Billy Claude

Here is the context for 2022 -- Josh Allen led the league with 19 turnovers. The turnovers break down as follows: 12 occurred when the Bills were leading -- 5 of those when the Bills were leading by more than 8 points. but one was on a 4th and goal up 27-17 against the Vikings. 4 occurred when the game was tied, three when the score was 0-0 in the first quarter, the other was 14-14 in the 2nd quarter in game 18 against New England. 3 occurred when the Bills were trailing, One was the last play in overtime against the Vikings, one was down 21-26 early in the 4th quarter in the 2nd game against Miami and the last was down 6-7 in the 2nd quarter against Chicago. It is not unexpected that very few of Allen's turnovers occurred when trailing since the Bills rarely trailed last year. It is simply not true that the turnovers were because he was leading comebacks which seemingly a lot of people are implying in this thread. Out of the 19 turnovers only three (Vikings twice and Dolphins) were in situations where he needed to play hero ball. Again, no one expects or wants Allen to have zero turnovers but leading the league in turnovers is not a good thing and I don't see any reason why he can't cut this number by 25%, Nor can all the blame be placed on Dorsey, the o-lines or the receivers. The guy making the final decision on when and where to throw the ball has to be somewhat responsible. This is not really an Allen thing, I just dislike it in general when people dismiss data simply because it doesn't agree with their opinion. I guarantee if Burrow or Jackson led the league in turnovers, no one on this board would be saying the data was being taken out of context.

I don't get this analogy at all. Why can't Allen reduce his turnovers by 15 or 20%? In fact, I would be very disappointed if he only reduces his turnovers by 20% this coming season. ----------------------------------------------------------- There's a lot of straw man arguments in this thread. No one is arguing that the high number of turnovers is all Allen's fault, however, many people seem to imply that none of it is Allen's fault (or maybe begrudgingly, a very insignificant amount). Almost no one is saying that Allen is not a top quarterback. However, when you are worst in the league at something there is plenty of fault to spread around and a significant amount of that has to go to the guy making the final decision on whether and where to throw the ball.

At least the premier league is competitive even when Man City wins as usual. I have a very hard time understanding how people can follow the Bundesliga where the season is just a prep for Bayern for the Champions league. Is the once in a decade win by Dortmund (such as maybe this season) enough to keep people interested? Its even worse in Ligue 1 where a bad season for PSG means clinch with three games left instead of six games left.

Have we reached some alternative reality here? Having a lot of turnovers is not a "good" stat. No one accused Aaron Rogers of playing it safe when he had 7 and 4 turnovers in 2020 and 2021. This is not a single data point, Allen also led the league in turnovers last year. Nor was it only when the Bills were losing, it is not a good idea to throw it up for grabs when your team is up 17 - 0 in a playoff game. Allen is a great QB but there's a lot of evidence that he was very sloppy with the ball last year. There was plenty of bad decision making. Hopefully much of it was due to the UCL injury, rookie OC, and bad o-line but a lot of it is on him and he has to clean this up.

It's more on Dorsey than on McKenzie, if he refused to use McKenzie on those routes due to one play at the beginning of the year.

Kind of curious. While it felt like Allen killed the D anytime they blitzed in 2020 and 2021, my impression was that the blitz gave Allen a lot of trouble in 2022. For what its worth, PFF also says the blitz rate against Allen was low but teams were effective when they blitzed: https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-slowing-down-josh-allen-buffalo-bills-blitzing

Josh identified ball placement and YAC as something he needed to work on so it would appear that Allen, himself was not satisfied with it, at least for the 2021 season. Was there any evidence of improved ball placement last season? Even before the UCL injury?

Getting away from Allen's fashion sense for a minute, I always felt that being locked down with Jordan Palmer for a month with nothing to do but eat, drink, and sleep football played a larger role in Allen's unprecedented third year jump than usually credited. It was also a somewhat concerning that Allen said he was going to focus on YAC last summer but didn't really improve on it last season. All previous years, he identified an issue with his game post season and showed immediate improvement in that aspect the following season. Obviously there is nothing wrong with going to the Kentucky Derby or otherwise having fun but is he doing too much other stuff? It is a fair question, other QBs, for example, Baker Mayfield, has been criticized for it.

People make way too many excuses for Allen's sometimes stupid decisions.

Any details? Was it just about targets or something more?

Thanks. Still, Pro Day numbers are sometimes significantly better than combine numbers since the player has the advantage of working in a familiar environment. I seem to remember a lot of incredible RAS numbers for that draft.

You were certainly much more accurate about the oline than Joe Marino was.

