look at it that way.
Not necessarily wide receiver tight end, just someone that can win on the interior occupied that space. There's there's speed elements to it, there's size elements to it, there's quickness
elements to it. And you know, even before or I should say before that, I was team remake the receiver room behind ten and seventeen because I didn't think it was I didn't think it was you know, tenable going forward with the contracts and the players and the effectiveness that you currently had because in the Buffalo game, for instance, man without Waddle and the way they spammed you know, Tyreek, you just needed a couple instances where those guys could
win one on one matchups and you never got it. And it was typically on the interior with minimal help and three way goes, and you couldn't do it. Plus I believe that there is a very, very real value this year for the Dolphins to consider refilling the receiver pipeline to think about the future beyond Tyreek Hill, right because he's not gonna you know, he's I think Tyregk's
gonna be great for a couple more years. But I wouldn't mind having the cheap option for when you know, the quarterback money, if that becomes what we do when that starts to kick in, like, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have options down the road. I think an early round receiver could make some sense. So some names I put down for guys that could fulfill that potential position in the draft. The first name I look
at as Brian Thomas from LSU. He's a six two, two hundred and ten pound receiver who has four to four speed and can win on the interior. He can block inside. That's a guy that to me, would if he hits, would solve a lot of your issues you had and fulfilled that future receiver pipeline issue. Like I talked about, cheaper options, less asset investment. Kendrick Bourne is at the top of my list from the Patriots because he played with Mike and Wes McDaniel Wilker for four
years in San Francisco. I think he's a vastly underrated, very very good football player who would come in here know the system, will block, can take end of rounds, can catch tough passes, whip routs, jerk routes, pivots, stuff that beats that one on one interior coverage. To me, he's an ideal asset for that. In market value, I think is like four and a half million, so it would be a little more expensive than what you paid
for Brags and Barrios. But you also, you know, if you can cut money on he and Fredrick Wilson, then maybe that makes some sense there too. Juwan Jennings is another similar body from the forty nine ers. It's his fourth year in the NFL, so he'll be a free agent next year. If they can't bring him back, We'll see if they can, but he a massively important blocker on the interior. In fact, Aska Niners fan, they'll say the roles that Kendrick Boord used to play have been
fulfilled by Juwan Jennings. Miami hasn't found that now. I think Eric Azukama is an option for that. In terms of an incumbents that you can potentially develop into that role. I thought that Azukama was going to have a big role this year. That was kind of scratching the surface in that Week one game against the Chargers. But he takes the injury. That man is the rest of the season and you don't get to find out about that
beyond that game. But I think that those types of players you know, versatile, can carry the football, can block, can catch the ball vertically, can win inside.
Those are some guys that you're looking at here. And then at the tight end position.
Noah Fan from the Seahawks, he's just as a superb athlete who has the size to go on top of linebackers and make big plays like kind of like I say, I likely did there. So that's kind of my thought coming out of that game was interior separators to find and to win for your quarterback. Lastly, I found this fact really fascinating that let me pull this tweet up. So touchdown returns by defensive slash special teams in their
playoff career. Peyton Manning had four and twenty seven games, Drew Brees had two and eighteen, John Elway one and twenty two games, Dan Marino zero in eighteen games.
How about c. J.
Stroud's played two playoff games already has three, one shy of Peyton Manning in twenty seven games, one more than Drew Brees in eighteen games, and two more than Dan Reno in his eighteen playoff games. Why do I bring that up? I'm not saying that we should expect to get that ever. I just share that tweet with you as a way to illustrate that there are so many additional variables that lead to strange results this time of year. The point is that extrapolating everything based off the smallest
of sample sizes as bad process. Forty games sample size, it's good to draw conclusions from that two or three games.
It never is.
That's just my point there, Packers and forty nine ers.
Look.
Mistakes by road underdogs are non negotiables in these environments. Occurred time and time again. For the Packers, you cannot give the nineteen twenty seven Yankees murderers row for baseball, for the non baseball fans, considered the best offensive lineup of all time, you cannot give them four outs in an inning.
You can't do it. The Packers went mid red zone field goal. You can't do that.
They then dropped a room service I int off brock Perty's arm, who was terrible, by the way, maybe a pick six if he catches it. Then a turnover on downs from third and inches. Once again, the mid red zone. Hey, short yardage failures on the road in a loud environment. Who's heard of that before? And then they come back and have one more mid red zone field goal before
a couple of late turnovers ultimately doom them. And going back to the first game on Saturday, the Texans committed pre snap and procedural fouls over and over and over again. They consistently went from third and eight to third and thirteen right, and it was a huge problem for them. I thought the Packers also had a problem for that in that regard as well, and just couldn't come up
with a big play in the big moment. And perhaps the most Dolphins thing to glean from the weekend, on top of the Ravens showing you a middle of the field big body presence that can separate with either size or quickness, is that how about these Shanahan Tree offenses going on the road in the playoffs and having procedural airs, going up against the shot clock, not having third and
short execution. It seems like it's more than just a McDaniel Dolphins thing, because Slowik and the Texans and then Lafleur and the Packers ran to the exact same issues.
