PBF81

Agree with you on the yardage figure. My guess would lie between last season and Allen's 2019 numbers, closer to last season. You got that nail. Having said that, it shouldn't be surprising if he were to post a career best rushing total yards. I wouldn't even guess on numbers until we know what the offensive scheme is. Order of yards ... Shakir Kincaid Samuel Cook Coleman Knox

And BTW, given our lack of ability to secure a Lombardi, the least reason for which that's the case is Allen. The leading causes are poor coaching and poor decision-making in the playoffs, a defense that folds in the playoffs, and the lack of any other player besides Allen to consistently step up in the playoffs are probably the top three. Over our past three seasons in the playoffs Allen is 143 of 212 (67.5%) for 1, 642, 16 TDs, 3 INTs, a rating of 109.8, 49 carries for 326 rushing yards and 4 rushing TDs. That's a per-game average of 274 passing yards, 330 combined passing & rushing yards, and 3.3 TDs/game and fewer than 1 TO/game. I'll take that each and every playoff game. Contrast that with the performances of our other players in the playoffs, McD's highly ranked defense, etc.

He's part of it, but the one thing that is rarely if ever mentioned is that we have no coach that is capable of challenging Josh much less directing him to improve his game based on things that they see that he likely isn't seeing. As I continue to iterate, a "forest for the trees" coach on the offensive side. We have that on the defensive side, which is why our team is skewed toward the defensive. Instead, we have a QB that's so good, for sure better than the coaches coaching him, so there's an apprehension as I see it, for them to take charge and control of our offense, and of course when all else fails, as in the playoffs, coaching simply steps aside and says let Josh be Josh. That works, sometimes, but it's not a strategy. If we had a Reid or Ben Johnson type, then I believe that they would guide and direct the offense in ways that optimize Allen's strengths but in ways that don't force him to do everything in order for us to win games. Again, imagine for a moment if Allen were to get hurt in the preseason, for the season. What would be the expectation with Trubisky? I wouldn't bet on us winning more than 4 games. But if we had an offensive system that optimized our talent, then we should still be able to be on/about .500, like many of our coaches during the drought years. And with the same system, this could easily be a 13 win team. Yes, I realize you'll disagree, that's simply my take. I also believe that many things are going to clear up this season and there will be a shift in fan opinion in some ways. I'll still pose the question, if Allen had predated McD here, and our coach were fired a season after Allen got here, what are the odds that McD would have made the shortlist for a replacement much less gotten the job. My position hasn't changed, for me it's zero on both. Again, Josh is part of it, but much of that has to do with coaching, or lack of proper coaching in our case. Josh isn't incapable, he's simply not getting much support from coaching.

2:21 in the video I linked above. He's clearly wide out to the right, and in fact he's the only WR on that side. That's the first I looked at. There are others. Not sure where you got the info, but it's inaccurate.

Inexperienced as a unit for sure. After Shakir, Kincaid, and Knox, among the newcomers are a couple of journeymen including a headcase with a contract that screams this is your last chance before you go join Antonio Brown, MVS who was channeling Diggs in KC last season, two of which have not come close to matching their draft statuses, a rookie whose narrative doesn't match reality and whose play against DBs headed to the NFL was not good, Shorter and a few other hopefuls that have never proven a thing. As Kirby Jackson says, underwhelming. Having said that, it caters to McD's complimentary football MO. A bigger question is how's it going to look if all of a sudden and "out of the blue," Diggs regains that step and Davis plays well in Jax, if we were to struggle.

You'll be reminded when the tranny swimsuit issue comes out.

I think therein lies our issue. You assume that because I said that he often lined up as a WR, and in defense of a notion that he did in fact have WR-ing skills coming into the NFL, otherwise no sane GM would have drafted him as such early in round 2, that I meant that he was a WR. He was in fact a flex player, obviously, but most of his receptions were while he was lined up as a WR and for sure his biggest receiving plays were from the wideout spot. If you observed something different, not sure what to tell you. From PFF ... Stats to know: Ranked second in the RB draft class with 2.76 receiving yards per route run. Lined up in the slot on 425 snaps in 2016 compared to 220 snaps in the backfield, including 11 direct snaps. That's about 70% of the time lined up as a WR. As you can see in the video, five of his 7 TDs were not from slot, but from outside. He was also billed as a WR both technically as well as fit in that draft.

