Ryan Tannehill enters his make-or-break third season with a new offense coordinated by Bill Lazor, a promising but relatively unknown coach. Joe Philbin let his friend Mike Sherman go and brought in Lazor, who has coached with Joe Gibbs, Mike Holmgren, and, most recently, as the quarterbacks coach in Philadelphia under Chip Kelly. Miami is hoping Lazor can do for Tannehill what he did for Eagles quarterback Nick Foles, who went from an iffy rookie year in 2012 to a sparkling 27-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio and a league-high passer rating in 2013. Nonetheless, Lazor, who, befitting his Cornell degree, looks less like an offensive coordinator than he does a
management consultant, is something of a blank slate and has never called plays in the NFL before.
And while several players have intimated that the new Dolphins offense will look like Philadelphia’s, Lazor has maintained it will be a blend of what he has learned throughout his career, not just his lone season with Kelly. But while we don’t know if Lazor brought the Eagles’ playbook to Miami, we do know he is trying to replicate Kelly’s fast-paced approach. “The number one thing we want to do is play with great tempo,” Lazor
explained recently. But the best no-huddle offenses in the NFL — the Broncos, Patriots, and Eagles — expertly
vary their tempos, a skill Lazor is going to have to develop.
The best-case scenario for Tannehill is that Lazor:
1. Ratchets up the tempo, thereby simplifying the looks Tannehill faces just as it did for Foles.
2. Adds lots of
packaged plays and other quick reads designed both to get the ball in space to playmakers like Mike Wallace and Lamar Miller and to relieve pressure on Miami’s hodgepodge offensive line.
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3. Gets Tannehill on the perimeter, where he can run or throw and use his athleticism to break down defenses, much like
Kelly used Marcus Mariota at Oregon.
4. Revamps Miami’s run-blocking schemes and sprinkles in
just enough read-options to keep the defense honest — which
Sherman tried but never cohesively fit into Miami’s offense.
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While the focus this offseason has been on Lazor’s ability to “fix” Tannehill, one cliché that’s absolutely true is that an improved Miami running game will directly benefit Tannehill. In Philadelphia, Foles simply faced very different defenses than most other quarterbacks in the league, as the first, second, and third priorities of every defense that faced the Eagles was to stop LeSean McCoy and the league’s top-ranked rushing attack. The Dolphins, on the other hand, finished 26th in rushing yards, 20th in rushing yards per carry, and 18th in rushing DVOA last season, and even those numbers were inflated by Tannehill’s six yards per carry. Unfortunately for Tannehill, not only does he not have McCoy, he doesn’t have Philadelphia’s offensive line, and it’s definitely possible that improvements in scheme and in Tannehill’s play could be masked by their subpar play.
The last time Lazor called plays for an offense was from 2010 to 2012, when he was coordinator at the University of Virginia. Those teams ranked seventh, ninth, and ninth, respectively, in points per game in the Atlantic Coast Conference. In fairness, Virginia’s offense took a big step forward in Lazor’s first season after UVA’s failed experiment with a pass-first spread, and the Cavaliers’ 16-21 record during his tenure was the result of deeper issues in the program. But it would be silly not to expect a young quarterback, rebuilt offensive line, and first-time NFL offensive coordinator to have some growing pains this season.
Nevertheless, I’m expecting Lazor’s scheme to help Tannehill improve; it can’t be much worse than Sherman’s staid approach. Yet, until the lights come on, your guess about what to expect from Tannehill — and Lazor — is about as good as mine.
One thing Lazor will want to do is make greater use of Tannehill’s most obvious strength as a professional player: throwing on the move and out of the pocket. You’d expect throws out of the pocket to be a Tannehill strength, given that he’s an excellent athlete with the speed to beat most defenders to the corner and both the arm strength and the quick release to whip spirals off at a moment’s notice just about anywhere on the field. His best professional play — and one of the best individual efforts from any player on any given snap during the 2013 season — was
this 46-yard heave to Brandon Gibson on fourth down late in the fourth quarter to extend Miami’s Week 5 game against Baltimore.
During his first two professional seasons, Tannehill’s been one of the few quarterbacks in football who is significantly better outside of the pocket than inside.
6 According to ESPN Stats & Info, Tannehill’s QBR inside the pocket over the past two years is 47.3, which is a dismal 29th out of the 35 qualifying quarterbacks over that time frame. Once he gets out of the pocket, though, Tannehill’s a totally different player. His QBR once outside the pocket in 2012-13 is 57.7, which is actually a pretty significant improvement given how most quarterbacks get worse outside the pocket. He has actually been the fifth-best passer in football outside of the pocket since arriving in the NFL, per QBR, and the gap between his performance outside and inside the pocket is the third largest in football. You’ll be surprised, by the way, at some of the other quarterbacks who see their performance fall the most once they’re outside the safety of the pocket:
Passer QBR Out of Pocket QBR in Pocket Diff
Jay Cutler 77.0 50.4 +26.6
Ben Roethlisberger 85.0 58.5 +26.5
Ryan Tannehill 57.7 47.3 +10.4
Matt Cassel 47.6 44.7 +2.9
Nick Foles 56.0 58.1 -2.1
Colin Kaepernick 26.0 77.2 -51.2
Michael Vick 5.1 58.1 -53.0
Alex Smith 8.9 63.3 -54.4
Philip Rivers 9.6 66.5 -56.9
Drew Brees 10.0 77.0 -67.0
Despite Tannehill’s success on throws outside the pocket, the Dolphins didn’t really make rollouts and bootlegs a key component of their offense. 11.2 percent of Tannehill’s dropbacks saw him travel outside of the pocket, which is right above the league average of 10.2 percent. Tannehill’s not going to be Wilson, but 16.3 percent of Foles’s passes came out of the pocket last season; it would behoove Lazor to get Tannehill somewhere around that range in 2014.
For all of his athleticism, though, it comes back to Tannehill’s brain and how well he’ll be able to read complex defenses before and after the snap. Scouts loved Tannehill’s arm strength before the draft and his ability to throw NFL-caliber outs to the sideline, but they fretted
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deliver throws to the middle of the field, where it’s far easier to run into an unseen, lurking defender or run your receiver into a big hit. I asked Kirk Goldsberry to run his charting magic on Tannehill’s 2013 campaign, and you can see very clearly where his weakness as a passer lies:
Tannehill was twice as likely to throw an interception on passes over the middle (4 percent) as he was on throws to either sideline (2 percent). That fits the scouting report — misreads and momentary lapses of judgment on throws into dangerous places — to a tee. As Tannehill tries to prove his mettle as an upper-echelon NFL starter to the Dolphins over the next year, he’ll want to show signs that he’s delivering upon the promise of athleticism and upside that led the Dolphins to take him in the first round of the 2012 draft. After watching Tannehill and looking over the numbers, though, it’s fair to say his progress report doesn’t show much progress at all. He’s not yet a bust by any means, but Tannehill still needs to show he has developed into something more than raw tools. With a new offensive line and coordinator, 2014 will be Tannehill’s best — and possibly last — chance to prove that to be true.
