Expectations for Tannehill’s 2015 Season

Jimmy Bourbon

9 years ago

Ryan Tannehill is entering his fourth year in the league and his second year in Bill Lazor’s offense. In each of his first three seasons, he has steadily improved, and as a result, he has rewarded this off-season with a new $96 million dollar long term contract extension. In addition, the Dolphins over-hauled their receiving group this off-season to better cater to Tannehill’s skill set, and to remove any conflicting personalities from the locker room.

During this year’s OTA’s Tannehill has looked very sharp, and the pay per head bookie service sites like AcePerHead.com would agree that this has been by far the best Tannehill has to look in any of his 4 mini camps. He looks a lot more comfortable in Lazor’s offense, and he is becoming more of a coach on the field to the rest of his offensive players, which is making him visibly more comfortable as a leader of this team.

Last season Tannehill had 392 completions on 590 attempts with a 66.4% completion ratio, for a total of 4,045 passing yards, with an average completion going for 6.86 yards, along with 27 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, a QB rating of 92.8, an average of 253 yards per game, and was sacked 46 times. In terms of completion percentage, Tannehill was the 5^th best QB in the entire league, which shows that the short to intermediate passes are his strength, and Lazor will continue to exploit that area of Tannehill’s game. In terms of QB rating, Tannehill was above the all-important 90.0 thresholds, but he was mediocre compared to the rest of the league ranking 14^th best. In the touchdown category, he was tied for 12^th best with 27 TD’s and was in the lower half of the league in interceptions with 12. His worst statistics compared to the rest of the league was yards per completion (28^th), and sacks where he was the 3^rd most sacked QB in the league

Clearly, the most important two stats for Tannehill to improve on is to throw more touchdowns and throw fewer interceptions, which will indirectly increase his QB rating. With all of Tannehill’s new weapons and bigger red-zone targets, there is no reason to think that Tannehill can’t throw more than 30 touchdowns. I believe it is realistic to think that Tannehill can average 2 touchdown passes per game, which would lead to a reasonable season total of 32 touchdowns. In regards to interceptions, he needs to cut that number to single digits, and a reasonable expectation is 1 every 2 games, which would be 8 interceptions for the season.

Last season he broke the 4,000-yard passing mark, and again there is no reason to believe that he can’t improve on that. A reasonable target would be 4,500 passing yards, which would be just around 280 yards per game. Lastly, Tannehill needs to improve his yards per completion average and at least get into the 7.50 yards per completion range. Obviously, if Tannehill can improve the touch on his deep ball, then that will help get that number up.

Lastly, Tannehill ran for 311 yards and 1 touchdown last season, and Lazor did not really start implementing the read-option part of the playbook until the 4^th game of the year, so he should be able to at least break the 300-yard mark again this season. What does the rest of the Miami Dolphins news enthusiasts think about realistic statistical expectations for Tannehill in 2015?

More Tips for Bookmakers (10):