VW82

What the heck, man!? Lol. It's fine to disagree, but you seem to be taking/making this personal. Why? People are allowed to have opinions that differ from yours. How am I spewing BS by mentioning that KB refused to work out with Allen pregame, as reported by the media and confirmed by McD? It would seem to be relevant that he has WRs turning on him in a discussion about Allen's progress and his ability to succeed with this group. Let me ask you, what progress are YOU seeing with him? Why don't you join the discussion and make some points instead of just trolling posters and taking personal shots.

I didn't see improvement either. Ask yourself this: how many of Allen's completions today came in the pocket? He seems to only be able to make a play once the play breaks down, and frequently he's just taking off and running before there's any real pressure. He's actually gone backwards with his pocket presence.

Bills media reported that Kelvin refused to work out with Josh pregame when Allen asked him to work on routes/throws with him. Unreal. That obviously looks terrible for KB but you have to wonder if Josh has already lost the confidence of his receiving core. Those guys aren't the most talented bunch but their QB is definitely making them look a lot worse than they are. For someone like Benjamin who's in a contract year that's probably tough to take.

This isn't about Anderson, it's about what's best for Allen and protecting our investment in him. Again, we're taking a big risk continuing to play Allen and having him perform terribly while the season slips away. These risks include: 1. loss of confidence from teammates and coaching staff. 2. loss of self-confidence from Allen. 3. outside pressure from ownership, media, fans, etc., to label Allen a bust or at least bring in a starting caliber QB to compete next year. 4. increased risk of injury given Allen's poor decision making. The benefits to sitting Allen for a few weeks include: 1. immediately takes the pressure off him and allows him the chance to watch, learn, regroup, and work on some of the fundamentals that have popped back up with increasing frequency the last couple of weeks. 2. Allen won't be blamed for a lost season. McD will take the heat for starting him too early. 3. keeps his confidence intact because now it's a situation where the organization is holding him back as appose to him continuing to fail miserably. 4. when Allen does return, the season will already be down the toilet so he'll have a pressure-free environment with which to work through his issues. Everyone will understand it's all about Allen at that point, and so he'll get more leeway.

You don't need to be in the locker room to get some idea. Again, watch the WRs when Allen screws up a throw (which is often). Their body language tells you everything. It's been getting worse as the season has gone along. Also, use some common sense. Our defense is clearly playoff caliber. We're losing because we can't move the ball, and we can't move the ball because our QB is so limited. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that if there's little to no improvement week to week that eventually players are going to start pointing fingers, and coaches are going to start questioning whether they made the right call with him. We might not be there yet, but we're close. Keep starting him and we'll get there soon if Allen doesn't improve dramatically.

How are we ruining him by sitting him under the cover of an injury? He's at a much greater risk of losing confidence by going right back out there and continuing to stink it up. Teammates and coaches will lose confidence, which is already happening btw. Watch the body language of the WRs. It's pretty tough for a young guy to succeed when his own organization is losing faith. Plus, it sure looks like he could use the time to decompress and regroup, not to mention heal up. Elbow injuries are no joke for QBs.

This is a great point. He's losing the team, and once that happens you're not far away from the QB losing his confidence too. If we continue playing him, and the results don't change Allen will be seen as the reason our season fell apart (him and Peterman),. That's a dangerous position for a young QB, and it will put a lot of pressure on McBeane to bring in a new starting caliber QB in the offseason to compete. Now you're even further undermining Allen's confidence.

Maybe that's the right answer, but there's a risk/reward to both sides of the argument. Right now he has to be dangerously close to teammates completely losing confidence in him. He's been that bad. If that happens you're not that far removed from the player losing his confidence, and once that happens you're in real trouble. Sometimes you have to save the player from himself. Allen is going to get another chance regardless, and everyone would understand if Bills pulled him. McD will take the hit for starting him too early. The downside to sitting him is he loses 2-3 games while we likely squander away the season when he could have been developing. The downside to continue playing him if he doesn't get better fast is you might lose the team, and support for bringing Allen back as the starter next year. He'll be seen as the main reason our season went to crap (which is dangerous because it's true). I'd rather take the loss of 2-3 games development, and take some pressure off the kid. Let him regroup. Let the team and fans see it's not just the QB screwing things up out there. This elbow injury provides a perfect cover 2 (pun intended).