If we didn't have Brady and had either an offensively versed head coach or a Ben Johnson type at OC, I would put good money on Shakir logging 1,000+, easily, and barring injury of course. But we don't. People hearken to that 2020 season w/ Brady in Carolina, but they overlook the fact that Brady's offense was horrible there, but more relevantly, that many WRs in Samuel's shoes would have put up his numbers given the utter garbage they had at 4/5 WRs and absolutely no receiving TE worth a turd on their roster. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Strong odds are that it will be Shakir or Kincaid. Otherwise there are far too many unkown variables to wager an educated guess; How will Brady be? If he's actually good, to what extent will what McD insists that he do influence his attack? How good is Coleman? Is Shakir ready and capable of performing without Diggs & Davis drawing coverage? Is Cook finished every season in rushing at/about 180 carries? Will Davis, whose credentials are lesser than either Singletary's or Moss' coming into the league, be any kind of a factor? How will Allen manage this new role with a cast of short-yardage slot type WRs? Is Allen's elbow back to 100%, or is he still going to have difficulties with the projected shorter higher-percentage passing game? ... to start. I would place the odds of Claypool resuscitating his career as notably more likely than Coleman being much more than a JAG WR. Coleman's performances in college, particularly in M2M, were poor when he was covered by DB talent that's headed to the NFL. That was starting to come out in the "every receiving play" video that @MasterStrategist and I were going through. Not sure what happened there. It's kind of stating the obvious that all of the skill position players on offense want the ball, particularly with no one like Diggs on the team anymore. A good OC would take charge of this offense and if necessary get Josh to do what they want him to do. That's why as stated before, we need a "see the forest for the trees" type of OC, someone we haven't had on Josh's watch. Yes, it's Josh's offense, but, it still needs to be directed by someone with a grand scheme big picture view. QBs do not have that nor does Josh. Josh's big issue this season is going to be the extent to which it'll befall him to become a game manager. It's going to be interesting to be sure, as stated, I wouldn't bet on a thing re: this O as long as McD's our HC. It should be prolific, and even now has the ability to be top-3 anyway. It's the offensive coaching that's been the primary lacking element on Josh's watch, that forest for the trees element that is. The success of this team is going to directly hinge upon how consistently good our offense is. If it's inconsistent, trouble lies ahead. Right, and he morphed into more of a WR in his last season there. Multiple position players are incredibly common at the collegiate level. You know that. I'm not sure you define "flexed," but in the video I linked, it was beyond clear that on 6 of his 7 receiving TDs he was playing WR, five of those six wide out WR. To me that's playing WR semantics aside. BTW, if your argument is that you thought I said that he played WR, that's not what I said. I was diminishing the notion that he had no WR skills coming into the NFL because, as stated, he often lined up as a WR. Which is true. IOW, he had the skills coming to the NFL, at least what Coleman does.

Yeah really, he was factually lined up as a WR often as I said. Just check out his highlight reels from 2016. I don't care about anyone's first seasons in college. How he got to OSU doesn't concern us nor is it relevant at this point. Here's one video, some of his biggest plays are lined up as a WR. In 6 of his 7 receiving TDs he was clearly lined up as a WR, all but once on the outside. Either way, he's been unable to repeat his contributions at OSU here in the NFL. I suppose that we can hope that it changes this season, again, what, 8th season's the charm?

