If the Bills had had Diggs in 2019

[Happy]

If Josh still overthrows him by 5 yards, nothing changes.  Not sure I see the whole point to this exercise.

[H2o]

Let's talk about what's coming up for Josh this year with Diggs. 

 

300 yard passing games just for TSW ✔

4000 yards passing in a season ✔

30+ passing TD's in a season ✔

At least a 63% completion rate ✔

Talk of Josh for MVP ✔

 

Get ready Bills fans

[Shaw66]

2 hours ago, Happy Gilmore said:

If Josh still overthrows him by 5 yards, nothing changes.  Not sure I see the whole point to this exercise.

I thought someone would show up with this schtick.  You're right, of course, that nothing matters if Allen doesn't deliver the ball.  But it's not like Allen never delivers the ball.  He hits open receivers, and with Diggs he's going to have more eopen receivers, for sure. 

[Doc]

If the Bills had Diggs in 2019... ?

[Ethan in Cleveland]

Defense collapsed against the Texans. Another WR would not have made a difference last year in the playoffs. Diggs maybe gets them one more win but they still are in the WC spot.

Diggs will be huge in 2020 when the schedule is much harder.

[NoSaint]

10 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

I was wondering this morning what Josh Allen's season would have looked like if the Bills had had Stefon Diggs in 2019.

 

It's not perfect, but what I did was add Diggs's receiving numbers to the Bills' totals, and subtract McKenzie's numbers and Duke's numbers, because they were the two guys who were the primary third receiver.   The numbers are interesting.  

 

Receptions go up 24.

 

Attempts go up 36.

 

Yards go up over 700!

 

Touchdowns go up 4.   

 

Interceptions go up 1.  

 

Allen's passer rating goes up to 91.0, 17th in the league.

 

Now, I know there are all sorts of reasons why it might not have played out that way, but at least it's some measure of the difference Diggs could make.   Browns and Beasley's targets might go down.  On the other hand, completion percentage probably goes up, because Allen's receivers would have been open more often.   And even though their targets might go down, their yards per catch probably go up.   There's no way to undrstand fully the impact of Diggs being on the field.   Substituting the data at least gives us some kind of picture.

 

The biggest difference is yards.   700 yards a season is over 40 yards a game.  Yards per attempt go up from 6.7 to 7.6.   

 

That kind of improvement would have made the Bills a much more potent offense.   

not only is it not perfect, it’s not really meaningful in any way. 
 

 

[Doc Brown]

Developing chemistry with three new WR's in one year would've been difficult.  If Diggs is a "diva" that we all worry about then this team is better equipped to handle him this year compared to last year.  Developing chemistry with Brown last year should allow Allen to take advantage of the mismatches against other team's 2nd CB's.  Same goes with Beasley who should have plenty of room in the slot with our two weapons on the outside.

[Happy]

40 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

I thought someone would show up with this schtick.  You're right, of course, that nothing matters if Allen doesn't deliver the ball.  But it's not like Allen never delivers the ball.  He hits open receivers, and with Diggs he's going to have more eopen receivers, for sure. 

 

It's really not a schtick, but merely pointing out that Josh had real problems with longer throws where he routinely overthrew his receivers.  The cause for this is up for debate.

 

If we're talking about short and medium (up to 20 yards) having Diggs would have helped others get open.  One thing I don't want to see this coming season is Diggs used as a decoy by Daboll to try and get his boy Foster going.  I want Diggs to be used like the weapon he is.  Maybe unnecessary worrying on my part, but wanted to bring that up.

 

Going back to the longer throws, if Josh can get his accuracy squared away, Diggs (in conjunction with John Brown) will stretch the field which will benefit all of the receivers.

[buffalostu2]

10 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

I was wondering this morning what Josh Allen's season would have looked like if the Bills had had Stefon Diggs in 2019.

 

It's not perfect, but what I did was add Diggs's receiving numbers to the Bills' totals, and subtract McKenzie's numbers and Duke's numbers, because they were the two guys who were the primary third receiver.   The numbers are interesting.  

 

Receptions go up 24.

 

Attempts go up 36.

 

Yards go up over 700!

 

Touchdowns go up 4.   

 

Interceptions go up 1.  

 

Allen's passer rating goes up to 91.0, 17th in the league.

 

Now, I know there are all sorts of reasons why it might not have played out that way, but at least it's some measure of the difference Diggs could make.   Browns and Beasley's targets might go down.  On the other hand, completion percentage probably goes up, because Allen's receivers would have been open more often.   And even though their targets might go down, their yards per catch probably go up.   There's no way to undrstand fully the impact of Diggs being on the field.   Substituting the data at least gives us some kind of picture.

 

The biggest difference is yards.   700 yards a season is over 40 yards a game.  Yards per attempt go up from 6.7 to 7.6.   

 

That kind of improvement would have made the Bills a much more potent offense.   

What if we just kept Zay Jones?  I realize there were reasons to get rid of him but does the year end differently?  

[Richard Noggin]

5 hours ago, Scott7975 said:

I didn't even think we probably wouldn't have even played the Texans.

With all due respect and good humor, I applaud this sentence. 