Good post. The thing that worries me the most is that he isn't getting better. He's making the same rookie mistakes he was making in the preseason. That should be a huge red flag for the coaching staff. Our defense is playoff caliber. The problem is we can't move the ball, and that starts with Allen. He's putting the team in such bad positions, and because of that we have to be super conservative with the play calling which only exacerbates the issue. He doesn't have one strength we can lean on right now and build an attack around. Instead, it's all about hiding his many weaknesses and the QB position is too important to be successful like that.

We don't know the extent of Allen's elbow injury yet, but IMO it doesn't matter. This is a perfect opportunity for the Bills to pull him off the field for a few games and let him gain a little perspective. Prior to the injury, Allen was terrible today...again. He was just as likely to get injured running the ball along the sideline and getting drilled by that Houston LB in the first half when he chose not to run out of bounds. He missed multiple open receivers. On 3rd and goal, he ran out of the pocket when there was no pressure, and short sided himself with only one available receiver (Jones) who was covered. Allen didn't seem to understand Houston had a spy on him so he couldn't just run it in. We've seen him do this several times now, including preseason. Peterman's career in Buffalo is over whether he gets cut or not. It's still early, but Josh isn't getting better. He doesn't understand what's happening pre-snap. He has a tendency to run backwards at the slightest hint of pressure. He's frequently wildly inaccurate with his throws. He makes bad decisions. Anderson isn't the perfect solution, but right now he's the best option short-term for the team, and long-term for Allen's development. The kid needs a breather. He needs to watch and learn.

Believe me I'll be first in line to eat crow if it means Josh is figuring it out. 20 years of sh!tty QB play has me a little on the cynical side.

The turnovers haven't been great though he's had a few really unlucky ones. I'd argue his team isn't winning because their defense sucks and their head coach shouldn't be a head coach.

Odd post. Carr is 5th in yards, 4th in completion percentage, and 8th in YPA, Just going to throw this out there but it's possible Carr is just fine.

I'm amazed at how resilient some of you guys are in your faith that Allen will come through this ok. Like, even Mitch Trubisky wasn't this raw as a rookie. It's so scary. This article did a great job of highlighting a bunch of the issues I've seen over the first five weeks plus preseason. Again, so much of this has absolutely nothing to do with the supporting cast. If you're still claiming it does, you didn't read the article or watch the video evidence, or any of the games really.

If Allen doesn't show much improvement by year end here's how I'd handle it: 1. We have cap space and the roster is bereft of talent so clearly we should upgrade it regardless; 2. Acquire another QB (draft, sign, or trade) and make Allen fight for the job in training camp. I wouldn't be averse to picking a QB in the first round if the right guy was available. If Allen can't win a QB competition going into year two then he can sit and be our back up for a year assuming we can't trade him. I don't think you can just hand someone a job two years in a row if they're not earning that right to play. Obviously the hope is Josh improves by leaps and bounds this year and proves he's our franchise guy going into year two.

You're the only one talking about him not playing anymore (even if it's just to be facetious). Obviously he needs more time. The question I raised is does it make sense to commit a bunch of other resources next off season to build around Allen if he hasn't improved considerably from where he is today? I think that's a fair question. Many here seem to be taking the default position of "it's not his fault because he's a rookie and the Oline and WRs suck so we can't objectively rate his performance." That's crap. You have to take that into consideration but it's clear he'd be having the same problems with better teammates because of how tremendously raw he is. He's so raw it's fair to question whether he'll ever improve enough to be successful, and it's worth monitoring that improvement over the course of the year so we can make a more informed decision about him in the off season.

He's played 18 quarters plus preseason of NFL football. It isn't too early to make some observations about where he is in his development. I'm not suggesting he's a finished product or won't make it. But the early signs suggest he has a long ways to go, and according to Andy Benoit maybe the longest out of any QB in recent memory as far as football IQ. Again, I don't think we should just assume "better weapons" is the answer here. Let's see if he develops at all first before we hard commit to the Allen era. This isn't about the picks. If he's good it's worth it to overpay. I think virtually everyone who isn't a hard core Bills fan would agree that Allen is not on par with Darnold at this point. Not even close. That isn't to say that Allen might not one day surpass him. But in terms of where they are re NFL sophistication, Darnold and Baker are light years ahead. I haven't seen much of the AZ kid yet.

Agreed but we just spent a lot of draft capital to take Allen who right now doesn't look like an NFL QB. I think we need to figure that out because if he doesn't dramatically improve there's no amount of talent we can put around him that will allow this team to succeed in a way that makes sense long-term. The worst thing we can do is pretend like we have the QB position fixed, go out and spend our cap and draft picks to build around Allen only to realize after the fact that he can't play. Now we're back to where to were two years ago: capped out, without the right leadership, and needing to rebuild.