He was a heavy-duty receiving RB at OSU. Hardly a stranger to receiving, and at OSU he often lined up as a WR. Well, he had plenty of opportunity last season. Washington threw more passes than any other team. Of Samuel's 5 TDs, three were late in games in blowout losses, hardly game-changing per above. His four biggest games were in serious blowout losses, favoring passing for him. After that his gamelogs were pedestrian, averaging 3 catches for 27 yards, quite often against very crappy defenses. So yeah, not seeing it here. He ranked 95th in catch% league-wide, quite average, actually pretty poor for a short-yardage high-percentage play WR. ... ... BTW, I just looked, and of 20 receivers having logged between 9.0 and 11.0 YPR (Samuel at 9.9), all WRs & TEs, he ranked 15th in Catch%. Behind him, rookie Smith-Njigba, TE Dalton Schultz, TE David Njoku, Samuel's teammate Jahan Dotson, and Elijah Moore. BTW, who was pushing Samuel for targets last season? What, washout second year WR Jahan Dotson? Dyami Brown? Byron Pringle? LOL We'll see how it shakes out this year, but much as with Harty and Sherfield, the hype here on Samuel isn't making much sense. He'll be better than either of those two, but expecting him to move the needle is unreasonable. If the needle's going to move, it's going to be because of our system, in which I have almost no hope given McBrady and their dogmatic adherence to "complimentary football," or Shakir and Kincaid otherwise. You'll see.

Well, two things here, for me all bets are off on our offense. There are far too many uncertainties and questionmarks about every single aspect of it besides Allen to even wager a guess. That includes what Brady's going to do, which is even contradicted here. Otherwise this gets into an analysis and discussion about Diggs. What I will say is that Diggs' catch% plummeted by 13% points going from Dorsey to Brady. Again, I don't care for either coordinator, just sayin'. Your distribution looks possible although I wouldn't bet on it. I will say that need a WR to step up. This notion that Allen's going to spread the ball around perfectly to lead us to much of anything significant, when that's been a weakness of his, and for whatever reasons and not necessarily laying all of it at his feet, seems unlikely. It would also indicate that we've failed to have a Go-To WR step up, and unless Kincaid is that receiver, ala Kelce, it would likely mean that there are related issues on offense. To me, a good OC would see to it that both Shakir and Kincaid get 120+ targets. But maybe Shakir isn't as good as some of us think he is. IDK yet. It's difficult to envision any other WRs getting more than 80 targets and if I had to guess, I'd guess 60 for Coleman and 70 for Samuel. If Shakir were to get 150 say, by chance, then I'd revise those downward a little bit. The only way that I envision either Samuel or Coleman logging more than 700 or so yards this season is if either Shakir or Kincaid goes down with injury. At some point we really need to start seeing some of our offensive skill position players stepping up to their draft statuses or Beane needs to be held into account. I'm really looking Kincaid's way here for a monster leap in productivity, same with Shakir, and given that those are the two that Allen's the most familiar with, if it doesn't occur, IMO anyway we're in a world heap of trouble.

Possibly, sorry if so, but that's also been repetitively woven into the season-ending theme. But yeah, it's a great exercise. It's easy to say that WR A is going to get 1,400 yards, WR B will have 1,000, etc., but before you know it you're at 6,600 total passing yards and 54 TDs. LOL Doing the entire roster puts it all into perspective. The point is that one cannot discount stats but then apply the most superficial ones. You know that. Thanks. My point however is that Samuel in that season where he "played well" under Brady, had absolutely no one that was going to challenge him for playing time or targets. Moore, a 1st-round draft pick was their #1, clearly, and Anderson/Chosen as an undrafted FA has outplayed Samuel in their careers. Samuel as you recall was an early 2nd-round pick, much like Coleman, came into the league with similar fanfare. There was absolutely nobody on that team as a WR/TE, quite literally, that has done anything significant in the NFL otherwise. Here is the rest of the roster for that season; TE: Colin Thompson Chris Manhertz Ian Thompson WR: Keith Kirkwood Seth Roberts Pharoh Cooper Brandon Sylstra It is and was garbage otherwise. So what Samuel did that season should be considered a minimum expected given his 2nd-round draft status and the notion that Anderson/Chosen is what he is, a WR that's averaged south of 700 yards and 4 TDs a season. The same argument was made by myself about Sherfield last season, met with the same stuff. He too was on teams with limited receiving options, so yeah, of course he (or anyone in the same situation) will get more targets than they normally would. Either way, Samuel isn't contending with just Moore and Anderson/Chosen here. He's contending with Shakir, Kincaid, Coleman, Knox, and MVS. Last season our top-5 targeted receivers posted 160, 91, 81, 54, and 45 targets. We threw less under Brady as well. The season prior to that even less. The #2 target getter over the past four seasons here has logged 91, 93, 112, and 107. Let's unrealistically suppose that Samuel's second in targets and logs an average of those, ... 101. Let's say he matches his career high 79.4% catch% for 80 grabs and his career average of 10.7/catch, ... 856 yards. But think about what that would mean, it would mean that Kincaid, Coleman, et al. are all behind him. I hope that we didn't expend 1st-round draft pick last season on a receiving TE that's going to put up performances akin to TEs taken notably later in drafts.