On Sunday Lines and Bucks.
The concept that you have to have a cyborg quarterback to make it this far was pretty disproven, right, I mean, sell your entire franchise and hopes and get rid of a top ten quarterback in hopes of finding a top three quarterback.
Just go find Patrick Mahome, Just go get Jes just go get all Lamar Jackson.
That's all you gotta do, Like okay, okay, But you don't have to have those guys to get this far because it's just been proven Goff and Mayfield. Is anybody clamoring over Jared Goff? I think Jared Goff's a good player, and I was actually in the pre draft process very anti Jared Goff and his hard knocks appearance when he didn't know where the sun rise the east or west was.
Very alarming to me at the time.
But he's turned into a very nice pro and much in the way a lot of these, you know, thirty year old quarterbacks that have a lot of talent can progress and see more and more defense and get themselves in a position where they became productive starters.
For very good football teams.
But to start this game, you know, Baker Mayfield throws a pick goff on his first drive.
Has a room service.
I int in the end zone that because he had a great game afterwards and it didn't get caught, doesn't get talked about it at all. But early on I thought pocket man vision of the field. I thought both guys struggled immensely. And to compound that first half of football where it was like was it ten to ten? In the first half of that game, you know, Stroud didn't do anything. I heard a podcast said CJ. Stroud played fine. No,
he didn't, he didn't do anything. Jordan Love threw the game away, and brock Purty was awful all night long. And then you followed up with this display of quarterback play in the first half, like, yeah, Allen and Mahomes were fantastic in their game, but we know about those guys, and that's it. When you have those guys, Yes, it's obviously a major, major boon and benefit to your long term ability to win games and to win playoff games. And to go Chase Lombard's I'm not arguing against that point.
But to sit here and say, if you don't have one of those top three quarterbacks in a league where eight teams get to this point, does the math doesn't check out? Like, I'm not a math guy, but it's more than three five more in fact, and we had that five quarterbacks that were not those guys. So that's my whole point. But then after I wrote that down, Jared goffh as Hell answered the bell, didn't he I just love and I'm gonna go back to this point that I've made. This was my Ryan Tannehill point.
Eight years ago.
I love that he's showing you the exact trajectory that you can get from a quarterback into their thirties. A good quarterback, you can't be bad and having this you can't just develop because you're there. You have to be good and put the time in. It's a tail as old as time quarterbacks. Good quarterbacks who show a proclivity for seeing the field, they get better with time. Hell, even quarterbacks who don't see the field tend to get
better like Ryan Tannehill. I wrote a piece for Lockdown Dolphins Once upon Time, Remember anybody Ryan Tannehill like a fine wine getting better with age. I had really cheesy headlines back then, but I showed you the growth of quarterbacks like Big Ben for instance, who at first was a physical specimen but became a see the field, read the field, rip it type of quarterback. Drew Brees was the same way Ryan Tannehill. You know that was the case being made, and he showed that with his post
Dolphins and Titans career. So quarterbacks who can play and wind up grinding out their career to whatever point. The more they see and especially when they get continuity offensively, personnel and play call wise, they can play at a very high level or championship level. And during the whole broadcast, they kept talking about Jared Goff in the production meetings they have with him throughout the course of the week, mentioning how calm he felt both in the Rams game
last week and in this one going into it. And I've not been shy at all about the fact that I thought that Tua just felt a little bit rushed or frazzled or bothered by the moment, and I think that I mentioned this in the previous podcast. He's going to see so many more of these games because of the fact that we have a good football team, a good coach, a good quarterback. We're gonna play lots of big games and hopefully at some point for him this year,
I hope it just becomes another game. And you know, I think Baker Mayfield fits that category of quarterbacks and late career trajectory, although it's not as late for him as it is for golf, but getting closer to the age to age thirty, which GoF is like almost thirty. But you get what I'm trying to say, in late twenties, in the earlier thirties. And then the last couple of notes here to kind of finish these two point so, there was twenty four point twenty five points per game
scored in these four divisional round games. There was twelve turnover worthy plays by quarterbacks, which is one and a quarter per quarterback. If and Lamar and Mahomes didn't have any. In fact, neither did Josh Allen, I believe, but that would be two turnovers per game from the non Lamar and Mahomes quarterbacks. The collective passer rating on the weekend
was ninety two point four. I think we can all agree the three best were Mahomes, Lamar and Josh and the other five quarterbacks, They're passer rating was eighty or eighty four point eight. So not a lot of great quarterback plays what I'm trying to say on the Division round weekend, despite the fact that I think that most of those guys were, you know, franchise level quarterbacks, whatever you want to call them.
