One way to help Josh Allen's accuracy: Fewer dropped passes

[HOUSE]

 

By Mark Gaughan|Published May 6, 2019|Updated May 6, 2019

Here’s a reason to hope Josh Allen is bound for improvement in his second year as the Buffalo Bills’ quarterback:

Maybe his receiving corps will drop fewer passes.

The Bills had too many drops in 2018. In fact, Allen had the second highest rate of dropped passes of any quarterback in the NFL last season, according to a recent study by Pro Football Focus.

Allen saw dropped passes on 6.3 percent of his throws, behind only Jacksonville’s Blake Bortles, who had a drop rate of 7.7 percent. The Bills' receivers combined to drop 20 passes on 320 attempts by Allen, according to PFF.

With free-agent signings mostly completed and the NFL draft in the books, Bills fans have four months to contemplate whether the team has done enough to help Allen take a great leap forward

Allen ranked last among all starting quarterbacks last season in completion percentage at just 52.8. The league average was 64.8 percent.

The addition of 13 unrestricted free-agent signings on offense has created high expectations of improvement.

“We drafted Josh last year and we saw some of his strengths, but some of the things we didn’t feel, and we, I’m putting it on me, didn’t do a good enough job with personnel around him to help him be the best version of himself on the field,” Bills general manager Brandon Beane said on draft weekend.

Kelvin Benjamin and Zay Jones each had four drops for the Bills last year, according to News game charts. Benjamin, released by the Bills in December, had three drops from Allen and one from Matt Barkley. Tight end Logan Thomas, who left the Bills in free agency and signed with Detroit, had three drops last season.

(Here's an example of a drop by Jones in Week 15 that wasn't an easy grab but should have been caught.)

Open to watch dropped passes...

https://buffalonews.com/2019/05/06/josh-allen-buffalo-bills-accuracy-dropped-passes-kelvin-benjamin-charles-clay-completion-percentage/

Edited May 7, 2019 by HOUSE

[wppete]

[The Wiz]

[TroutDog]

While it’s been debated to death here, the biggest drop was by Clay against Miami. I believe he should have caught it giving us and Josh the win. 

 

With that being said, we would, more than likely, not have ended up with Oliver if he did so...

[Doc]

It was more than 20 passes dropped. 

[Jay_Fixit]

Another way is to be more accurate.

[HOUSE]

[BarleyNY]

https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/stats/passing#completionPercentageAboveExpectation

 

Allen isn’t doing well with advanced metrics that account for things like drops and quality of receivers though.  He’s dead last in Time To Throw and third last in  Completion Percentage Above Expectation.  One can argue that his TTT mark is mitigated somewhat by his ability to buy time to throw, but it’s also due to him almost never getting the ball out on his drops.  That has to improve.  Ditto his accuracy/timing.  Hopefully the training he has been doing with his footwork helps there.  He will have an improved cast around him so hopefully the experience he got last year and the work he’s done in the offseason help him take that big step forward. 

[JESSEFEFFER]

I'd like to know his stats in relation to balls thrown away and clocked ( I think they count.)  It seems he had more than typical situations where he escaped the pocket and threw the ball away prior to going out-of-bounds.  Actually, there should have been a couple more of those types of throws rather than throwing into coverage and getting picked.  As a % it seems like it was higher with him than most.  Maybe TransPlanted knows.

 

Wait, I found his thread on page 2.  He was very high in throwaways/spikes.  Looks to be as big or even bigger contributor to his low completion% than the drops.  His high drop % ( lets say half) accounts for ~ 3 points of his "incompletion % and his higher throaways/spikes account for another 3 or 4 percentage points of it.  All of a sudden the rookie lowest 52.5% looks like a phoney issue.  Nice work TransplantedBillsFan.

Edited May 7, 2019 by JESSEFEFFER

[Hapless Bills Fan]

31 minutes ago, HOUSE said:

By Mark Gaughan|Published May 6, 2019|Updated May 6, 2019

Here’s a reason to hope Josh Allen is bound for improvement in his second year as the Buffalo Bills’ quarterback:

Maybe his receiving corps will drop fewer passes.

