CincyBillsFan

Why? Allen was better then a lot of other young QB's at ball protection. He only threw 9 inceptions which is decent and he lost what 5 fumbles? Given how much he ran with the ball he should be more vulnerable then most QB's to fumbling. That's the price you pay for all those 3rd down conversions he makes running the ball. And Allen wasn't as bad as the Giants Jones or the Panthers Allen when it came to losing fumbles in the pocket. Those 2 fumbled if they felt the breath of a DE on their neck. Bottom line is that Allen was responsible for 30 TD's and 14 TO's over the course of the season. That hardly gives me reason to be concerned. Sure I would like to see his TO's cut in half to 7 but 14 is in no way extreme for a 2nd yer QB.

I agree but at the same time it's a petty argument to make. Do any of these people who dwell on Allen not seeing an open receiver on EVERY play watch any other NFL games? You can nitpick any NFL QB to death if you have motivation to do so. And man there seems to be plenty of motivation by a few select posters at 2BD to do it! On any scale applied to plays that Allen may or may not have missed in that game this one was minor. And didn't Allen convert the 3rd & 12 on the next play? It's like the obsession with the lateral. If we didn't know better you would think a Texan intercepted the lateral and ran it in for a TD sealing the win for Houston.

Can you actually call out a couple of those "egregious awful decisions"? Should be easy to pick a few really bad ones given how you're claiming he had so many. As for the two "almost" INT's that Allen threw - so what? In almost every game I watch QB's, even the great ones, throw passes that "should" have been intercepted. Oh and by my count he only had one which "should" have been intercepted and that was the potential pick 6 in the 1st quarter. The pass that went between Watt's hand at the LOS happens a lot in the NFL and is almost never intercepted as the defender is to close and the ball is moving to fast. And for the record Watson had a potential pick 6 dropped that should have been an easy INT for the Bills. IMO Allen played well in his first playoff game. He's a big part of the reason we got out to a 16 - 0 lead; got into OT with a late game FG drive and had us poised to win in OT if only Knox or Morse had made a block. Let's not forget that the first 3 Bills drive starts were at their own 10, 8 & 4 yard line and that Allen led them to two FG's in spite of such awful field position. And if Allen's receivers had made NFL quality plays on a couple of passes in the 2nd quarter the game would have been over with the Bills up 21 - 0 at half. So spare me the talk that so and so was "open" by "7 yards" from a video image.

I guess this proves that you can argue about anything! The Allen fumble did not change the outcome of the game as it only led to 3 points. If you want to point fingers at what really changed the outcome of this game here's two that were far more important then Allen's fumble: * the inability of Brown & Duke to make plays on well thrown Allen passes in the 1st half that would have given us two TD's instead of FG's. * after the Bills went up 16 - 0 the defense allowed the Texans to go on an 80 yard drive to score a TD and then allowed Houston to make the 2 point conversion. This is what got the crowd back into the game and gave the Texans hope. Suddenly it was only a one score game. Allowing the 2 point conversion was HUGE because had they not made it the Bills would have still led by 2 scores.

I may be misreading this but doesn't it prove that PFF's metrics are a total crock of bat feces? While I'm not a big fan of the conventional passer rating it's better then nothing. So you have Allen improving significantly by double digit numbers in almost every passer rating category with some huge improvements like his red zone rating going up by 44 points! That Allen dropped in some of the subjective PFF ratings tells me their ratings suck.

I think the biggest reason for Allen's lack of a 300 yard passing game this season were the circumstances of the games being played. In only 1 game did the Bills lose by more then one score and even in that game (Eagles) they were only down 17 - 13 late in the 3rd period. And given the wind conditions that day NO QB was going to throw for 300 yards even against a prevent defense. From what I can see a lot of 300 yard passing games are the direct result of a team down big desperately trying to get back into the game. These big yardage games often require the assistance of a prevent defense to make it happen. By throwing "check down" passes under the coverage QB's can easily roll up 100 - 200 yards passing in the 3rd & 4th quarters. There's a reason that the correlation between passing for 300 yards and WINNING the game is so poor.