So there you go.
And then the last, last final note here, like the Lions path man, God got ye six seeded Rams who have a great quarterback, but are you know otherwise a rebuild team that kind of got hot to get there. And then the Bucks that freaking Titans game man, all right, last one before we get to the quarterback review of twenty twenty three Bills and Chiefs. Keeping this as it is because I wrote it at the end of the
first half. It felt to me watching that game like Josh Allen was the best player in the sport, him, Lamar and Mahomes, you know who took I think a slight step back this year. I would still take Patrick Mahomes if we had a thirty two team fantasy redraft, I would take Mahomes first overall on that, but I think Allen would be a second for me, and Lamar a tight third probably how I would do that, but
either way you can't go wrong. And then of course, as the game wraps up, high variance Josh shows up, chaos ball Josh shows up. He had stayed patient and won all night long. Then he went hunting and damn near gave the game away. He should have thrown a pick that would have ended the game. His fumble could have been a fumble six had not Dalton king Kate or Dawson Knox, one of the two tight ends made a great play to restrip the football back out of
the defense's hands. And then he misses an open touchdown on the second down play before the Tyler Bass miss where he just missed it. It's just so interesting because we obviously have a different look at this guy because we'd get him guaranteed twice a compared to others getting Mahomes Lamar twice a year.
Whatever it might be.
Who I you know, I think you can definitely take the patient approach. But it seems to me like Alan will give you one, two, three chances a game mixed across all the dominance and tough physical running that he does to give you chances in the game. But look at this man, Like Josh Allen completed sixteen of his passes thrown behind the line of scrimmage. He completed just ten of twenty one passes beyond the line of scrimmage
in this game. Only two completions passed the sticks all game long, and only one completion beyond.
Five yards the entire game.
Like they reeled him back in and his playmaking with the legs allows him to do that. But I just think it's interesting because we heard that you know your game plan dictates what your quarterbacks capable of. I think we all know Josh Allen can throw the ball on the field, but he didn't do it in this game.
I just it narratives, right, they're kind of funny.
Hell, even McDaniel was asked about Tua's case passing chart, and I storm, guess what coverage dictates where the ball goes? But can we all understand that, of course we cannot. Let's go go ahead and take our first break right there, come back on the other side and do some more Dolphins centric conversation. I know this was Dolphins, Like, here's what this means for Miami as a satellite. Let's get more into it with the year end review series the
quarterbacks up first. That's next Draft Time podcast, your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by Auto Nation, Segment two on a Monday, January twenty second.
Here the Draft Time Podcast.
Let's go ahead and get into this exit interview series, even though there are no interviews on the podcast, a season review position by position. If I'm not mistaken, I've done these every year since I got here, and even
going back before that. You know, we have the off season primers coming down the pike here soon, but I want to take this portion of the calendar to just reflect and address the season that was, so we can approach the next phase with full knowledge of our own self scouting right kind of the genesis of my podcasting career, following the NFL schedule in terms of games from September to January, then self scouting, then college scouting, then free agents,
then back to draft mode, and right in to off He's in programs. It comes up fast, man, I promise you it'll be Opening Day in baseball before you know it, and then we'll have that realization. Wait, the first voluntary OTAs are just a couple of weeks away. Whatever it's gonna be, right, I think it was April seventeenth last year. We start with the quarterback position, and to ease into this, we'll also comb over the special teams in this episode, because well it's just not something I go deep into
on this podcast. Maybe something we can fix. Stix Suar get some more special teams knowledge on the show. But the really nice part about having the same quarterback start wire to wire for the first time in eight years is that you really just have to do one evaluation. Mike White got more clean up duty than any backup quarterback I've seen since watching this team.
Oldheads helped me out here.
Did Marino get some flower seeds in a bucket hat in the fourth quarters a lot back when he was turned.
Up the league?
I imagine he did, but it was a different era, So who the hell knows well old Heads do? And wasn't it nice to not have to start a third stringer for multiple games? I mean, that's just no ideal. Right, Speaking of the eighteen starts, the last a Dolphins quarterback started eighteen games in a season. You guessed it, Dan Marino, Jay Fieeddler started seventeen games back in two thousand and two playoff games, missed one regular season game. Chad Pennington
started seventeen games in two thousand and eight. Dan Reno started eighteen games in nineteen ninety eight, twenty five years ago. It's fitting that since the same era we've had to go back to in order to find the last time Dolphins had a top ten offense coincides with this. In fact, we've had top ten offenses for back to back years for the first time since the ninety four ninety five seasons.