The Bills had too many drops in 2018. In fact, Allen had the second highest rate of dropped passes of any quarterback in the NFL last season, according to a recent study by Pro Football Focus.

Allen saw dropped passes on 6.3 percent of his throws, behind only Jacksonville’s Blake Bortles, who had a drop rate of 7.7 percent. The Bills' receivers combined to drop 20 passes on 320 attempts by Allen, according to PFF.

(...)

Kelvin Benjamin and Zay Jones each had four drops for the Bills last year, according to News game charts. Benjamin, released by the Bills in December, had three drops from Allen and one from Matt Barkley. Tight end Logan Thomas, who left the Bills in free agency and signed with Detroit, had three drops last season.

(Here's an example of a drop by Jones in Week 15 that wasn't an easy grab but should have been caught.)

Open to watch dropped passes...

https://buffalonews.com/2019/05/06/josh-allen-buffalo-bills-accuracy-dropped-passes-kelvin-benjamin-charles-clay-completion-percentage/

 

Just a comment that I would be very surprised if the film clip pulled by TBN and flagged by Gaughn as "an example of a drop", would actually be scored as a drop by whoever is creating that stat - I think it's ESPN?  If the player has to extend his arms fully and leave his feet to get his hands on the ball, they don't score that as a drop. 
 

This standard says drops are "incomplete passes where the receiver SHOULD have caught the pass with ORDINARY effort."

"Only use this if the receiver is 100 percent at fault and no one else can be blamed for the incompletion," ESPN tells its game charters. "Pass interference that wasn't called/passes thrown just outside the receiver's reach, etc., are NOT drops."

 

So there are two issues:

1) actual passes that are scored as drops - "ordinary effort", seems to be the ball reaches the WR within a shoulder-width rectangle extending from the top of his head to his thighs

2) passes that top NFL WR manage to haul in and hang onto routinely.  Watch Thielen, Diggs, Hill, Woods, Jordy Nelson in his prime etc for this.

 

We need fewer drops, AND Allen needs to help himself by delivering more passes that are more on target and  lower-degree-of-difficulty to catch, AND we need some better WR who haul in those higher degree of difficulty but makeable catches.

 

[K-9]

Fewer dropped passes will help his completion percentage, won’t do much for his accuracy, though. 

[Bangarang]

Fewer dropped passes helps increase his completion percentage. Accuracy and completion percentage aren’t always the same.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Bangarang

[Doc]

3 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Just a comment that I would be very surprised if the film clip pulled by TBN and flagged by Gaughn as "an example of a drop", would actually be scored as a drop by whoever is creating that stat - I think it's ESPN?  If the player has to extend his arms fully and leave his feet to get his hands on the ball, they don't score that as a drop. 
 

This standard says drops are "incomplete passes where the receiver SHOULD have caught the pass with ORDINARY effort."

"Only use this if the receiver is 100 percent at fault and no one else can be blamed for the incompletion," ESPN tells its game charters. "Pass interference that wasn't called/passes thrown just outside the receiver's reach, etc., are NOT drops."

 

So there are two issues:

1) actual passes that are scored as drops - "ordinary effort", seems to be the ball reaches the WR within a shoulder-width rectangle extending from the top of his head to his thighs

2) passes that top NFL WR manage to haul in and hang onto routinely.  Watch Thielen, Diggs, Hill, Woods, Jordy Nelson in his prime etc for this.

 

We need fewer drops, AND Allen needs to help himself by delivering more passes that are more on target and  lower-degree-of-difficulty to catch, AND we need some better WR who haul in those higher degree of difficulty but makeable catches.

 

 

In that video showing the drops by Josh’s receivers last year, there were 34 or so where the receiver didn’t need to make an extraordinary effort to catch the ball. 

[RoyBatty is alive]

A lot of the drops are also the result of the velocity and the force the ball is coming at these receivers sometime.  I can recall several Zay Jones drops resulting from this.

[Doc]

2 minutes ago, Bangarang said:

Fewer dropped passes helps increase his completion percentage. Accuracy and completion percentage always the same.

 

Not sure if they last sentence was you being facetious, but no, they’re not. 

[GG]

1 minute ago, Doc said:

 

Not sure if they last sentence was you being facetious, but no, they’re not. 

