Reader Question: QB situation

Time for another reader question:

What are your thoughts on the Dolphins' QB situation? I read on your site that the Bills might have an interest in acquiring Tyler Thigpen. Do you think that is a possibility? It looks like the Dolphins want Henne to be the starter for the 2010 season. What QB that is currently on the Dolphins would be the best backup for Henne? Why did the Dolphins draft Pat White last year?

I really hope that the Bills do have an interest in trading for Thigpen because that would solve a lot of problems for Miami.

I was never really on board with the trade for Thigpen to begin with. I still cannot wrap my head around the logic of trading away a valuable fifth round pick in a very deep draft for a guy who is coming in to be the third QB for half a season. The front office had to know that Chad Pennington would be ready to play by the time 2010 rolled around and that he could probably be persuaded into re-signing as the backup.

But now there's a logjam at the QB position and the team has to decide if it can squeeze Pennington back onto the roster or let him go in favor of the clearly inferior Thigpen and Pat White.

So, yes, it would be a great help if the Bills made a run for Thigpen. I think it's certainly a possibility since their QB situation is such a mess. Miami could also facilitate things by essentially giving him away for a seventh-round pick. Also, I don't really think Thigpen is all that good, so if the Bills were to choose to place their future hopes in his hands, well that's all the better for Miami, right?

The best backup on the team for Henne right now is unquestionably Pennington. And I stress "right now" because Pennington might not be on the team in a month, so we can't count on having him as that option. I'd say the next best option is a toss-up. White and Thigpen can both run the change-up spread option packages that have been installed. If it comes down to those two though, I'd like to see White as the backup simply because he has a higher upside and the team needs to keep him active on game days to try to get him involved in other ways. He really needs to learn some receiver routes so that he can stay in games for entire drives and switch to QB from the field rather than coming in from the sideline.

I didn't like the choice of Pat White in last year's draft and it still looks pretty bad. The way the team is going about his development isn't helping things. Henne is the current and presumably future starter at QB so they shouldn't try to force White into becoming the same kind of player. That's not what he is. He is a backup who has the versatility to be involved in a lot of aspects of the offense. Use him in spread packages. Use him as a receiver. Use him in conventional packages. But don't continue with this pattern of shoehorning him into games just to hand the ball off. At least let him throw the ball.

Overall, Miami's QB situation at this moment is solely defined by Chad Henne. I was pleased with his production this year, but there are clear areas of his game that must get better if he is to become the kind of QB that this team will need if they are serious about making a legitimate run for a championship. He must improve his accuracy on all passes, he must improve his situational passing (aka not gunning it at a running back who is three yards away), he must improve his ability to read a defense, and the team must open up the playbook more and let him throw downfield.

Dolphins embarass themselves trying to get rid of Porter

OK, so everyone was pretty much in agreement that Joey Porter had to go this offseason after the ridiculous team-bashing remarks that he made before the Super Bowl. Not to mention the fact that he is delusional about how good of a player he truly is. Newsflash Joey: You are pathetic against the run. Absolutely pathetic. And you're hurt almost half the season so you use that as your excuse for why you aren't getting double-digit sack numbers.

Maybe the real reason is because you're losing a step or two.

In fact, ProFootballFocus ranked Joey 22nd out of the 28 3-4 OLBs who played at least 25% of their team's snaps. He was statistically the worst OLB on the Dolphins, finishing behind luminaries like Charlie Anderson and Quentin Moses.

Well, the Dolphins clearly had had enough, so they decided to release Porter.

Good idea...except that they don't have the cap space right now to absorb his cap acceleration, so the NFL had to step in and reverse the move, calling it an invalid termination. So now Porter is back on the team, until March 5 at least, which is the beginning of the new league year.

This is embarrassing. How the hell did this front office not realize the cap ramifications of cutting Porter right now? That seems like something basic - if you are going to conduct a transaction, you should know the consequences. Now it looks like the guys running the team are clueless or ignorant.

And maybe they are, since cutting Matt Roth midway through this past season has never looked like a more buffoonish decision. I was strongly against the move at the time, and now even more so.

Even in his limited time with Cleveland, Roth played 371 snaps and finished 7th on that list of 3-4 OLBs, one in front of Jason Taylor. Porter played 755 snaps, almost exactly twice as many as Roth, yet Porter only recorded a combined 16 QB hits and pressures. Roth had 17...in half as many plays. Oh, and as usual Roth was an absolute beast stopping the run.

Even Cameron Wake wiped the floor with Porter (and every other pass rusher on the Dolphins). Wake played a mere 167 snaps, but tallied an incredible 26 QB hits and pressures. 26! In one fourth the snaps! And it's not like Porter was getting the Jason Taylor treatment and being taken off the field in passing situations or asked to cover backs and tight ends. Just like Wake, he was pretty much just rushing the passer, play after play.

So good riddance Joey. You're not a complete player, you never were, and the one part of the game you are good at is slipping more and more all the time.