Lamar Jackson was not considered raw he just wasn't able to make certain types of throws. There's a BIG difference. Jackson ran a spread offense where he was the guy. I'm sure that Jackson was attending multiple elite QB camps throughout high school. He was exposed at a young age to top notch QB coaching. The nature of the offense that Mahomes ran meant he was anything but raw coming out of college. Allen was raw because he didn't attend those elite QB camps and he didn't benefit from top notch QB coaching until he was preparing to be drafted. I bet that between the age of 12 - 22 Allen threw a lot fewer passes, in any capacity (games, drills, practice, 7 on 7's, camps) then Jackson or Mahomes did. Allen is a true rarity among young QB's today - he's still learning how to play the position. Collin Cowherd on his show made a great point with Trent Dilfer about the current crop of young QB's receiving all sorts of elite training and throwing the ball tens of thousands of times by the time they get out of college. But Allen is an exception to this. Under the circumstances hes actually making great progress.

I may be naive but deep ball success is as much on the receiver as it is the QB. There are a few deep throw routes that I see frequently in the college & pro game: * The classic over the shoulder catch of a straight line shot. You actually don't see this that much in the pro game. These are the ones that Allen struggled with this year. * The deep throw where the receiver tracks down and snags the ball. I put this on our receivers more then Allen. On a couple of deep shots to Foster it seemed like if he had just broke off his straight line route to track the ball it would have been a great throw. This is the most common deep ball you see thrown in the NFL. See KC for the best examples. * The "50/50" deep shot where the receiver goes up and gets the ball. Bill's receivers were awful with this kind of deep shot. I'm thinking of the pass that Brown missed against Denver and the one Foster missed against Baltimore. Upgrade the receivers and you will make Allen a better long ball thrower.

I would settle for ONE elite WR, a solid TE and a second solid RB. At present we have one good WR, a 2nd competent WR, a below average TE group & one good RB. Now don't get me wrong I think Knox will develop into a solid TE. But during the last season he was below average and had to many drops and ran some poor routes. As for Kroft & Smith................. Just look at the Super Bowl. The Chiefs field an elite WR, an elite TE, very good 2nd & 3rd WR's and a solid RB. The 49's feature an elite TE, an elite RB and a very good WR. It's not being a fan boy to hope the Bills can have at least ONE elite skills player on the offense. Or put another way I am 100% convinced that if the Bills had an elite TE Allen would have been well above 60% in completion % this season.

And when 3 rushers can generate that much pressure that quickly it's a disaster considering that the Texans had EIGHT men in coverage as a result of only rushing 3. As an aside, I listen to Cowherd a lot and over the last month he frequently calls out Allen as an example of the next wave of super QB's. This is a distinct change from when he was calling Allen a bust. My guess is that Cowherd has watched some tape and talked to some QB experts who studied Allen and he's changed his mind about him as a result. From what I've seen Allen does more with less then almost any other QB in the NFL. It's that simple. I predict that when the Bills surround Allen with players that lift the Bills into the top half of NFL offenses, Allen will perform as a top 10 QB. If we ever get the talent on offense to reach the top quarter, Allen will be a top 3 QB.

Never in the history of pro football have so few argued so strenuously and for so long that a particular QB sucked. The "pro" Allen folks throw out the reasonable and obvious observation that Allen got better from his rookie to his 2nd season. And then the naysayers express their horror at such homerism and throw out all sorts of stats to show that Allen sucks and will always suck! He is hopeless so we better draft a QB in the 4th round to give him competition. And to prove their point they employ more mathematics then was employed by NASA in the moon landings. That this thread has gone 100 pages without showing any signs of dying out is amazing and a bit sad at the same time.

