CincyBillsFan

It would have been nice if Zay had held onto the ball and the Bills punch it in for a TD. Then you take out Allen on a high note. Now do you play Allen another series?

Judas priest we can't have guys dropping balls that would have put the Bills inside the 2 yard line.

I didn't like the holding penalty that wiped out a nice 1st down gain so instead of 2nd & 3 we were in 1st & 20. That has to stop.

I see what you're saying watching that pass play. It looks like Allen just flips the ball using half an arm motion and the ball goes over 30 yards for a perfect placement.

Great points and I would add that with all the injuries to our TE's wasn't Allen effectively working with the 4th & 5th string TE's in that Red Zone drill? IMO when you're down that close to the goal line your TE is probably the most important receiver on the offense. Frankly, I like the body chemistry & words coming out of the Bill's training camp.

The way I try to get a take on whether a player is doing well or not in training camp is by listening to what he and those around him ON THE TEAM are saying. It's not an exact science and you have to read between the lines and look at body language but my takeaway on Allen is: * First, listen & watch how Allen is behaving. Last year it became clear that this guy is very hard on himself. He doesn't blame others when he sucks or makes a bad decision. So what Allen is saying and more importantly his body language are critical to assessing his performance in PRACTICE. So far he's come across as in command, upbeat and confident. I get the clear sense that he's feeling his oats and is loving the new talent the Bill's have brought in on offense. If he was struggling I would fully expect to see frustration out of Allen in practice and in the post practice interviews. Instead, he's interviewing more like a guy who just won a game and played well. * Second, look and listen to Bean, McDermitt & Dabold. Given that their professional reputations and income depend on Allen doing well you should be able to get a clue by their demeanor whether Allen is doing good or bad. So you have to ask the question - do they look like they're walking past the graveyard? My answer would be a great big HELL NO! In fact It's the exact opposite as these guys seem upbeat, relaxed and liking what they see in their franchise QB. * Third, look and listen to what the players around Allen are saying and how they're acting. Again, it seems pretty clear that Allen is the leader of the offense and I haven't detected in their words or body language a whiff of frustration from the new, VETERAN players that have joined the Bills. My guess is that Beasley & Brown are figuring out how best to get Allen's attention so they can have all pro stats this year. They see visions of 1,000 yard seasons with Allen throwing them the ball. So sure my way doesn't involve a detailed breakdown of every freaking PRACTICE play. But I think at this point the eye test is the best way to gauge progress as long as you watch more then just Allen.

It's head scratching how this guy actually puts in YARDAGE numbers. How the hell does he come up with his numbers? I mean some of the drills start at the 10 yard line so does it even make sense to reference "yardage"? Or what happens when Allen hits Beasley on a 15 yard pass and the guy jukes his way past the tackler then cuts up field for what looks like a huge gain and the whistle blows? Does Brown give Allen 15 yards or does he give him about 20 (when the whistle blows) or 65 yards which is what the play may have gained? Statistics are dangerous in the hands of football writers.

Judas Priest sharing QB stats from practice just seems so dumb AND misleading. Thad Brown has Allen at 8/19 for 72 yards, 5 TD's(!) & 1 INT. Brown calls out the dropped INT but not the dropped passes - biased much? All I want to hear from the so called professional "experts" is an overall assessment of Allen's performance. Given the nature of practice keep the descriptors general and subjective. Don't insult our intelligence by providing numbers as if they mean anything from a practice. The coaches must laugh there asses off at this stuff.

Buffalo Bills versus Carolina Panthers Why the Bills: What's the point of being a fan during training camp if you don't think your team can get to the Super Bowl? There is time enough for the reality of the regular season to kick in and adjust your expectations accordingly. Why the Panthers: A healthy Cam Newton combined with the NFL's best RB - yes, in the modern NFL McCaffrey is the best RB and he'll blow past 2,000 yards rushing & receiving - will mean Carolina will have a scary good offense. On defense they still have the best LB in the NFL and Rivera is a defensive minded coach who will fix the D's lapses from last season.

So far so good in training camp with no major injuries! Knock on wood. Our two 1st rounders from last year seem to be on the verge of breakout seasons as both are having great camps. Rumors that the O-line & Receiving Unit would be much improved after the Bills off season signings have been confirmed. Allen really seems to have a handle on the offense and Dabold has settled into the Offensive Coordinator role. The new O-line coach is a hoot and seems to know what he's doing. Overall the Bills look to be way ahead of last year at this point in training camp. One final note: Is it me or does posting Allen's STATS for practice make Thad Brown look dumb?