 

I only wish my underprepared college writing students wrote sentences that were this clear in spite of all the words getting in the way.

[Richard Noggin]

1 hour ago, Doc Brown said:

Developing chemistry with three new WR's in one year would've been difficult.  If Diggs is a "diva" that we all worry about then this team is better equipped to handle him this year compared to last year.  Developing chemistry with Brown last year should allow Allen to take advantage of the mismatches against other team's 2nd CB's.  Same goes with Beasley who should have plenty of room in the slot with our two weapons on the outside.

See, now this is a really compelling counterpoint. 

 

For those of you pooping on the OP's hindsight premise/projections, or on hypothetical football discussions in general, here's a reply that analyzes forward while also looking backward.

 

Maybe the presence of Diggs would have put pressure on Allen to weight his reads in favor of #14, sacrificing overall offensive chemistry/cohesion with a mostly-new battery of weapons? OR,  conversely maybe the presence of Diggs would have put pressure on defenses to back out of those cover-0 pressure packages? I'm thinking of the last pass against Baltimore: would Diggs have fared better against Peters on that play? Would Brown have also fared better against their #2 CB (Smith?) on that same play? Interesting questions.

 

What else are we supposed to do with our fandom these days? 

[Shaw66]

9 hours ago, Richard Noggin said:

See, now this is a really compelling counterpoint. 

 

For those of you pooping on the OP's hindsight premise/projections, or on hypothetical football discussions in general, here's a reply that analyzes forward while also looking backward.

 

Maybe the presence of Diggs would have put pressure on Allen to weight his reads in favor of #14, sacrificing overall offensive chemistry/cohesion with a mostly-new battery of weapons? OR,  conversely maybe the presence of Diggs would have put pressure on defenses to back out of those cover-0 pressure packages? I'm thinking of the last pass against Baltimore: would Diggs have fared better against Peters on that play? Would Brown have also fared better against their #2 CB (Smith?) on that same play? Interesting questions.

 

What else are we supposed to do with our fandom these days? 

What I didn't say when I started this, what I didn't even understand, was that doing what I did was just one way of imagining what the addition of Diggs means.   I think I was clear that it wasn't real, it was just a way to think about it.  Reading the posts has helped see what we might learn from the numbers. 

 

So, sure, Doc Brown is right that you couldn't just drop Diggs into the mix and have it all work just right, have Daboll know how to use the receivers best and have Allen know how to find them.   The gap between the theoretical discussion and the actual on-field performance is big.  There are a thousand variables, 2019 variables, 2020 variables, all of which would have and will define the actual result of adding Diggs.   I see now that the point was to predict but to give us a tangible idea of what Diggs might mean.  

 

So at least for me, the numbers helped me quantify what adding Diggs COULD mean.   It gives me an order of magnitude to think about.   It gives an idea of how much better Allen would be with really good receivers - his passer rating goes from below league average to solidly average, almost minimum acceptable.  As, I said, it shows that even with good receivers, Allen has work to do to get to where we want him.  And the numbers are believable.   It's not difficult to imagine how the passing lanes open up with Diggs on the field, how he demands double teams some of the time, and how that leaves matchups or spaces that Brown, Beasley, Knox and Singletary can take advantage of, matchups or spaces that weren't always there last year.   It's not difficult to imagine Diggs making six or eight or 15 plays over the course of the season that no one on the 2019 roster could make.   One play a game.  Sometimes that one play is just an eight yard catch for a first down.   We can see that happening, and the numbers I posted are consistent, statistically, with the kind of play I just described.  

 

It gives us a number - 700 - that gives us an order of magnitude of how much improvement in the passing game we could see.   700 yards a season, 30-40 yards a game.   That's actually a reasonable number.   Thirty yards a game is two or three plays that Diggs makes that the Bills didn't get last season.   That seems reasonable.   So what do we think about 30 yards a game?   I think that's a very healthy improvement.   Thirty yards a game is two or three more first downs.   Two or three first downs a game moves the Bills from 20th in the league  to 10th in total first downs, a significant improvement.  

 

So, sure, there's no one-for-one translation of data into performance.   How they're going to mesh, how Daboll is going to use them, how Allen is going to adapt to the opportunities presented, not to mention all the other variables - oline, injuries, personalities, all of that, that's all a big unknown.    But the numbers show what's possible, and not wildly optimistic possible, but achievably possible.  

 

When you bring it down to a single game, it's even more speculative, but as some of you have shown, even at that level, it's interesting.  I don't remember the details of games as well as many of you, but it's certainly easy to imagine how the Ravens game would have been different with Diggs.   Diggs gets outstanding separation off the line of scrimmage.   If he didn't have other skills that made him valuable as a #1 or #2, he'd be an absolutely deadly slot receiver.   He'd put Edelman to shame.    Assuming Allen knew how to make the reads, the Bills could have been running a short passing game against the Ravens that could be really effective moving the ball and negating all the blitzing the Ravens were doing.   Go ahead and blitz, Diggs or Beasley will be open on almost every play, or maybe we'll catch you in single coverage on Brown with the middle wide open.   