The excuse for Buffalo was that the organization wasn't ready to take their franchise QB in 2017. Brand new coach, a GM hanging on by his finger nails and a relatively new owner. And I suspect that Tyrod's very low turnover rate appealed to a defensive minded coach like McD. I bet that the thinking was along the lines of "lets see how we do with Tyrod if we go into 2017 with a much better defense". And do you think Jacksonville is kicking themselves for taking Fournette over McCaffrey? What was their excuse? They were in the market for a RB and still took the wrong one. The NFL draft is one big crap shoot.

This is a great point. And for the record, Cincinnati's pick John Ross at #9 has been a world class BUST! Had they taken Mahomes instead they wouldn't need to be drafting Burrow at #1 this year. And we all know that Mahomes would have been a superstar with the Bengals just like he would have been with the Bills and is with the Chiefs. As an aside, do you think Jacksonville wishes they had taken McCaffrey over Fournette?

I guess this depends on how you look at things. Since the available evidence has convinced me that Allen will be a better QB then Darnold it was awesome that we didn't waste draft picks to move up to #3 and take Darnold.

Am I the only one who thinks that Palamalu & Mahomes Head and Shoulders commercial is hilarious? The way it ends cracks me up every time.

Agree 100%. I don't understand how anyone watching these games doesn't come to the same conclusion. Also notice how much YAC these receivers gain. And just as often as not the pass isn't all that great but they manage to dig it off the ground turn on a dime and gain 5 - 10 more yards. The other thing you notice is how deficient we were at RB. Other then Singleterry we had nothing. Look at how the #2 & #3 RB's on these other teams make plays BOTH running & catching the football. I suspect we've been to hard on Allen AND Daboll.

So was mine!

I was being sarcastic there Motorin! And you're right, Rogers had a more normal development path. If we're lucky Allen will develop along a similar line. People forget that we've been there and done that before with respect to Mahomes - his name was Dan Marino! And like Mahomes, a lot of teams passed on Danny.

According to folks on this board that IS passing on Rogers. Had we NOT traded our 1st round pick for Losman we could have taken Rogers and the rest would be history. I mean the Bills should have known a year ahead of time that Rogers was a future HOF QB and NOT traded for JPL. Remember you can't win an argument with me on this because I have 20/20 HINDSIGHT - just like all the Bills "fans" backing Mahomey's!

I don't know about that but we definitely passed on Aaron Rogers!

So we have Bills fans obsessing over the PAST because we didn't draft Mahomes three years ago and we also have Bills fans obsessing over Allen's FUTURE accuracy. Funny what Bills fans worry about isn't it? Here's the bottom line: * We can't do anything to change the fact that the Bills passed on Mahomes. NOTHING. So at what point do folks move on? * It seems stupid to worry about Allen's accuracy NEXT SEASON. I mean it still hasn't happened yet right? * Allen improved his completion percentage from 53% to 59%. It was OBVIOUS to anyone who watched the last 2 seasons that Allen's accuracy improved considerably. * Given the CAP room and the fact that under Bean/McD the Bills have drafted well it's reasonable to assume that they will further upgrade their offensive skill positions. Add in another year for Allen to develop and for an offense with NINE NEW players to better gel it's likely that Allen's accuracy will further improve.

Do Bears fans obsess about Mahomes as much as Bills fans do?

But the Bills didn't take a QB that year right? So they didn't pass on Mahomes. Look the Bills had a lame duck GM and a brand new head coach and almost a brand new owner. It wasn't a year that the Bills were going to pull the trigger on a 1st round QB. And let's not forget that Reid was one of the few NFL guys who saw greatness in Mahomes.

Allen was a better pick for the Bills then Jackson would have been. And IMO 5 years from now the this will be considered conventional knowledge. The Bills were not going to hire Roman at OC and were not going to build an offense to fit Jackson's strengths.

No. But you know what's worse, much worse, obsessing over something that can't be changed. How long are some Bills fans going to cry into their beers over not drafting Mahomes? It's been freaking THREE YEARS. And the Bills weren't the only team to pass on Mahomes.