What the offensive plan is! In spades. We have Josh Allen, one of the best QBs of all-time, a generational talent and arguably the best QB in the entire league. Thus far he's been less than optimized as has our offense. This offense under Allen has the ability to be prolific, or has had it anyway, and to the point of league-leading despite Mahomes & KC. Allen was drafted for his big-time arm and "ability to make any throw," not to manage games in a ball-control running attack. THAT is the strength and core of what will ever determine whether we win a championship, not our running game or defense primarily. Yet, that's what we appear to be catering to, our running game, short-passing game, and defense. (aka Complimentary Football) 8 seasons in for McD and 7 seasons in for Beane, with Beane lapping himself in cap issues now, and we are well beyond the fish or cut bait point here now. Under Brady last season in our last 7 regular season games Allen averaged 1.4 passing TDs, posted a 60% compl.%, and had a rating of 85.5. He was also all but solely responsible for our uptick in rushing production. That's abysmal and cannot even approach continuing or it's going to be a long season. Over the course of a season it would render him statistically average in passing TDs, and bottom quartile in compl.% and rating, which presumably needless to say would be inexcusable despite it not having been inexcusable in the second half of last season. It's a tall order for McBrady, and with diminished weaponry, a new C and LG (also, can we remain injury-free along the OL like we did last season), and a focus on running the ball featuring a RB that peters out somewhere south of 200 carries, and which would otherwise be fine if it didn't come down to Allen having to do everything. McD has what he wants, two Coordinators that he can control, a ball-control offense, a roster full of slot receivers, and Allen playing a short-passing game, and with the receiver on our team having logged the most yards in any single season (873) being a problem child on a very cut-able 1-year, $1.1M contract with only $25k guaranteed. Let's hope for the best. But right now it ALL seems to hinge on Allen. It's difficult to envision this team winning many games if Trubisky were starting, which a good offensive system should at least keep the team competitive.

When arguments deteriorate to this kind of stuff ... You're missing the point otherwise, and again, you continue to fail to answer a simple question. What do you envision Samuel getting for targets, catches, and yards? It's not a complicated question. Once again, this team has never had two 1,000 receivers, of any sort, WR/TE/RB, and the closest that we ever came was Beasley in 2020 with Daboll running an entirely different system than we'll see this fall. The next closest was Davis with 836, and the season that Beasley posted 967 the third best receiver on the team had 599. As to this statement of yours ... That's pretty funny considering how you're the one that laid out the 6-1 finish last year, the most superficial of all statistics. Otherwise, and unfortunately for that statement, that's pretty much how they measure things in sports. Yards thrown for, TD passes, Total TDs, Home Runs, 3 Point stats, Rebounds, Goals/Assists, plus/minus, etc. etc. etc.

For someone that specializes in the higher-percentage (much higher) shorter routes to have a mere 65% catch% (10.7 career YPR) is hardly something to crow about. Otherwise, you missed my point. Competing with Anderson, whom I already pointed out averaged fewer than 700 yards and 4 TDs per 16-games, and Moore, is going to be a whole lot different than competing for targets with Shakir, Kincaid, Coleman, MVS, and Knox. It's really not a difficult thing to conceive. Samuel's not likely to even sniff 1,000 this season. How would you breakdown each player on our offense by receiving yards? I'm not sure people understand how as a group there aren't as many passes thrown as envisioned independently. Several of our WRs could conceivably hit 1,000; Shakir, Kincaid, Coleman, Samuel, but it's unlikely that more than one actually do it. We haven't had two WRs hit 1,000 on McD's watch yet. But somehow this is the season that two or three are going to get 1,000 and what, in Samuel's case what, 150 targets, at 11 YPR and a 67% catch%, to do it? Few people think this through.