Now, if only we still had Roth. Oh well, hopefully Porter's eventual release means that Jason Taylor is more likely to stick around for another year.

Reviewing Preseason Projections: Quarterbacks

In my annual preseason roster breakdown, I included all of Football Outsiders' KUBIAK individual player projections.

It's always interesting to see how the system fares.

For the QBs, it's tough, because the system projects them (Pennington and Henne) as if they each played all 16 games. Of course, neither did, so we will have to approach them accordingly.

Here are the preseason KUBIAK projections:

	Att	Comp	C%	Yds	TD	INT	FUM	NY/P	DVOA	Runs	Yds	TD
Pennington	492	321	65.2%	3576	22	14	7	6.6	15.3%	29	105	1
Henne	455	280	61.5%	3360	17	13	8	6.2	5.5%	15	61	0
White	25	17	69.5%	212	1	1	2	7.5	4.9%	40	208	3

Pennington's numbers can pretty much be thrown out since he played less than three games. And let's scale Henne's numbers to fit a 14 game season since that's about what he ended up playing (he got significant action against the Chargers after Pennington went down).

Using that scale, Henne's projection would have looked like this:

	Att	Comp	C%	Yds	TD	INT	FUM	NY/P	DVOA	Runs	Yds	TD
Henne	398	245	61.5%	2940	15	11	7	6.2	5.5%	13	53	0

And here are his actual numbers:

	Att	Comp	C%	Yds	TD	INT	FUM	NY/P	DVOA	Runs	Yds	TD
Henne	451	274	60.8%	2878	12	14	4	5.7	7.8%	16	32	1

The KUBIAK system has the most trouble projecting young players who have yet to really play yet, but it did a pretty good job with Henne.

While the system thought that Henne would throw the ball a lot less than he did, it actually projected him to accrue more yardage. That's mainly because it projected him to have a slightly higher completion percentage to go along with a much higher net yards per pass number. And that NY/P number is key. He has to get that up from a disappointing 5.7.

KUBIAK also thought that Henne would have a positive TD/INT ratio which he did not. But the system was still only three off his actual number of TDs and INTs. Perhaps most impressively, the system pretty much nailed his DVOA.

I'd chalk this one up as another success for the KUBIAK system and statistical projections in general.

Of course, Pat White is a whole other story. It's clear KUBIAK (like the rest of us) had no idea what role White was going to have. It saw him attempting 25 passes and instead he threw a mere 5, completing none. It also saw him getting 40 rushing attempts when he really only got 21. Interestingly, the projection system also had White seeing time at receiver, with 17 catches, but he obviously was not used in that manner.

2009 Pass Defense Review Final

So I just realized that I forgot to post these numbers after the season.

Below, I've created a table of every player who recorded a sack, quarterback hit, interception, or pass defense this season. Take a look:

	Scks	QH	INT	PD
Jason Allen				2
Will Allen		2	2	6
Charlie Anderson	2
Akin Ayodele		2
Ryan Baker	0.5	1
Yeremiah Bell	1.5	1	3	9
Channing Crowder	1	2	1	2
Tyrone Culver			1	4
Vontae Davis			4	11
Jason Ferguson				1
Nathan Jones	1	1	2	10
Kendall Langford	2.5	5		2
Tony McDaniel	1.5	2		1
Phillip Merling	2.5	4		3
Quentin Moses	1	1
Joey Porter	9	13		1
Sean Smith				12
Paul Soliai		1		1
Randy Starks	7	16
Jason Taylor	7	6	1	5
Reggie Torbor	1	4	1	5
Cameron Wake	5.5	9		1
Gibril Wilson	1	3		8
TOTAL	44	73	13	80

First off, while Miami's defense certainly didn't play well this year, they were in no way awful, and truth be told they were hardly different from last year. People have to remember that the strength of schedule was vastly different between this year and last year, so staying put on defense just looked a whole lot worse this year. The performance was still pretty similar though.

To wit, Miami finished 2009 with an overall defensive DVOA of 3.1% and a pass defense DVOA of 1.5%, good for 11th in the league. In 2008, they finished with an overall defensive DVOA of 3.0% and a pass defense DVOA of 5.3%. So Miami was actually marginally better in pass defense in 2009 than 2008! Remember, it's adjusted for the opposition, which makes a huge difference when you go from facing Matt Cassell, Joe Flacco, Seneca Wallace, JaMarcus Russell, Marc Bulger, Shaun Hill, and Tyler Thigpen in 2008 to facing Tom Brady (twice), Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Matt Schaub, and Ben Roethlisberger in 2009.

Seriously, those two lists could not be more different. It's amazing how lucky Miami got in 2008 with such a cupcake schedule (and Tom Brady's injury). That's the biggest reason why I was hesitant to see Paul Pasqualoni get fired. His defense played the same, just against a schedule infinitely tougher. Obviously, it's a black mark against him that he wasn't able to get them to improve, but there's no guarantee Mike Nolan will be able to do that either and there is something to be said for continuity.

