I wouldn't have predicted that Allen would be this good because who wants to get their hopes up like that. But watching his Wyoming film, you saw a guy playing for a terrible team against terrible opponents who had obviously had never been seriously coached . . . with otherworldly physical talent. His ability to extend plays and throw off platform jumped off the film, and that's something that you can't coach. Everybody made it sound like he was just some lunk with a big arm and nothing else, and that was just empirically wrong. The Josh we know now was always there on film.
Now if you had asked me back in 2018 to estimate the probability that Allen would be a Jamarcus Russell-like bust, I would have put those odds at around 30-40%. Allen was certainly a high-variance, swing-for-the-fences type pick. Lots of guys like this are incapable of making the jump to the NFL. The film never showed Allen's dedication to his craft, his coachability, or his leadership in the locker room, for example. We (fans, not the FO) had no real way of knowing his mental side. But the potential was always there for all to see.