His name is irrelevant. And you ignored the notion that Anderson was never anything special at WR, always a 2/3 tweener, at best. He's a WR that averaged under 700 yards and below 4 TDs/season. That's the competition that Samuel had. What's funny about this discussion is that everyone argued the same about Harty and Sherfield last season. Wash/rinse/repeat. I'm quite content to let the season do the talking.

Right, and let's ignore the fact that we're now forcing him into a game that thrives on that kind of throwing. What was that about prowess?

I hear ya, but look at Lofton and TO's aggregate stats, then look at the QBs and systems that were throwing to TO. Lofton would have easily been #2 to Rice all-time had he had Allen throwing to him. Agree on Moulds, he'd be my third, but distant third after those two.

Gotta go with Lofton here. He led the league in YPR twice, posted 6 seasons of 1,000+, and finished his career with 764 catches for 14,004 yards and an 18.3 YPR avg. His second season was close to 1,000 and he had another wedged in there where he got injured but would have had over 1,000. His QB in his five biggest seasons was Lynn Dickey. His other 1,000 yard season was here with Kelly, at the age of 35, when he posted 57 catches for 1,072 yards, 8 TDs, and 18.8 YPR. At 35. Dude was Gabe Davis with route running skills.

But why argue off in some arbitrary tangent then? Why waste our time?

You missed the point, entirely. Out of curiosity though, how many targets do you think that Samuel will get this season?

If you don't care, why comment? Your "analysis" is trivial. And yes, when all else fails, like our offense sputtering to end the season unable to average more than 20 PPG in our last three RS games, that's what out staff does, throws its hands into the air and "lets Allen be Allen." That's not coaching or leadership, is throwing one's hands up into the air. It's reasonable to suspect that they don't mind doing that for a few playoff games, just not all season.

What do you think that the whole complimentary football thing is, which is driven entirely by McD, as opposed to Allen doing what Allen does best, which isn't that. Hence the drop-off. That's false. Under Dorsey Allen posted 1.1 INTs/game, under Brady, 1.0, no significant difference. We also have to ask ourselves whether that trade-off did us good or not. If the offense didn't look good, was notably less efficient, with Allen's performance metrics dropping into the abyss, what's the point. If that's the point, just run the ball by Cook for infinite 3 and outs and have zero picks. Besides, as others have accurately pointed out, some of Allen's picks were deep in opponent territory resulting in "as good as punts." Significantly lower. I've posted how much many times. That's exactly the case and can easily be seen. Is there another logical conclusion? We have been underachieving the entire time that Allen's been here. Our offense under Allen is capable of so much more than we're getting, and our perennially diminishing overall team offensive production validates that. I'm not optimistic at all. Hoping it works, but to me this is a hope against hope situation. There's absolutely nothing suggestive that Brady's going to be better than average as an OC if even that. What we do will, as usual, hinge upon Allen's individual performances, very little having to do with Brady's scheming. As to Brady, I'm pretty sure that by season's end more people will realize the extent to which McD has his thumb on Brady. We shall see. There are going to be more questions than solutions by season's end.

OK, so factor the TEs in then. Carolina had nothing even approaching Kincaid. Anderson who? We were talking about Samuel's "big season" at Carolina. (2021) I see Robbie Chosen, undrafted prospect out of Temple. OK, but far from great. If you can find another notable WR/TE receiving talent on that team besides Moore, let me know.

He also had 97 targets, no receiving talent on that team that was worth a turd besides Moore, and a 79.4% Catch%. How many targets do you see him getting here? Do you see him repeating that Catch%?