 

It was when everyone was screaming about Allen's sub 60% completion rate

[JESSEFEFFER]

6 minutes ago, Doc said:

 

In that video showing the drops by Josh’s receivers last year, there were 34 or so where the receiver didn’t need to make an extraordinary effort to catch the ball. 

 

 

I think some of those you reference would be scored as a pbu.  I don't think it can be both. it's one or the other, a drop or a pbu.  At least that's my thinking.  If it's in the receivers' hands and it gets ripped or knocked out before he can secure it, is that a drop or a pbu?

[Shooter McGavin]

https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/pro-2019-free-agency-profile-john-brown

 

“The five-year veteran has also struggled with drops, producing the seventh-worst drop rate among wideouts and dropping seven of his 49 catchable targets this season.”

 

I initially liked the signing, but his hands still worry me. 

[JoshBarnett]

To add to the discussion, here are the 20 drops as registered by PFF with week, time on clock, down and distance, receiver and notes from the weekly game book on the play (Note, that the gamebook descriptions vary in detail from week to week based on the stadium and the stats crew at that particular venue). 

 

As noted, Mark's tabulation has four additional drops beyond PFF. 

 

Specific to the Charles Clay play in Miami, we asked the PFF analyst to look at the film again and give us more detail. "His adjustment takes place in enough time by our grading standpoint as well that it should have / could have been caught. Still would have been a good catch from Clay to make it happen – and the wobbly ball trajectory from Allen does effect it a bit, in my own personal opinion, but still goes in a drop by our standards as it does look like he gets (or could get) his hands to it before it reaches the ground."

 

Week 1 - Q3, 3:34 – Second-and-5, Kelvin Benjamin – short middle, from shotgun

Week 1 - Q4, 14:35 – First-and-10, Marcus Murphy – short right, from shotgun

Week 2 - Q3, 5:45 – Third-and-10, Andre Holmes – short right, from shotgun

Week 2 - Q4, 0:59 – First-and-10, Marcus Murphy – short right, dump pass, from shotgun

Week 3 - Q1, 7:31 – Third-and-6, Kelvin Benjamin – short right, from shotgun

Week 3 - Q2, 3:57 – Second-and-6, Robert Foster – deep left

Week 4 - Q1, 8:14 – First-and-10, Kelvin Benjamin – short right

Week 4 - Q2, 7:44 – Third-and-5, Andre Holmes – short left, from shotgun

Week 5 - Q4, 8:03 – Second-and-7, Andre Holmes – deep right, pass would then be intercepted, from shotgun

Week 12 - Q2, 0:23 – Second-and-6, Jason Croom – through receiver’s hands along sideline, from shotgun

Week 13 - Q4, 1:05 – Fourth-and-11, Charles Clay – deep right, from shotgun

Week 14 - Q1, 11:48 – First-and-10, LeSean McCoy – screen pass short left, from shotgun

Week 14 - Q1, 6:09 – Second-and-6, Charles Clay – short middle, receiver cross from right

Week 14 - Q2, 0:47 –First-and-10, Zay Jones – short left through receiver’s hands, from shotgun

Week 14 - Q4, 8:45 – Second-and-20, Zay Jones – short right, receiver in flat, from shotgun

Week 14 - Q4, 2:40 – Third-and-5, Zay Jones – deep right, receiver in end zone, from shotgun

Week 16 - Q1, 11:08 – Third-and-5, Isaiah McKenzie – short middle

Week 16 - Q3, 10:21 – Second-and-10, Logan Thomas – deep right, from shotgun

Week 16 - Q4, 6:57 – Second-and-12, Keith Ford – short left, from shotgun

Week 17 - Q2, 13:48 – Second-and-19, LeSean McCoy – receiver in flat

[Doc]

5 minutes ago, JESSEFEFFER said:

I think some of those you reference would be scored as a pbu.  I don't think it can be both. it's one or the other, a drop or a pbu.  At least that's my thinking.  If it's in the receivers' hands and it gets ripped or knocked out before he can secure it, is that a drop or a pbu?

 

I don’t recall seeing any PBUs in that video, and I agree those are different from drops.