That's longer than.
I imagine a chunk of this podcast audience has been alive. All right, come with me into the weeds. We're gonna bite back against a lot of Twitter bad apples, Okay, because everything around this quarterback. I feel like if it was twenty years ago without the advent of social media and constant morning talk show nonsense that feeds the beast, I feel like everyone would just say, oh, that's a good quarterback.
That's their quarterback going forward.
But because we have to bandy about all these horrible tweets, ideas and concepts, and non experts of the game providing thoughts that they should you know, make serious decisions based upon these non expert thoughts, like I see one of the guys on the beat. You know, not to single anybody out, but let's talk about it, because if you put it on Twitter, it's it's fair game to talk about right. Thump this idea that there are excuses being made for TUA right now, like, no, they are not.
The excuse making has now flipped to the other side, like you're the one making the excuses. I've always said, just blanket statements that say no excuses is a cover for I'm not doing the work to find the context to find out why. And if you don't find out the why, you have zero chance to repair the issue. My sink is broken and it's leaking. Okay, it's it's a bad sink. Well, what are you going to do to fix it? And yes, I compare media coverage to the
actual team. If you want to be taken seriously and compare your own personal record to teams of drafting or whatever your fantasy GM stuff is, you should probably enact some similar type of value evaluation or else you're just a fan with the keyboard, which I mean, that's what we are faced with ninety nine percent of the time, right.
But I saw the thing now, you're making excuses for two of if you point out the injuries this team has had down the stretch that contributed to your collapse and three straight losses to three really good football teams, and if you heard the Friday podcast, you know we use the context of the injuries to explain a lot of reasons why behind the collapse and its occurrence, which issues out plenty of blame, shortcomings and things the incumbents have to get better at, while spelling out the gravity
of the challenge they faced with all these practice reps lost to injuries, right, and it compounded with what was already a bad road game operation. And that's a foremost issue that has existed for two years and must must get better next year. But like cutting bait on that after two years, Like that's again where I ask you to find historical context to understand that's what bad franchises do.
That's what the.
Panther's are doing right now. Okay, I'm not comparing the success. Nothing they've done has worked But when you have a decision maker who issues out a big contract to a quarterback, then eight weeks later into the season decides against it and then does the exact same thing with the head coach, that's how you become the least attractive destination. That's how you get your ticket prices in December to under two bucks a ticket, and it's how you become an annual bottom feeder.
Just watch the Panthers.
I promise you are not going to win more than six games in the next three years. That's a promise, and it's because a fan bought their team. Seriously, go look up David Tepper's background football fan and mega capitalists who bought a team and wanted to play real life fantasy football like we see a lot on these Twitter streets. That's a diatribe to say the injuries are excuses, and then you point to at first it was the receivers weren't good enough, Then it was flow sabotaged him, then
it was the offensive line was bad. Now it's injuries, No, dude, it's context, and no one's making excuses. And you know why, because two had an awesome year all freaking year. He's had two awesome years. And after the first one, all of you said, people like this tweeter for example, Well he needs to play every game, and he did that.
Guess what his stats wound up right back where they were last year on the smaller sampleized sample size, literally top four and ninety percent of the main QB statistics that are credible to give you a quantification of what you see with your own eyeballs, and that's counting stats and advanced metrics. The excuses are you cherry picking four games to make your point. Well, if you excuse the other eighty five percent of the games, then you're left with this.
You can't pay this like, yeah, no kidding.
Reduce anyone down to the worst fifteen percent of their profession or their work as a husband, a fo, whatever it might be. You're not going to measure up.
You can't do that.
And again, I acknowledge these bad games showing up at the worst time of year is a bad thing. I'm not saying that at all, But I'm not naive enough to think that some made some magic pixie dust that just shows up at two was window at two am in December and sprinkle some kind of throw accuracy decrease power over him. I tend to live in the reality where we look at context and assess why it wasn't good enough. And again he got his percentage of the blame.
There's no doubt about that. And there are plenty of other factors as to why the offense folded in the final one and a half games of the year. There were moments against Baltimore and Buffalo in the first half that look good than the second half not so good. So really the final three games, but there was good sprinkled in the Chiefs game wasn't adherent, just disaster. It was terrible, right, Okay, I want to go ahead and pull up some data points here real quickly that I
think do a good job assessing. You know what I'm talking about here. You guys are familiar with Bill from Boyton on Twitter, right, I'm sure you are. We can all stand to be a little bit more like Bill. In my opinion, he's been cooking folks lately. Like these
stats right here. So Tua's league leading four thy six hundred and twenty six passing yards is the seventeenth lowest for a league leader over the last eighteen years, and Bill notes that people have been using this as a way to say that Tuas simply took advantage.
