wiley16350

I'm just going to say that the sack was bad but Allen doesn't really take a lot of those. He's been very good at throwing the ball away. The times he has done it has been specific situations and in this one I think it is possible that he was thinking about keeping the clock running, which would be fine except that points were more important in that specific situation than the clock was. Despite what apparently some people think, he has shown plenty of ability to learn from his mistakes. The only mistake he has really repeatedly made is playing hero ball which tends to happen when the offense has struggled for too long of a stretch during any certain game. While he has repeatedly made that mistake, he has gone long stretches without doing it and played pretty clean with the interceptions.

YAC comes from a variety of reasons. John Brown scored a TD off of a screen pass that was almost in the dirt. That YAC was earned by the play call and a defense not prepared to stop it. It is possible that Allen audibled into that or that it was the original call, nobody knows so it is hard to say who earned the YAC for that play (outside of any tackles Brown avoided) but the one thing I do know, it had nothing to do with accuracy. With that said, there are times where YAC is reduced because the QB's accuracy took the receiver to the ground as the throw to Beasley did. Lots of YAC comes from screen passes and check downs. The Bills haven't done a lot of that in the previous 2 years and when they did, they weren't good at it. Receivers also earn YAC by avoiding tackles, so plenty of YAC has nothing to do with the QB. It is also harder for Receivers to get a lot of YAC when playing in tight coverage because they're more often tackled at the catch point. There are also certain routes that are less likely to get YAC because of the positioning of zone defenders. These are the reasons that the Bills haven't been earning much YAC the last couple of years and people want to put that on Allen. In this game, the game plan and the defense they played was more conducive to getting YAC and guess what; more YAC was had. Saying that a QB's accuracy is what earns YAC is way too simplistic of a mind set.

I added Darnold's numbers to the original post

For his career, I have him with 14.75 instead of the 22 that he is officially credited with

I'll clarify the turnovers being unstable because I can see where I may have contradicted myself. Fumbles are completely unstable because they are more about what is happening around the QB rather than what the QB is necessarily doing. There are certain things that increase the likelihood of a fumble and not all defenses do those things. Pressure from behind, getting hit while throwing, having the ball punched out from behind while the QB is running are near certain fumble opportunities no matter who the QB is. That can change drastically from year to year because it depends on opponent and the players around the QB. Fumbles are more about bad luck or tough circumstances than they are about skill. Interceptions are unstable in the sense that QB's that face more pressure are more likely to throw them and some situations can influence a QB to take chances he shouldn't take. That means the better the environment for the QB, the less likely he is to throw an interception, for most QB's. For those reasons some QB's can swing some from year to year if they're on an unstable team. With that said, a QB's personality and ability to read defenses can make him consistent in making bad decisions. That is what you have to determine by watching the film. Jameis Winston and Brett Farve were consistent in making bad decisions and forcing throws and it wasn't necessarily the team around them that was influencing that. A QB like Drew Bledsoe was more about the team around him and the circumstances that he was playing in. His int's would tend to come in bunches in games where his team was over matched.

I had Allen with only 3.5 fumbles last year, fumbling 0.8% of his plays. This year I had him fumbling 11.25 of 704 plays for 1.5%. Pretty much twice as much.

I would say yes. There is no doubt he had more skill talent around him. The offensive line is debate-able in terms of pass protection. I would have to delve into my numbers more before committing to either one of those.

Well first of all I was talking about fumbles being unstable, not turnovers. Essentially, fumbles are more of a fluke thing than int's. Int's have to be improved by the QB making changes to how he plays the game or understands defenses. Fumbles can be fixed without the QB necessarily making an effort to avoid them. Baker's turnover consistency was about this year and doesn't say anything about last year. The stats you show about Bakers turnovers are just what he was officially charged with. If you look at my charts, I had him with 8.5 int's in the first 8 games and 10.5 in the last 8 games. I also had him with some blame for an int in 13 of 16 games. So I guess that is how I can say that it was a consistent problem. Allen on the other hand had 7 games out of the first 11 with some blame for an int and then finished the regular season with 5 straight (4.5 actually because he only played half of week 17) games without an interceptable pass. In total he had 7 out of 15.5 games where he deserved an interception. That seems to be better than Mayfield.