I would add that McCaffrey's play is almost solely responsible for Cam raising his completion % so much. He is an elite pass catching RB who not only makes great grabs but has a killer 1st move. For probably the 1st time in his career Newton recognized that he had a play-maker catching the ball out of the backfield that could turn 5 yard gains into 15 yard gains. We really need McCoy or the rookie to step up and be that RB who is dangerous catching the ball AND picking up the blitz.

I remember watching a KC game in which Mahomes had a couple of throws that went for big yards to the TE Kelcy. Both throws were a bit off with one being behind and the other down below the knees of Kelcy. Yet the TE caught them both and rumbled for decent yards. My first thought after each of the catches was: Clay doesn't make either one. The job of an NFL QB is to get the ball close to their receivers. Being a little off is not nearly as important as receivers who can't make tough catches. In every Bills game I can remember receivers for the opposition making tough and at times spectacular catches against us. I can't remember more then 1 or 2 such catches the ENTIRE season from our guys. Fix this problem and the accuracy issue largely goes away.

Great question and the ONLY logical answer would be along the lines of "gee, Mahomes didn't get to play much did he? Is he still in line to be "the guy" in 2018 or are your guys going to be looking for a QB in this years loaded draft ". Hell, even a lot of Chiefs fans must have wondered about this. Only those who CLOSELY followed KC would have known that Mahomes had impressed in practice and had a decent game at the end of the season when he got his only start.

Not in the least bit surprised by the answer Denver fans gave. Under the circumstances I would have given the same answer. Down here in Cincinnati I interact with a lot of Bengal fans and a fair amount of Brown's fans. And their reaction to Allen is very similar: "man he's a super runner but can he pass?". Of course those that say this never watched him play and based their comments entirely on stat sheets and highlights! But every so often I run across a Bengals or Browns fan who has seen him play or watched one of those highlight videos and they have a very different view of Allen. They usually say things along the line of: "man he's an athletic freak with a cannon for an arm. He looks raw but with work he could be something special." In my experience the more another teams fans know about Allen the closer their opinion mirrors those of a cautiously optimistic Bills fan.

Allen has a natural charisma about him. If he succeeds on the football field and becomes an outstanding QB he'll have plenty of national endorsement deals. Green Bay isn't exactly a big media market but their last two QB's seemed to get on national TV selling stuff quite a bit!

In defense of Badolbilz I think he's referring to how statistics can be manipulated intentionally or unintentionally to give us almost any answer we want. From what I can see much of the analytics used in football does not properly account for the extreme variability, subjective nature of the observations and small sample sizes involved in the game. This often makes the results of the statistical analyses irrelevant or flat out wrong. But as you point out analytics can be useful after a QB has accumulated a long enough track record. Towards the end of their career a QB's stats are a great way to capture his performance relative to his peers. As you note, HOF's don't have crappy stats. My issue is the use of analytics to assess very young NFL QB's. I just don't think the numbers gathered during a QB's first 2 to 3 seasons are very useful in predicting the steady-state performance of a QB over their career.

Exactly right oldmanfan. The extreme variability and relatively small sample size in the game of football does not lend itself to the use of analytics to assess performance. And this is particularly true for a QB. A few simple stats like games won, playoff games won, TD passes thrown, INT's thrown, yards per pass and completion percentage can all help describe a QB's performance. But even here they're not of much use until a QB has completed several seasons. Think about how poorly analytics does in predicting a rookie QB's progression from year 1 to year 2. If statistical analyses was an appropriate tool for evaluating QB's we should be able to predict, after a single season, a QB's next season outcomes. Of course even a casual glance at the stats will tell you that they can't predict year 2 & 3 performance based on year 1 numbers. This is why the critical stats for rookie QB's likely involve subjective things like "leadership", "grit" and whether they improved over the course of their rookie year. I know it's frustrating to the numbers jocks but the "eye test" by folks with a lot of experience assessing NFL QB's is probably the best way to evaluate young QB's and determine their potential.

This is great news. We're running under the radar baby!

While 4000 yards is possible the real thing I want to see from Allen are wins and a playoff berth. A division title would be even nicer. If 4000 yards gets me those things I'm great if they don't I'm not so happy. And whether Allen gets to 4000 yards passing will depend a lot on how the Bills game plan. If their defense is as good as we think it will be and dominates the schedule then what I want from Allen would be directing an efficient offense that wins TOP & field position most games; doesn't turn the ball over much and when needed can put together game winning 4th quarter drives. That would IMO translate to about 3400 yards passing & 600 yards rushing with Allen producing three passing/rushing TD for every INT/fumble he had.

Bringing Reid's kid into the discussion, no matter how briefly, was a scum bag move by this guy. As others have pointed out addiction is a cruel condition and whether Reid was a great or bad parent can NOT be determined by his kids troubles.