Of a down year. No, it's quite the opposite.
The lowest was Brady in twenty seventeen, for it's worth at forty five seventy seven. What it actually tells you is the defense has swung the pendulum back in the direction of the offensive outburst era and have found ways to make passing more difficult, and in this era, the
Dolphins quarterback has found a way to shine. It takes me back to the idea of quick process or with a quick trigger, an accurate thrower stands a better chance to sustain success against the shifting defensive paradigm where the big play hunters and exhibiting are exhibiting far more variance and not for the better. Look at what happened to de Shaun Wattson's career. You can look at the guilt
of being a predator. You can look at the time away from football, but the truth is the league changed while he was away because nobody was more of a big play hunter than Texans to Shawn. Now, predator DeShawn is trying to play the same way, but defenses have clamped down that and it has made him not successful anymore, not to mention the traits by our guy tend to have a much much longer shelf life than someone who exposes himself to punishment weekly. But that's a different topic.
Back to the cherry picking of stats. More from Bill in Betown. In twenty twenty two, teams that ended up with a winning record, TUA went four and four agains them with this stat line two hundred and seventy seven points, six yards per game, sixteen touchdowns, five picks, two hundred two touchdowns per game, less than a pick per game. If you pro rate that over seventeen games, it's forty seven hundred and nineteen yards, thirty four touchdowns, eleven picks.
Billy being in moneyball, man, what are we cussword talking about here?
Man?
One more real quick again? The whole flip your model after a few games. That's how you wind up making poor decisions right and look nothing personal, but my man elite Marino used to be elite to a man. Reminds me of when I cursed off and swore off Tannehill out for the first two picks he threw in the twenty fourteen Packers game, and then he came back and had like the best three games of his career. It's kind of funny how that works. But formerly elite TUA,
only real TUA stands up shared this gym. Tua with two top ten wide receivers. Oh, and they're fast. He mentioned that they're fast. Forty six hundred and twenty four yards, twenty nine touchdowns, fourteen picks. Marino with two top ten receivers who also were fast five eighty four yards, forty eight touchdowns, seventeen picks. Well, he didn't mention was the mark Clayton missed six games in nineteen eighty five, like
how Waddle and Tyreek combined to miss four games. More if you can't Tyreek's very limited snap count against the Tennessee Titans, or Waddle being limited in La Buffalo and Germany when he got hurt early or missing the end of the Dallas game after having exited earlier with a separate injury, my point is that you can find six
games and they aggregate without those guys, right. Well, when Reno was out without one of those guys for six games, forty one hundred and thirty seven yards, thirty touchdowns, twenty one picks.
In an eighty four passer rating.
In fact, Reno had one season where he surpassed two was passer rating each of these last two years, and that was nineteen eighty four, arguably the greatest passing season of all time. His passer rating that year A number there is essentially an algorithm uses all the counting stats we discussed and quantifies them with one number one oh eight point nine two of the last two years, one
oh five point one, one oh one point one. That's one more season with a passer rating over one hundred the DAN had his entire career, and I know comparing numbers to that era is absurd, but the tweet I'm addressing did that, so attacking absurdity with absurdity right. One more point on two was stats and twenty nine touchdowns because I see that being held against him for some reason. Two, which I think was fifth in the National Footballleague this year.
I mean, you guys are where that we had running backs score eighteen touchdowns this year and had another one score eight touchdowns. That's twenty seven touchdowns on the ground in total. Do you guys know how many teams have scored twenty seven rushing touchdowns while I can tell you this, eighteen teams in the Super Bowl era the entire NFL have scored more rushing touchdowns eighteen teams in the last fifty six years.
Whatever it is.
You know how you score that many touchdowns because you get down there. Because here are the other twenty one teams that have scored twenty seven touchdowns on the ground in a single season. The nineteen seventy six Steelers. People seem to like Terry Bradshaw. The twenty twenty two Philadelphia Eagles Jalen Hurts Super Bowl appearance. Pretty good team, pretty good quarterback. O six Chargers Rivers was he was okay, right, Hall of Fame fringe quarterback. They also went one and
done that year. The Three Chiefs Trent Green was the only quarterback in the NFL at that time that had three straight four k yard seasons. They lost in the playoffs. The four Chiefs see again lost in the playoffs as well. The twenty twenty Saints. I think we like Drew Brees a little bit on this podcast. Probably wouldn't wouldn't if he were a Dolphin who lost the divisional round that year like he did. Right eight Panthers, Cam Newton did
he change the franchise or what? Cam didn't start a playoff game, and then he got smoked in that one. Nineteen eighty three Washington team, thisman, pretty good quarterback, lost the Super Bowl. Nineteen seventy eight Patriots Steve Grogan. They had a first round exit, but that's a pretty good quarterback. The twenty six team Buffalo Bills finally our first non playoff team, and that was ty Rodd's best season of his career. The five Seahawks Matt Hasselbacks Super Bowl lost.