Well, with the Corona virus giving me more time on the weekends, I decided that I would work on some adjusted stats. I had already finished Allen but never shared them because people have cited that they would like to have some kind of comparison or they think the stats are useless. Since there are people out there that have bashed Josh Allen by claiming that Baker Mayfield was better last year, i.e. PFF, I decided I would do all of Mayfield's games to verify that belief. I also included a chart of how the opposing QB's performed against the Bills this year to give a 3rd reference of comparison. As I have stated before, the PFF grading system is really a big time throw vs turnover metric and they don't put enough stock into the short and intermediate throws. Mayfield was much better at the deep ball, giving him a big advantage in the PFF system. My turnover totals had them very similar so it is easy to see why the PFF system has Mayfield higher. The problem though is that big time throws and turnovers aren't stable from year to year, so it's not really a good gauge of how good a QB can be in the long term. I don't think it's a good gauge of how well a QB played overall in any individual year either because it excludes a lot of other information. Even though Mayfield was much better than Allen with the deep ball and had a 1% higher adjusted completion percentage, I had Allen with a better average. That is because Allen was more productive in the short to intermediate range. Mayfield got a lot of his production from screens and passes to the flats and within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. Despite being more proficient with the deep ball, Mayfield wasn't nearly as necessary for the production of points. The Bills needed Allen to perform most of the time or they weren't very good on offense. There was a lot of drives were Mayfield just didn't have to do much to get points whether it was YAC production or a great running game. So the overarching point is that deep ball passing doesn't necessarily lead to point production. There are 2 main reasons for this. 1. Mayfield had too many turnovers in the red zone. 2. Some of his best throws were dropped or interfered with and while that was good in the moment, those passes didn't always put the Browns in scoring range and they found a way to punt instead. Point production is what matters most and being consistent in the short to intermediate range is the best way to accomplish that. It is the main reason Tom Brady has been so good for so many years. His deep ball consistency wanes year to year but he is always good in the short to intermediate range. That is what is so promising about Allen last year. The other main PFF metric is turnovers and while Allen and Mayfield are less than 2 turnovers apart, Allen was 0.6% better. There is also a big difference between their turnovers. Allen was charged with 7 more fumbles than Mayfield was. He just had a major issue with them last year but that is just another very unstable stat from year to year so it is reasonable to expect him to improve on that. That same differential of 7 is reversed when it comes to interceptions, with Mayfield having 7 more of those. As we know, Allen had an issue with those early in the year but once he stopped trying to play hero ball, he was able to drastically reduce his int's. Mayfield on the other hand, had a consistent issue with them and while he wasn't as bad as his official numbers, he still wasn't in a good enough range. Mayfield couldn't curb his int's because they were more varied than Allen was. He had poor throws, aggressive gunslinger throws and bad decisions. It is the biggest problem he had last year and he needs to improve on that. The last part of the turnover discussion is the hidden ones that don't show up anywhere in the stats. These are bad 3rd down throws, bad 3rd down reads, sacks and other bad plays that led to the team punting. Allen was better than Mayfield in that category too. It isn't separated out but if you subtract the charged fumbles and charged int's from the total turnovers in the total effectiveness rating, you can find the difference. Ultimately, I have a Total QB effectiveness rating (which is at the bottom of the attached sheets) that combines, passing, rushing, sacks and turnovers into a traditional QB rating stat line, adjusted based on what actually happened on the field and the circumstances they faced. Here is the final judgment on the two. MAYFIELD 529.50 - attempts (total plays he had a true opportunity to make a play) 403.30 - Positive (number of plays he had a positive influence on) 76.2% - Positive % 3698.75 - yards (number of yards the QB was worth, including air yards, rushing yards and avoiding sack yards) 6.99 - avg 29.27 - TD's 5.5 - TD% 32.75 - Turnovers (number of times the QB was the reason a drive ended) 5.0% - TO^% 92.3 - Total QB Effectiveness Rating ALLEN 565 ATT 439.7 POS 77.8 POS% 4024.5 YDS 7.12 AVG 39.21 TD's 6.9 TD% 31.10 TO 4.4 TO% 101.1 TER DARNOLD 446.75 ATT 322.6 POS 72.2 POS% 2708 YDS 6.06 AVG 28.24 TD'S 6.3 TD% 28.75 TO 5.3 TO% 86.4 TER Darnold played behind the worst line of these 3 QB's but I felt like there were too many times where he contributed to pressure. I also think that even though he was under pressure more, some of that was just blockers getting pushed near him and he refused to move in the pocket to make more room to throw. The 2 main issues with Darnold then to me is pocket presence and decision making. His decision making issues go back to college, so I'm not sure if how much he'll improve but less pressure should make him better in that area. I won't say that pocket presence was a constant issue but there were some games where it was an issue that came up often. The biggest reason Darnold was the lowest of these 3 is because he had 5 games with less than a 70 rating and 3 of those under 60. Allen had 1 game under 80 (the Patriots game in week 4) so he was much more consistent in at least being productive even if he was turning the ball over. Mayfield had 2 games under 70 with 1 game in the 70's. To make it look even worse for Darnold is that he played in 3 less games than Mayfield and Allen did. There was a period from week 9 to week 12 where I really liked how Darnold was playing and even for weeks 13-15 he played well enough so the end of the season had more good than bad. He did finish poorly the last 2 weeks of the season because of turnovers but the Jets won those games in spite of that. Honestly, I like all 3 of these QB's to some extent. I won't make any declarations of which one is the best because they all have things to improve on and the team around them will have a lot to say about their success. Allen needs to improve his deep ball and be more willing to check down. Mayfield will most likely be better if his protection improves. Interceptions were his main problem but I think it was more about pressure than his skills as he has shown in the past to be a better decision maker. Darnold needs to be a better decision maker and maybe better in the pocket. J.ALLEN-2019-SC.pdf 2019 - Bills Opponents.pdf B.MAYFIELD-2019-SC.pdf S.DARNOLD-2019-SC.pdf