Not saying that Spencer Brown is not a good athlete at 311 but wasn't this the year that the combine was canceled and therefore all these numbers were essentially self-reported. As I remember, there were a lot of amazing RAS numbers that year.

Wouldn't Diggs have said something in one of his interviews if If Allen's elbow was seriously affecting the game plan for the entire 2nd half of the season? Or even if Diggs didn't say anything specific, he might have hinted there was a reason for the problems the offense faced the second half of the season. Instead he just expressed frustration.

The Bills offense reminded me of the way the Chiefs offense in the first half of the 2021 season. The defenses were giving them the short stuff and counting on Mahomes to lose patience and eventually force it and make a mistake. Even when they were getting the yards, there was never any consistency nor momentum. Mahomes and the Chiefs eventually figured it out and took what people gave them. Of course, it was probably much easier to convince the qb with Kelce as an always available target and Andy Reid whose opinion has to be respected.

Absolutely agree. One of the first things McDermott did was to plug up all the leaks that were occurring regularly from the front office. Also heavy.com is probably one of the least reliable sources on the internet, which is saying something indeed.

Luckily the coaching staff does not agree with the there's nothing to worry about attitude. That attitude gets you eliminated early on the playoffs. I am almost certain that cleaning up the sloppy turnovers will be a main focus of the coaching staff over the bye week. They have already started addressing the short yardage issues by bringing back the qb sneak. Who knows? They might even be trying to figure out how to cut down on tip passes.

Very short memories on the board. Elam himself said he had an F- game against the Steelers which was only a week and a half ago. Right now Gardner is the DROY favorite at +300 with Devin Lloyd (JAC) and Kayvon Thibodeaux (NYG) at +600 and Tariq Woolen at +800. Elam is tied for 11th best odds at +2500. There are 3 CBs (Gardner, Woolen and Jack Jones (NE)) and one safety with better (Jalen Pitre (TEX)) better odds than Elam.

In Gaelic football, it actually works the other way, 3 points below the crossbar (a goal) and 1 point (a point) above the crossbar. The goal posts are taken to extend upwards forever. They only use cameras to decide on whether a point is scored -- not goals. Actually FGs would be more exciting if the NFL gave more points for lower field goals. That would increase the probability of a FG being blocked and require much more precision and touch from the kicker.

In Gaelic football it is only used to decide if a point is scored, that is if a ball crosses above the crossbar and between the goalposts. It would be similar to deciding whether a field goal is good or not.

Mahomes only started one game in 2017 so the record is 24-13 not 26-14. This is just for the sake of accuracy since the record is still obviously is still very good and does not hurt your argument. Yes, I already noted in my original post that if you take out the 2020 season, the Bills would get much worse. I just thought that it was interesting that most of the KC amazing record came from one season. As I said in my follow up post to your response, I am sympathetic to your argument. The other data you present certainly indicates the Bills are not as good as they should be in these situations. I feel that the Bills bad record in close games is due to a large extend on their inability to convert on short yardage (worse in the NFL). In both the Steelers and Jags game, if they had been able to convert on one of multiple short yardage situations they would probably have won the game. I don't think this is a random thing and was a direct result of trying to go cheap on the Oline.

I thought we were comparing coaches not QBs and Alex Smith was not a bad QB. I am somewhat sympathetic to your argument since I feel the Bills short yardage issues contributed a large part to losing the close games last year.

KC being 26-12 in close games does not seem right so I went back and checked the numbers. Counting any game decided by 8 or less as close, I find that KC is 26-18 in close games since the 2017 season. If you include playoffs they would be 28-21. So KC has been very good in close games but not as good as you claim. Perhaps it was a typo? The regular season corresponds to 59% win rate in close games versus 73% overall. However, a bit closer dive into the data shows that almost all the difference occurred in 2020 when they went an extraordinary 8-1. If you don't include that year they are 18-17 so basically 500 in close games. Of course, if you don't include 2020, the Bills record in close games would also get much worse. I think the conclusion is that teams that are win over a long period of time is because they win a lot of blow outs, not because they win an extraordinary number of close games. Of course, on a single season basis, being lucky may be enough such as with the Bengals last year. For people who are interested, this is the data KC by year, close game record + overall record 2017 3-5 (10-6) 2018 5-4 (12-4) 2019 5-4 (12-4) 2020 8-1 (12-4) 2021 4-3 (11-5) 2022 1-1 (3-1)

If you count a first for Diggs you also need to count a third for Kelvin Benjamin as a day 2 investment.

Thanks for the clarification. Seems much more reasonable.