He was a pretty good quarterback.
The ninety five Cowboys Troykman, people like him, World champions that year. Seventy nine Saints Archie Manning, non playoff team, seventy eight Seahawks Jim Zorn no playoffs Dan. These late seventies teams, huh, seventy five Colts. I don't know who Burt James is, but they went one and done with him. Kenny Stable nineteen seventy five, the Raiders divisional round exit. And then this year there's three teams that had that many touchdowns this year, the Lions, the Niners, and the Dolphins.
Ninety six Washington team also had twenty seven touchdowns. So yeah, there are teams that score that many rushing touchdowns only do it because they have awesome quarterbacks.
Unless it's nineteen seventy five.
Let's go ahead and take our last break rate there and come back and finish up the quarterback room.
I have a lot more on Tua.
We'll also do special teams all that next Draft Time podcast, your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you.
By Auto Nation.
Third segment, and we're finally going to talk about my grades for the players and the room in general. My two a tongue of bi LOWO grade gets an eight point eight this year. It's eighty eight percentile. Right, where's that grade come from? It's it's essentially accumulation of film watching the statistics where I think he ranks across the league at his position, some of the shortcomings factored in. I think that he would be in the top ten category at that grade.
We discussed this on Friday. Lets go ahead and revisit the counting stats.
Three three hundred and eighty eight for five sixty is sixty nine point three percent, six hundred and twenty six yards twenty nine touchdowns at a five point two percent clip fourteen picks a two point five percent clip. He had two hundred and twenty two first downs, a fifty point eight percent success rate, eight point three yards per pass. He finished point nine yards per game lower than last
year at two hundred and seventy two. He took twenty nine sacks that was four point nine percent of his dropbacks, hit a seven point five to six adjusted yards per drop back, two fourth quarter comebacks, two game winning drives Chargers and Cowboys, and Pro Football Reference gave him an approximate value of sixteen. For comparison, Lamar was nineteen, Allen
was eighteen, and Patrick Mahomes was fifteen. He was third in completion percentage first and yards with the ninth, most attempts by the way fifth and touchdowns fourth, and success rate second, and yards per attempt fifth, and passer rating fourth and sack percentage allowed second, net yards per attempt fourth, and EPA per play fourth in completion percentage over expected
and then obviously fourth and EPA plus CPOE composite. That's a stat that a lot of folks like, and you typically will find the top quarterbacks in the league and that category. I also touched on this and wanted to dive a bit deeper. Pro Football Focus has a stat called big Time Throws, and I know, PFF we talk about him a lot, yet the consumer platform not great. I want to touch on it because here's a thing
when I saw I thought was something worth exploring. Anytime I come across the stat where other people in the category are like Hall of famers or obviously future Hall of famers, that's when you kind of say, hey, let's look at that stat a little bit further and go deeper inside on the onion. Like when going into the final couple of weeks, Tua was tops and passing yards and completion percentage and only five quarterbacks had ever done that before, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Brett fav
and Dan Foutz. Like, okay, that's a group you want to be a part of. So I went ahead and pulled up these five big time throw stats. And big time throws essentially equates length of the pass to separation down the field. Can you squeeze it into a tight window essentially?
Is what that is.
And what has two done his entire career every year it's literally, well he can't do this, then he does it and The funny thing is I think about sometimes is going back to like square one. You can literally find tweets where it's like he can't complete a ball or five yards, and then he does it, and then it's, well,
he did it on air, he can't do it against team. Well, then he does it in eleven on eleven the first AG training camp, Well he can't do it in a game, seating very first preseason snap with Tyreek Hills a fifty yard bomb. Well, he can't do it in the regular season, and then he becomes the most prolific productive downfield passer over a two year span the National Football League. Then they said, well, he can't stay healthy, and he did that too, But I do think there were some sacrifices
that were made. More on that in a moment, let's get into these big time throws. So this year, Dak forty one, Allen thirty nine, Stafford thirty seven to thirty six, Jordan Love thirty five. Last year it was Allen fifty two, my God, Mahomes thirty eight, Borough thirty seven, Brady thirty six,
Gino thirty five. Gino's kind of like the guy in there that you're gonna say, hey, what about Geno Smeth Travis, twenty twenty one, Stafford, Alan Brady, Murray, Burrow, Like, these are the top quarterbacks in the league more rapid speed twenty twenty Rogers, Brady Watson, Mahomes Wilson twenty nineteen Wilson, Rodgers, Mahomes Watson Wentz.