Don't take this personally, but you do NOT deal in hard data and facts you're a world class cherry picker. I love how you use "until week 17" to remove Allen's best statistical performance from the discussion. Gee the guy only started and completed 10 games and you're throwing out 10% of his play because it doesn't fit your narrative. This is the kind of stuff that gives statistics a bad name. Then you tout the "fact" that Allen led the league in "uncatcable passes"! Gee for a guy who claims to have watched all sorts of video on Allen you didn't notice all those balls he threw away into the stands? Do you think that maybe because the O-line struggled Daboll told Allen to throw the damn ball away rather then take a sack? Then you compare this "stat" to the # of uncatchable passes thrown by Rosen as if that's a bad thing! Well Rosen is a smart QB and if he had Allen's escapibility I bet he would have thrown a lot more "uncatchable" passes into the cheap seats rather then take a sack or throw a pick. BTW your response doesn't seem to be addressing my point that Allen & Jackson did not play under "similar circumstances" unless you meant things like how they did on 3rd down or in the red zone. But even if that was your meaning it's still a case of comparing apples & oranges as Jackson & Allen were surrounded by very different supporting casts. And for someone who only deals in FACTS you sure let your sarcasm get the best of you. Most of us readily admit that we don't know whether our O-line will be "above average" this year. What we are CONFIDENT of is that it will be much better then last year. This means we expect the O-line to be at least average which would be a big improvement over last season. Do your "facts" and "hard data" tell you otherwise? As for claiming we have "stud WR's" again who is saying that? What we did is UPGRADE the receiving group by bringing in SOLID, veteran receivers who represent a clear improvement over last years receivers. But none of us would mistake Beasley, Brown & Croft as "studs". But compared to last year having very good veteran receivers is a big step up. Or to keep things simple if your kid is getting an F in math and suddenly starts getting C's were going to be happy & justifiably claim he's much improved. At the same time this doesn't mean we think he's going to be a world class rocket scientist. When talking about the Bill's O-line & receivers it's all RELATIVE.

I agree this must be the Onion or maybe it's from Babylon Bee! Of those fan bases I would rank the Steelers ahead of ours but not any of the rest.

I forgot to address this sentence which IMO is not correct. While Darnold & Allen could be said to have played last year under "similar situations" the same CAN NOT be said about Jackson. First, he didn't start until half way through the season giving him time to learn on the bench; 2nd Jackson played for a playoff caliber team with excellent TE's & O-line and a very effective running game. IMO, If you put either Dranold or Allen on Baltimore last season they easily match what Jackson did and neither of them would have been shut down in the way Jackson & the Ravens offense was by SD in the playoffs.

I'm not hearing this at all on 2BD. Seriously who is posting that Allen is "refined"? His "supporters" on 2BD constantly point out that Allen needs to improve in his passing game. We think the guy is a raw talent with a huge upside. We tend to be optimistic becasue he showed flashes of greatness and the things he didn't do well can be LEARNED and CORRECTED. This is the opposite of considering Allen to be a refined passer. And why shouldn't we be excited about Beasley? He is by most accounts a top 3 NFL slot receiver. His signing immediately upgraded our receiving core. Ditto for the signing of Brown who gives us an EXPERIENCED deep threat to compliment a developing young deep threat in Foster.

I would not be as bullish on Allen if he was drafted by the Jets or Finns because like others, I would be judging the guy entirely by his stats. And since I'm NOT a Jet's or Finns fan I would not have watched EVERY one of their games and concluded that the stats do not tell the whole story about Allen. Nor would I have been as aware of the real improvement seen in Allen's game after he returned from injury. I consider improvement in a rookie QB's play to be a much more important metric then most of the statistics being tossed around. It's because I did watch every one of Allen's snaps from scrimmage and I watched them with a high degree of interest as his success or failure is critical to the Bill's future, that I can be bullish on him. But I do have friends who are Jets fans and if they had sat me down and got me to watch Allen's highlights I would have been impressed. And if Allen played on the Dolphins and had games against the Bills like he did against the Finns I would be very concerned that Miami had gotten themselves a hell of a QB. And for the record, I hadn't seen much of Darnold until the Bills/Jets game and I came away impressed and believe he has a similar potential as Allen to be a very good QB. One final point is that I had watched several of Allen's games when he was in college. I used to love watching those Mountain West games on late ESPN and I came away impressed with Allen. It was obvious he needed a lot of work but he made throws I had never seen a QB make at any level of football. I even thought wouldn't it be cool if the Bills could grab him in the 4th round. So I do have a bias in favor of the guy. Of course my bigger bias is in favor of the Buffalo Bills who will be in deep trouble if Allen turns out to be a bust. Oh and the fact we ended paying a much higher price for Allen then a 4th round pick is irrelevant IF he becomes a franchise level QB.