FireChans

Fever dream. Check your temp.

Maybe Josh is trying to be a leader for his team, several of whom are not fully on board with vaccination, by playing mum. He’s a QB for the Bills. He isn’t your leader.

No, I think that argument holds some merit. It just has two large problems. 1. Holds Mahomes’ greatness against him. Allen got his weapons and time to develop and became a superstar. Mahomes had weapons in place and was a superstar out of the box (in terms of when he first started.) 2. Piggybacking off that, if Mahomes and Allen were drafted to opposite teams, like is so often argued, and Mahomes had to deal with the bum brigade in 18, then 19 with Brown and Bease, then a true 1 in Diggs in 2020, wouldn’t we have expected a meteoric rise in his statistics as well?

Like I said. You can try to make a predictive argument, “this guy isn’t better than the other guy but will be,” which is based on nothing. Your issue is that everyone picking Mahomes is talking about the past. Unfortunately, in a situation like this, the past is reality. It’s all we truly know. There is a bunch of a fluff arguments as to why Josh will be better than Mahomes (and this is a Bills board so I get it, I get caught up in it too) but that’s it. It’s based on nonsense like “he’s hungrier! He’s perfect for Buffalo! He’s tough!! He didn’t get offers in college, he got so much better from SUCKING that he will put up 80 TDs on this TRAJECTORY” all of which are absolute JOKES in terms of argumentative gravity. It’s the same spin of why Tyrod is quietly spectacular and the rest of the clown car of QB’s in Bills past. Just pure nonsense and fandom. “He’s got a bigger frame so he’ll be better” is not an argument, it’s a prediction. What am I supposed to say to that, no he won’t? He isn’t bigger? It’s like two children in a sand box playing pretend trumping each other with super powers. “I shoot you with my eye lasers and you die” “well I have a super secret eye laser shield so I deflect it and you die.” Again, it’s a Bills board so whatever. Half of these folks thought Mahomes 2018 was a flash in the pan and he was gonna be the next RG3. I really don’t care to convince homers not to be homers. Do your thang. I’m just pretty confident on 31 other NFL teams message boards and in a majority of NFL front offices, they are picking Mahomes over Allen. And guess what, I’m okay with that too. Allen is the second best young QB in football, he’s a great kid, he’s easy to root for and he’s a superstar. The best QB doesn’t win the Super Bowl every year. This isn’t the NBA.

I don’t think there’s a rational way to argue that Josh will be better than Mahomes for the next 15 years. “He’s angry and motivated and he wasn’t good his first season so he will be better than a guy who has been better than him” holds no water.

I wish Edmunds was a little less tame tbh.

Exactly. Mahomes can’t improve “enormously” because he’s already great. It’s a diminishing return. Josh won’t see a similar jump from year 3 to 4 as he did from 2-3. Simply put, how much better can he get? He’s a top 5 QB. Is he gonna throw 70 TD’s? No. That’s why calling Mahomes plateauing and dinging him for not improving like Josh (who we all admit was not good at one point) is silly. Also, everyone saw Josh’s potential before he even took a snap, he was in the conversation for #1 overall. This isn’t an UDFA making the roster. I also think if Mahomes was “off the board” Josh would get the significant majority of the votes. Quite simply, today, I believe that Josh is the second best young QB in football.

If you want to make the argument that if Mahomes and Allen somehow became equal passers, Allen would be the better QB, I would definitely NOT disagree. But they have to get there.

This “trajectory” business only exists because ALLEN WAS ONCE NOT GOOD. I think we can both agree that with time in the league, both QBs will obtain a mastery of the position more than they do today. However, implying that somehow Allen has a “better” trajectory simply because he used to be not good and now he’s looking great just holds no water with me. Peyton Manning had an error filled rookie year. His team was not successful. His next few seasons, he cleaned it up and became great. Tom Brady was extremely successful from the jump (albeit he wasn’t slinging day 1) and he eventually improved quite a bit as well. But Brady ended up the better QB. Peyton had the “trajectory.” It didn’t matter. Starting out not good and becoming great is not an indicator that you will eventually be better than a great player who started out great. It just isn’t.