Huh, he was.
He was still kind of decent at that point. Not really, He's getting towards the twenty eighteen Mahomes, Wilson, big Ben Luck Brady twenty seventeen Brady Wilson, Breeze, big Ben, Stafford. Should I go further because it's the same thing over and over again. My point is players are not winding up there as accidents and blips on the radar. And if two is in the top five again next year, he'll be one of the He'll be in that category
of Brady's and Breezes and Big Ben's. The guys that are in that consistently, Only those guys that are in their back to back years. It's only like future gold jacket guys. I'm not saying Two is that, but I'm just telling you that's the company he keeps in those big time throw categories, which is play making right. This was something I really wanted to dig into because I think it goes into the playmaking aspect.
Of the position.
Because what do we hear so frequently from two A tongue of my lower detractors, right, anybody could throw to those wide open receivers like, yeah, it's great to have that, and his process helps him do that. It's evident when you watch, but it's always nice when you can quantify here because we saw big time throws all year. Man, what a great throw that was from Tua. It's right there and the freaking the proof is.
In the pudding baby.
Now, do we need more creativity extending plays, Yes, but not the way you might think. I just think two it needs to find a little more comfort within the pocket.
And that was his game in the past.
That's why I loved it Alabante, because he was so good at navigating tight spaces. I just think that maybe maybe the injury, maybe the protection of your body, and it's important to have the quarterback. But at a certain point it felt like I can point to several reps where he.
Just didn't make the.
Correct adjustments in the pocket, the climbs to shoot the dark I mean that deep shot to Waddle on the first series against Dallas, which weirdly is the last time we practiced fully together, right, weird. But he slides around pressure and uncorks this dime fifty yards down the field. That's elite level football, man, And it was there four weeks ago, whatever five weeks ago that was. But it seemed to go away in the Chiefs and Bills game. Didn't it in the Titans game for that matter?
Real quick?
I must have blacked out during the postgame show when Tuas said this, here's a continuation from the Friday show.
I didn't know that TUIs had this post game.
I mean, it's deem sport. We didn't come together the way we wanted to offensively, it showed tonight, and you know, as the leader of that offense, I mean it really started with practices, So you know, that's that's how that's how we should have got things going, was in practice, with the communication, with knowing where we should be going in this loud environment, and then those miscues lead to
delay of games. Those miscues lead to Okay, we can't change the protection, we don't have enough time, things like that. So it was just communication.
Theirs time on the grass man.
I think practice was the biggest issue those last two games, and our unwillingness to simplify things in general. Our falloff coincided with that man losing, Heam losing, waddle Hunt, missing reps, Liam in a boot Harrison taking so many of those reps early on. Tyreek limited for weeks before finally getting it right, only to have his freaking house catch on fire and missed two practices before the biggest game of
the year. I think about that we only practiced once with the entire ensemble after the Dallas game, just one time. We didn't win the game the rest of the year. Wattal and Raheem hurt in that game, house fire, short week man, that's a quest to curse. I just feel like you've seen growth in every area of his game since he came into the NFL, and like I mentioned in the Divisional round recap, he has the skill set of a quarterback who would develop nicely as the year
goes on. The years go along, not to mention as I developed more and more continuity in the offense. I think he time and time again displayed that he can put the football exactly where he wants I think he took massive strides in leadership and command of his team. I think he constantly got into positive looks both in the run game but also the check to the vertical shots with well timed dimes down the field. I do think pocket management needs to be and can be better.
I mentioned it, a balance between cautious and aggressiveness needs to be struck. Recalibrated was the word I used. And now we take that cultivated mass max style and turn it into a more athletic quick twitch, which I already know Nick Hicks has.
On his agenda for the offseason. So there you go.
