Tannehill’s deep ball issues not what they seem to be

Written by Matthew Cannata
Pro Football Focus is one of the best websites out there for providing another metric to judge players on. For quaterbacks, the grade they give is a good indicator of how well they do in a given situation. Whether they throw an accurate pass that was dropped, or perhaps an inaccurate one that should have been intercepted and the defense dropped, the PFF grade will account for those situations with a positive and a negative grade respectively.

They took an in-depth look at Ryan Tannehill and provided some interesting grades and tendencies:

Positives
- Graded at +12.1 on second down.
- Ranked third with +8.0 grade on passes thrown in 11-to-20-yard range.
- Despite perception, graded at +2.7 on passes thrown at least 30 yards in the air.
- Among the league’s best when throwing from a clean pocket (+20.5).
- Graded at +7.7 against third-down blitzes.
- Ranked fourth with a +16.3 on 7-to-8-yard drop-backs.
- Ranked second with a +15.6 grade on drop-backs lasting 2.1 to 2.5 seconds.
- Among the league’s best when throwing to outside wide receivers (by alignment) at +16.0.

Negatives
•  Graded at -0.5 on 3rd-and-10+ and -1.3 on 3rd-and-long.
•  Below average on passes in the 21-to-30-yard range (-2.8).
•  Graded at -3.6 when pressured.
•  Graded at -1.4 against third down non-blitzes.
•  Struggled to a -4.1 grade on 4-to-6-yard drop-backs.
•  Graded at -3.6 on drop-backs lasting 2.6 to 3.0 seconds.

There are more grades that you can find on Pro Football Focus and it gives you some insight to see how well Tannehill is really doing. As you can see, it’s not all doom and gloom like a lot of people are saying. 

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