As far as the individual pass defense numbers go, Miami did very well in the sack department, but I think they could have gotten more quarterback pressures. They were finishing the job when they got there, but not getting there quite enough.

And the defense definitely needs to create more turnovers. Vontae Davis did a nice job forcing the issue all year, although he needs to work on improving his lockdown coverage skills. Sean Smith, supposedly a ballhawk, didn't get a single INT, and he started the whole year.

Reader Question: Talking 2010 Draft

With the season over and Miami's roster needing help in very specific areas, it's a good time to start thinking about the 2010 Draft.

Here's a question a reader sent in:

With the draft coming up, some are speculating that the Phins might get a chance to pick Rolando McClain ILB with their first overall pick. Is he worth it? If he is off the board do you think Dan Williams NT or Terrence Cody NT would be the next choice? I don't see the Phins picking a WR with their first choice. How likely is it the the Dolphins will get a wide receiver through free agency?

That definitely hits on the major areas of need for this team right now - ILB, NT, and WR.

Of course, some of those needs could be addressed in free agency - particularly ILB and NT. For instance, Miami may be able to make a run at Karlos Dansby who would immediately push Akin Ayodele out of the starting lineup. The team could certainly get by with a starting duo of Dansby and Crowder for a couple of years, but Dansby won't come cheap and he is 29 years old.

At NT, Jason Ferguson recently said that his return is still up in the air. It would be great to re-sign him to a one-year deal, but regardless, the team should also explore signing one of the top NT in free agency like Vince Wilfork, Casey Hampton, Aubrayo Franklin, or Ryan Pickett. Signing any of those guys to pair with Soliai and/or Ferguson would not only be a great boost to the defense, but it would take away the need to use a draft pick on one of the premier NT prospects in this draft, freeing up that choice to be used elsewhere like at OLB or WR.

But whether the Phins sign Dansby or not, Rolando McClain is definitely worthy of being picked at the #12 spot. He has everything this regime looks for in a player - he's big, fast, and has a ton of experience in college, even for a junior. If he's available, it's hard to see Miami passing on him, unless they get a tremendous offer to trade down. And even if Miami was to trade down only two or three picks with a team looking to get in position to snag a top QB, McClain might stay on the board into the mid-teens. That would be the ultimate win-win situation.

As for Williams and Cody, assuming the team didn't address this need in free agency, I still don't think either is worth taking so high in the draft. In fact, I have a feeling one or both of them may still be available when Miami picks in the second round, so it would not make sense to reach this greatly for either one. They both have serious conditioning issues that make them prime boom or bust candidates. With the 12th pick, Miami needs much more of a sure thing. And if they can get Ferguson back for one more year, they can put off this need until next year.

Unfortunately, I don't see Miami taking a WR in the first round either. I say "unfortunately" because Parcells and Ireland seem to be stuck in the mindset that they can simply throw a receiving corps together out of undrafted free agents and a gaggle of #3 guys. Well, it doesn't work that way. If this team wants a stud receiver (and it should) it needs to take the risk and invest highly in one. And there may not be a riskier pick at WR than Dez Bryant, but if he's sitting there when Miami picks, I would hate to seem them pass him over.

WR help is just not going to come via free agency. All the best WRs will be restricted free agents this year, which means they probably aren't leaving their current teams, and if they do, whatever team gets them will likely be overpaying by a sizable amount. The most attractive unrestricted free agent WR is probably Antonio Bryant, and while I wouldn't mind seeing him in Miami for the right price, he's 29 years old, and he showed this year that he isn't a true #1 guy. Parcells and Ireland are going to have to come to terms with reality and get over their ridiculous fear of drafting a WR early.

Brett Favre's season-ending plays

It's no secret that I detest Brett Favre. There's absolutely nothing likable about him. So I was obviously overjoyed to see him go down in the manner he did tonight against the Saints. Which got me thinking to how he ended his season the year before...and the year before that.

So without further ado, here's a fond look back on the last play of Brett Favre's last three seasons:

2007, choking away the NFC Championship game versus the Giants with a classic Favre-INT:




2008, getting absolutely destroyed by Yeremiah Bell as the Dolphins go into New York and take the AFC East crown:


2009, once again choking away the NFC Championship with a game-deciding INT late:

Mike Nolan hired as defensive coordinator

After missing out on their first choices for defensive coordinator, the Dolphins received a bit of a gift on Monday when Mike Nolan parted ways with the Denver Broncos after spending just one year there.

Nolan's departure from Denver was spurred on when Miami sent a written request to interview him for the open DC position. Because this was a lateral move, Denver was not required to consent. But head coach Josh McDaniels asked Nolan where he would rather be, and when Nolan said Miami, the two parties agreed to part ways.

And just a day later he was officially hired as Miami's new defensive coordinator.

Nolan runs an aggressive 3-4 scheme, so Miami will be able to maintain the basic structure of its defense.