He's not Cooks because he has Contested Catch ability.

They include all aspects of QB play in the overall grade and have separate grades for passing and running.

Actually Mayfield only had 4 more turnovers than Allen when you combine fumbles and Interceptions. I do believe they're biased against Josh because I see it in their writings and the things they say. I don't know how much that effects the grade but I do know that it distorts the narrative they have about him. My post wasn't to defend PFF, it was to explain why their rating of Allen is what it is. I think the rating is flawed because they put too much weight on big plays and not enough on the short to intermediate game that is necessary to win in the NFL. Big plays matter but just the threat alone can be enough to make a team successful if their really good at the short and intermediate. When it comes to grading QB's, I don't like their system mostly because of that.

The reason Allen doesn't rank high in the PFF system is because he wasn't good throwing over 30 yards and he had too many turnovers. It is as simple as that. They have admitted that Allen was top 10 in the short to intermediate game according to their system. The problem with their system is that it weighs too heavily on big plays vs turnovers, the 2 areas Allen struggled the most. What they fail to recognize is that Allen's turnover problem isn't necessarily something that is not fixable. Jameis Winston throws a lot of interceptions every year because he makes bad decisions of every type and has never shown the ability to be something different. Allen on the other hand had most of his interceptions in the first half of the season and most of them were because he tried to play hero ball when the offense was struggling. Allen wasn't throwing interceptions because he didn't understand what the defense was doing, he threw them in spite of knowing exactly what was happening. That is why he was able to fix it and why the Allen of the second half of the season is more likely to be the player he will be. The second half of the season saw Allen fumbling too much but how much of that really defines what kind of QB Allen will be? Fumbles have a lot to do with luck and protection and even if it isn't, it can still be easily fixed. The point is, it is reasonable to expect that this will be the worst year for Allen in the number of turnovers, especially if the team around him continues to improve. The other area where Allen wasn't that good was in deep ball accuracy and there was a multitude of reasons for that but ultimately, for most QB's, deep ball accuracy isn't stable from year to year. Tom Brady would be the most notable great QB that has never been consistently good at throwing the deep ball. So the 2 things Allen was bad at this year are the 2 things that aren't stable from year to year (deep passing and turnovers). For those reasons, there is no reason to believe Allen won't be better next year and that's what frustrates me most about PFF; they have an expectation of Allen not getting any better than he was this year.

20 years after the Music City Miracle, the Bills get revenge this is the one I like

The truth is that his early interceptions happened because he was knowingly forcing throws that weren't there or he threw them late across the field. It had nothing to do with trying to make tight window throws and everything to do with playing recklessly. There is a difference. Throwing recklessly is when the DB has position on the receiver and there really isn't a place to put the ball but the QB throws it anyway. Throwing into tight windows is when the receiver has position but the QB has to put it into a perfect spot to keep the defender making a play on the ball. The difference is that Allen stopped playing recklessly, not cautiously.