That's my two evaluation. Really good, can get a lot better. Number fourteen Mike White. I didn't give him a great cause he didn't play nough. He was five for six, seventy four yards and a touchdown and a pick. If not for that pick, my man bats one thousand with the one fifty eight point three passer rating. I got to know Mike this year and just one of my
favorite people on the entire team. Fellow father of two, loves to golf, has baseball in his background, a shared love of South Park with your boy, and I think he's really, really good fit here as the backup quarterback. He knows the offense. I thought he led some of those run exclusive drives at the end of blowouts really well and showed a good command of the offense. He's a nice fit here. Scalar Thompson never saw him this year. What can we say is in the Camo practice jersey
a lot right. Give him the top three practice performers of the week. He gave some great scout team looks there, and he's a developmental quarterback in your system. I want to go ahead and do this real quick, because the top forty quarterbacks I wrote this down last week, was going to put in the podcast, never got to it. I want to go ahead and rank the quarterbacks at the end of the year as I see fit. I know some of these guys were relegated to back up,
some will be moved. Let's just go ahead and look at it in the sense of top forty quarterbacks, regardless of team situation, all that guys that played this year, how they performed, where they project going forward. These are my top four quarterbacks I'm taking to win a game tomorrow. And boy, this list shifted a lot throughout the season, which is another lesson, Right, it's gonna change. Jordan Love ten weeks ago was thought to be a bust. That's
something that got to move on from. Now he's everyone thinks he's a top five quarterback. It just it changes like that number forty Bailey Zappy, number thirty nine, desim Ritter, number thirty eight, Kenny Pickett, Mac Jones, Mason Rudolph, Jake Browning, Jacoby Brissett, Sam Howell, and then Jimmy Garoppolo is my thirty second ranked quarterback, my starting cliff. Right, then I go like this up to twenty five, Will Levis, Jamis Winston,
Joe Flacco. I mean, where do you put Joe Flacco, Bryce Young twenty eight, Gardner Minshew, Daniel Jones My top twenty five, Ryan Tannehill, Ryan Dannahill yeh yeh. Derek Carr, Russell Wilson, Baker Mayfield and Deshaun Watson and Gino Smith round out the top twenty. Into the teens, Anthony Richardson's by nineteenth, Justin Field's eighteenth, Aaron Rodgers seventeenth, or rather Jared Goff seventeenth. Aaron Rodgers is sixteenth. Yeah he's not.
I don't trust him coming back off the Achilles and all the.
Stuff that he does.
Fifteenth, Trevor Lawrence fourteenth, Brock Purty thirteen, Jalen Hurts twelfth, Justin Herbert eleventh, Kirk Cousins tenth, Dak Prescott ninth, to a tongue by Lowa eighth, Kyler Murray seventh, Jordan Love sixth, c. J. Stroud, and then Joe Burrow, Matt Stafford, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Patrick Mahomes round out my top forty. I'm sure you guys will agree with all that. Right, Let's go ahead and real quickly. Special teams.
Dolphins didn't do very good in this category.
Twenty two point system kicking game evaluation from Rick Gosling measure Miami out at thirty first in that list.
This year.
We also were thirtieth and dv away from Football Outsiders. But you know, you also had a lot of injuries that basically reduced your ability to have guys on special teams. I mean, Duke Riley, a key contributor on special teams, gets lifted off to play defense.
What else was there?
Elijah Campbell in that mold Durrehm Smith played a lot of snaps this year on offense kind of got less special teams work. It just it wasn't a good year for those guys, except for the kickers. Jason Sanders. I gave him a nine point one. He was He had four missed field goals this year, and two of those were blocks. He was twenty four for twenty eight eighty five percent, but was eighteenth in the NFL at that rate.
Kickers are good now, man.
The fifty seven yard was tied for This was tied for the seventh longest successful field goal this year. He did not miss any kicks under forty, just two misses between forty and forty nine, and then five for seven on fifty plus also fifty eight for fifty nine on Pat's a pretty great year for Jason.
You love to see it.
Jake Bailey was twenty sixth and punts twenty ninth and yards per punt, twenty eighth in return yards, twenty fourth and net yards and twenty fourth and punts inside the twenty yard line. I gave him a four point two. I didn't give Blake Ferguson a grade because I don't know anything about long snapping, but he got a personal foul that I didn't love. I always say this, but m my as well. Running back I don't know. I don't know, but he's got an extensions. He must be
doing a good job, right. But I literally don't know anything about long snapping. I don't know. Maybe we do a podcast this summer where I'd get Blake or you know, Blake and Brax or something and talk about special teams so I can learn about it because I needed some blind spot for me.
But there you go.
That's a special teams and quarterback review. We're gonna go ahead and get out of here. I don't know what position is gonna be on Wednesday. I have to kind of coordinate with our video team because we might be having some top ten videos that come out and I want to make sure I have those accurately. But we'll have one of these three days a week for the next couple of weeks. Are on the podcast taking you
through the NFL playoffs. In the meantime, you all please be sure to subscribe, rate, review the podcast, all that fun stuff. Follow me on social at Winklin NFL. Go ahead and check out the fish Tank podcast with my guys Seth and Juice. They also have their happy hour radio show I Believe tonight at five o'clock at the Twin Peaks and Davy Don't miss That on nine to forty am Fox Sports, and of course the team YouTube channel, Media Availabilities, Dolphins a Day and so much more, and
last but not least, Miami Dolphins dot Com. Until next time, Finns Up, Carolina and Cameron Daddy come home