Phins trade for Tyler Thigpen

Looking to replace Chad Pennington, who was placed on Injured Reserve, the Dolphins traded an undisclosed 2010 draft pick to the Kansas City Chiefs in return for QB Tyler Thigpen.

The success of this trade depends in large part on what round pick the Dolphins gave up to get Thigpen. The Chiefs had been asking for as high as a fourth round pick for him earlier this year, and it would be ridiculous for Miami to pay that much for him. I really hope they simply traded back to the Chiefs the "future considerations" (aka probably a 2010 7th round pick) that the Chiefs gave to Miami in last year's draft.

But let's get to know Tyler Thigpen.

He's a third year veteran out of Coastal Carolina who is 25 years old. He stands 6'1, 224 lbs.

He is essentially a spread QB, much like Pat White. When Thigpen took over in Kansas City last year, the team implemented its "Pistol" offense - essentially a shotgun formation where the QB is in a shorter dropback position. Counting the pistol and shotgun snaps together, Thigpen took an astounding 359 of 420 pass attempts away from center (85.5%). And to little surprise, the Chiefs performed significantly better from these formations than when Thigpen operated from under center.

Thigpen is known to throw a lot of short passes, but he's got a strong arm and he's a good scrambler. He ran 62 times last year for 386 yards and 3 TDs, and a 15.2% DVOA. But he also finished with a below-average passing DVOA of -6.2% and a horrendous completion rate of 54.8%.

Football Outsiders also found a disturbing trend in Thigpen's performance by quarter. His DVOAs for the first, second, third, and fourth quarters were 25.1%, -6.6%, -10.5%, and -25.2% respectively. That means that he regularly started off games extremely hot and proceeded to regress to horrible play by the fourth quarter.

Thigpen isn't going to challenge Henne for the starting QB of the Dolphins. But his skills are so similar to Pat White's that he may end up becoming the backup before season's end since he has more experience. He's still just 25 years old so he has plenty of room to grow and he will need to if he wants to stick around.

For those interested, here are Thigpen's KUBIAK projections for this season (assuming 16 games played):

	Att	Comp	C%	Yds	TD	INT	FUM	NY/P	DVOA	Runs	Yds	TD
Thigpen	457	229	50.2%	2897	18	17	12	5.5	-14.8%	57	294	2