You guys keep coming back to the Oline and WRs. If we swapped Oline and WR groups with the Rams we'd still have trouble moving the ball right now. That's how raw Josh is. The focus needs to be on determining if Allen can develop in his pre and post snap reads and with his accuracy enough to be a winning QB. If not, then we should be thinking about finding a new QB to develop rather than ignoring the problem and looking for players who might cover up his debilitating weaknesses.

Look if Josh doesn't get much better and fast they have to. McD isn't going to just piss away the season on performances like GB and Tenn (which we almost lost because of Josh). Allen is so raw right now. There's a good argument to suggest he'd actually benefit from sitting for a few games, and watching a vet QB go through the process of preparing to play and debriefing afterward. He might appreciate the opportunity more next time around. Allen is still the future but you can't completely punt on the present in favour of one guy's future. It sends the wrong message to the team. He can play again when we're out of it.

Bills should start him as soon as he's up to speed. Not necessarily for an extended period, just for a game or two so Josh can watch another QB go through the process. Allen desperately needs to steepen the learning curve. He's just been atrocious out there, literally costing us games. If he's even half as mentally tough as every claims he is, he'll take the benching like a champ and come back a much better player in a few weeks with a little more perspective on what it takes to be successful at this level.

I think 80-90% of the protection issues and holding the ball too long is QB pre-snap stuff. It's not Daboll other than to whatever degree he isn't successfully developing Allen in that area. If you blind-folded Brady or Rivers or Rodgers or any of the great pocket passers until after the ball was snapped, and forced them to diagnose coverage based solely on who moved where they'd hold the ball too long and get sacked just as frequently. It's too much to ask of any QB to drop back and "find the open guy" every time without the benefit of some foresight. You need to be able to figure out what the defense is trying to do, and either know where you're going before the ball is snapped, or manipulate the defense into something favourable if that option isn't there. Allen has no chance without some level of sophistication at the line, and right now he's the least sophisticated QB in the NFL (and probably down the list compared to some of the current college guys as well). It's actually a testament to how naturally gifted he is that he's been able to have any success so far. Tl;dr I'm not sure how much a different game plan will really help outside of the first scripted drive, or before the other team adjusts.

This is such a frustrating line of thinking to me. Quick story from my youth: I went to university with this girl "Jenny" (her Canadian name) who was from rural China. We were in a bunch of classes together first year. She spoke English well enough to understand what was going on but still struggled badly. The rest of us were just so far ahead of her it wasn't fair. She legit flunked out and had to take a bunch of hundred level courses over again in the summer, and then again the next summer. The thing was Jenny was brilliant, way smarter and more naturally gifted than the rest of us, and ultimately medalled at congregation. But she was so close to flunking out and having to move back home. It really could have gone either way for her at various points that first year. To ignore circumstance and context, and pretend like they don't play a massive role in the success of people is just plain ignorant. Good is not always good enough without a little help. If Allen flames out it will be because of a variety of factors, and will depend at least partly on the circumstance he flamed out in.

Sorry forgot the link. It's up now. Yes Dilfer loves Allen. I think his perspective closely resembled that of the concerned father who was watching his son needlessly go through the same trials and tribulations that he had 20 some years earlier. He repeatedly said how his heart was breaking for the kid. I think he genuinely cares, and believes in him too. It's the timing and the situation, or as you said "the strategy." Culture over everything, right? The adversity aspect is interesting to me. In theory it makes a ton of sense. That said, if Josh is so much more mature because of the road he took to get to the NFL, why doesn't it show to people like Dilfer who claim he just isn't ready? There's a bit of a disconnect there.

Trent Dilfer went on Ryen Russillo's podcast this week, and had a bunch of interesting takes on how teams should develop rookie QBs vs. how it was done in years gone by. His main take away was that most of the time young QBs today are ready to start right out of the gate. He was previously very against that idea. Here's Dilfer on his own rookie year, and how that influences his thought process: "I was the worst player in all of football...and I just don't want to see that happen to other kids. Josh Alllen right now is the one that's ripping my heart out. Darnold should be playing. Rosen should be playing. Baker should be playing. I don't think Josh Allen should be playing. He comes up very similar background as me. Central Valley, California. Smaller school. I don't think he's ready for the bigness of the NFL, and he's not surrounded by enough good stuff - innovation, talent, whatever, the ten other things - that can make up for his lack of sophistication and experience." "Every year I will identify a kid that is like me, his background is like me, you can see the writing on the wall that the chances of ruining this kid (by playing him too early) are better than the chances of making him a superstar."