Josh might! The real crystal ball guys are the ones who are saying they wouldn’t take a superior player because he will.

Correct. And I would predict that the guy who has been consistently better will continue to consistently better. Versus the guy who hasn’t been better, let alone consistently better.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick

You should go read the topics of several unpopular hires in the past. Dennison and that terrible OL coach got roasted.

I don’t think that either 25 year old has hit their ceiling. I don’t know who is closer to their ceiling. Maybe Patrick Mahomes’ ceiling is the best QB ever of all time. Wins MVP 10 times. Breaks every record. In that case, he hasn’t come close to it. This is why ceiling is a terrible argument. If Josh isn’t as good as Mahomes right now, you can just say he “hasn’t hit his ceiling yet.” Well what’s his ceiling? What if his ceiling is current Pat Mahomes? What if Pat Mahomes’ ceiling is way higher than Josh Allen’s ceiling? Is the only argument that Josh has a higher ceiling or hasn’t hit his ceiling yet because he wasn’t great his first two season and Mahomes was?

Well maybe I can get the money back that I spent to sweat in Jacksonville for four hours. I mean, Tyrod and NP took KB, Zay Day, Clay and Holmes to the postseason the year before. No one is arguing that Allen has as good as a situation as Mahomes did. Talk about tangential. Mahomes gets a knock on his ceiling because he has been great out of the box and has been consistently great. Hard for folks to crow about your “ceiling” when you’ve already done things that 99% of QB’s won’t come close to achieving.

I think Mahomes would have had more success than Allen as a rookie. Tyrod and Natey took the 17 Bills to the playoffs. The next year, with a similar roster, they went 6-10. Do I think Mahomes could have beaten that? Yes.

I mean if the question isn’t viewed through the lens of “who is the better QB” then sure, Ryan Fitzpatrick has an argument in this debate lol. This is actually the best answer. The difference between Josh, Tre and Diggs and the respective best players at those positions is approaching zero. Would be terrible positions to “upgrade”. Has Patrick Mahomes reached his ceiling?

Aw man some of you get so emotional.

None of which Allen has done. Mahomes is off to arguably the best start in NFL QB history. Allen is not. I get the intangibles thing, but Mahomes certainly has his fair share of intangibles and making jaw dropping plays out of nothing to keep his team cruising. Allen needs to win a SB and an MVP before this is a real debate. No QB has won 2 MVPs without winning one.

The correct answer is yes. But I would say that you could play this game with would you trade X QB for Allen and that would be a yes for 30 teams in the NFL. Which counts for something. Can you really have a higher ceiling than league MVP and Super Bowl winner?

While I understand this sentiment, it's the same sentiment that is purported to overlooking Israel's transgressions. You can't shrug your shoulders at one side and not the other, you know?

It's not supposed to be a gotcha. It's an honest question and I appreciate you answering it. What I will ask is do you think the Palestinian tactic of launching rockets at Israel is working?

If the Native Americans started launching rockets at NYC, what would the American government do?

Fight back. If I fought back, I'd also probably risking my countrymen's lives to retribution. You can't do step 1 and not expect step 2. You really can't. I won't pretend to fully understand the intricacies of this conflict. There's centuries of enmity between these two groups and that will take likely centuries to overcome. But as long as one group keeps fighting, the other will fight back. And peaceful civilians will continue to die. Would there be more Native Americans left if they didn't fight to the last against a superior opponent? And if they were, we would all expect the American government to respond in kind.

I saw the KB trade as a both a push for the playoffs (we were more competitive than we thought we would be in 2017) and at worst, a "cheap" potential #1/2 WR for our rookie QB the next season. As such, it wasn't a terrible idea. Worked out horrifically, yes. But KB comes into Buffalo ready to work, he would have fit quite nicely on the JA timeline.