Player Spotlight & Fantasy Outlook - Ryan Tannehill

Ryan Tannehill Quarterback #17

Miami Dolphins | 

Height: 6-4   Weight: 216   Age: 30

Born: 7/27/1988 Lubbock, TX

College: Texas A&M

Experience: 7th season

High School: Big Spring HS [TX]

The Perception:

Its rather astonishing to witness the Miami Dolphins starting quarterback Ryan Tannehill enter his seventh season donning the turquoise and orange, as it feels like just yesterday he walked across the podium on draft day. The former receiver turned quarterback has definitely enjoyed varying levels of success and hardship during his short career. Evaluating Tannehill for the 2018 season came with great enthusiasm as many positive trends from his game clearly stood out when reviewing the five completed seasons on his resume.

As we all know, the 2017 season for Tannehill was lost to an ACL injury relegating him to the sideline for the entire year, watching Jay Cutler come out of retirement and learning the game further from the coaching perspective. As Ryan enters the ripe age of 30 years old, and ultimately entering his prime, we believe a year off the field would’ve provided Tannehill a great viewpoint to understand technical facets of the game while collaborating with offensive guru and head coach Adam Gase. When Ryan entered the league back in 2012, the naysayers came out in drones just waiting for the inexperience to show, as initial belief was that Ryan would be in over his head with limited snaps from his days at Texas A&M. While the learning curve was steep, Tannehill showed flashes of intelligence which allowed his solid athletic ability to produce a decent rookie season. As the years moved on, Ryan became more comfortable and productive finding ways to generate career statistics as each new season came to pass. Even still, the critics evaluating Ryan would continue to promote lower grades without great credence suggesting Tannehill would be nothing more than an average to above average quarterback in the NFL.

While Ryan has been quite effective creating plays during his tenure, the perception still holds true that he can be quite careless with the ball at times. Tannehill has shown an interception ratio garnering a career worst 3.1% rate from 2016, while throwing 66 turnovers in his five completed seasons to his 106 career touchdown passes. ADF does believe the progression of Tannehill has be very good throughout his career even as the Dolphins have struggled to find an identity as a whole to stay on the same page as a team. As Adam Gase enters his third season as the Fins bench boss, finally we see roster change over that should be conducive to his schemes, promoting more efficiency and creativity thus lifting Ryan Tannehill to potentially generate career numbers once again.    

The Reality:

As we enter the 2018 NFL season, the hype on Tannehill has been extremely quite nationally, allowing the Dolphins to fly under the media radar (thus far) while coach Gase attempts to streamline his systems and play executions. As Ryan continues to shake off the cobwebs from his ACL recovery, the Dolphins new supporting cast might in fact show more production then it has in the past. Some may scoff at that statement believing the Jarvis Landry departure will ultimately lead to the Dolphins demise, we feel the opportunity for Miami to become multidimensional clearly exists with not only the additions to the receiving core, but the expanded role of up and coming talents like Kenyan Drake taking this offense over the top.

In reviewing the Dolphins offensive depth chart, it’s clear the objective this offseason was to recreate Landry in the aggregate with slot receivers Danny Amendola and Albert Wilson to hopefully fill the void from lost targets and production Jarvis took with him to Cleveland. While it will be no small feat to replace 161 targets going for 112 receptions creating a healthy 9 touchdowns from the past season, we fully expect the core as a whole to come together while Tannehill spreads the ball around all over the field. As training camp moves forward, the praise from local media outlets has suggested Ryan looks sharp early on having a clear understanding of what coach Gase has in store. Adding to the additions of the Fins receiving core, ADF is very interested in witnessing the development of a true number one receiving tight end prospect in rookie Mike Gesicki. It’s been far too long since Miami has employed a sustainable solution at the position where Tannehill can trust a reliable check down option with the potential for mismatches in the redzone, everything is looking mighty positive on that front. While the Fins have been known to struggle in redzone and short yardage goal line situations, ample opportunity to exploit and strike the opposition is real with the six-foot-six athletic freak Mike Gesicki leading the way, yet another positive Tannehill has never had in his career.     

Diving deeper into the roster, we at ADF are extremely excited to witness the evolution for the Miami run attack as Kenyan Drake and Frank Gore plan to form a viable one two punch, with rookie Kalen Ballage potentially having a decent role seeing live game action. While some quarterbacks can produce without a solid run game, we feel with Tannehill’s skillset, dependable runners will only elevate his progression and lift his performance that much further. Establishing the play action pass essentially forcing opposing safeties to stack the box to assist in stopping the run will give Ryan every chance to burn defenses deep with Kenny Stills and DeVante Parker becoming great benefactors. There definitely is a lot to like in this Miami roster for the upcoming season, as the outlook for Tannehill views higher than it ever has.   

  

The Outlook:

The perceptions of Tannehill being an average quarterback should finally come to rest if he can take advantage of this fantastic situation as the Fins are loaded with good talent and playmaking ability. We believe this is the season that will define the future outlook of the Dolphins and their starting pivot moving forward to suggest if he in fact is the real deal, or just another player with great athletic ability. ADF has never sung the praises for Ryan in the past as we too have fell victim to the perceptions and inadequacies Miami had created these last five seasons, showing they haven’t been anything more than a middle of the pack club. This year however, we find ourselves smitten with the potential this offense could develop into while witnessing Ryan take a giant leap in becoming a household name that opponents fear on Sundays. Establishing a run attack that will generate great numbers while exploiting a quick short pass game should open up more downfield success making the Fins a fun team to watch in 2018.

From the fantasy perceptive, Ryan Tannehill has never excelled to create noteworthy buzz outside of being a rostered backup and bye week fill in with weekly match-up appeal. We need to climb back to the 2014 and 2015 seasons to find fantasy relevance for Tannehill where he generated 278.5 and 257.32 fantasy points respectively. Combining his best campaigns Ryan saw an average of 16.74 points per contest, indeed making him an average play on a weekly basis. While we take these numbers into account when evaluating the future success of any player, the team situation is dictating our increased appetite to roster Ryan as his ADP (Average Draft Position) is sitting in extreme value slots showing his stock sits anywhere from 180 to 190 in recent mock drafts. The risk is very small when drafting Ryan as his services can be obtained with little sacrifice, but we feel the potential outlook could have Tannehill as a weekly starter lifting your club to great heights. It’s definitely not out of the realm of possibilities to witness Tannehill hit 4500 passing yards and finally seeing his touchdown totals increase beyond 30 for the first time in his career. ADF fully endorses drafting and rostering Tannehill at his low ADP for the 2018 fantasy season, get ready to sit back and enjoy.