 

The point is that with Diggs (again assuming Daboll and Allen do their jobs) the Bills passing game is ideally multi-faceted.   Shortly after the trade, I said that getting Diggs achieves what McDermott (and other coaches) have said they want - they want an offense that can attack all parts of the field, so that the opponent is forced to defend the whole field.   We spent all last season talking about how the Bills needed a deep threat to pair with Brown, and none emerged.  We've talked for years about having deep threats.   The Bills never had them.  We were left to complain about throwing deep to DiMarco.   Well, friends, that has changed.  The Bills no longer are looking for Robin to Brown's Batman.   The Bills got Batman, and Brown is an outstanding Robin.  The entire field is now open for business. 

 

The numbers I posted are just an idea, actually a reasonable estimate, not pie-in-the-sky, of the statistical impact Diggs could have.  

[Doc]

12 hours ago, Ethan in Portland said:

Defense collapsed against the Texans. Another WR would not have made a difference last year in the playoffs. Diggs maybe gets them one more win but they still are in the WC spot.

Diggs will be huge in 2020 when the schedule is much harder.

 

Completely disagree.  More points on offense means defensive collapse wouldn't have been enough to lose the game. 

 

If you're saying that Diggs wouldn't have/won't make a difference in scoring points, I disagree with that as well.

[Shaw66]

56 minutes ago, Doc said:

 

Completely disagree.  More points on offense means defensive collapse wouldn't have been enough to lose the game. 

 

If you're saying that Diggs wouldn't have/won't make a difference in scoring points, I disagree with that as well.

I agree with you, on both points. 

 

This notion that the defense collapsed is ridiculous.    Texans had the 12th best offense in the league in yards, 14th best in points, over 23 a game.   The defense held the Texans to 19 in regulation.   That's hardly a collapse.   Moreover, the defense got an absolutely essential three and out before the Bills drove to tie the game, and the defense also got an excellent stop on the Texans' first possession in overtime. 

 

That was hardly a defensive collapse.   An offense like Houston's, witha quarterback like Watson, is going to score some points some of the time.   

[Mr. WEO]

On 4/5/2020 at 12:14 PM, Shaw66 said:

I was wondering this morning what Josh Allen's season would have looked like if the Bills had had Stefon Diggs in 2019.

 

It's not perfect, but what I did was add Diggs's receiving numbers to the Bills' totals, and subtract McKenzie's numbers and Duke's numbers, because they were the two guys who were the primary third receiver.   The numbers are interesting.  

 

Receptions go up 24.

 

Attempts go up 36.

 

Yards go up over 700!

 

Touchdowns go up 4.   

 

Interceptions go up 1.  

 

Allen's passer rating goes up to 91.0, 17th in the league.

 

Now, I know there are all sorts of reasons why it might not have played out that way, but at least it's some measure of the difference Diggs could make.   Browns and Beasley's targets might go down.  On the other hand, completion percentage probably goes up, because Allen's receivers would have been open more often.   And even though their targets might go down, their yards per catch probably go up.   There's no way to undrstand fully the impact of Diggs being on the field.   Substituting the data at least gives us some kind of picture.

 

The biggest difference is yards.   700 yards a season is over 40 yards a game.  Yards per attempt go up from 6.7 to 7.6.   

 

That kind of improvement would have made the Bills a much more potent offense.   

 

28 more points would have moved them up to tied for 17th in the league.

 

23 hours ago, HappyDays said:

It's hard to predict how the numbers for the season would have changed, but I can say with near certainty that we would have won the playoff game. Other than Allen no one on offense was able to create plays out of nothing and across the board too many routine plays were missed. Diggs doesn't miss the routine plays AND he creates plays out of nothing. A special player like that tips the needle for us in a close game.

 

 

They were winning the game handily well into the 3rd Q.  They didn't go on to lose for the lack of another stud WR.  Basic Offensive game management would have sealed it.  Run the ball with a big lead in the second half in the playoffs.

[C.Biscuit97]

I was starting my sophomore year in college all through training camp at receiver.  Having possibly the best camp of anyone on the team.  Spectacular catches.  Coaches pulling me aside, telling me the offense is going through me and I was going to have 100 catches easy.  Well, we had a play that was an automatic audible.  Well, I completely blanked and ran the same play wrong 3 times in a row!! After that, I was Zay Jones.  Started dropping everything and lost my starting job.  Ended up switching to defense and while I had some moments there, it wasn’t the same.  If that play doesn’t happen in practice, I probably dominate.  Eventually I get drafted (maybe by the Bills who take a chance on a local kid).  I become good friends with Gronk, offseason hangout buddies in WNY.  Gronk takes me to a Hollywood party.  I meet Margot Robbie.  We fall madly in love.  Get married, 2 kids, 2 dogs, beachfront place in Malibu.  I’m earning millions but my wife makes even more than me! Eventually, things happen with our Colombian nanny and Margot and I divorce.  I struggle post nfl career to not being constantly praised and with my injuries, I get hooked on pills because weed is the devil’s lettuce.  Well a couple of prison stints later, I become clean and go on talk shows.  The networks notice and I get a Romo type deal to be a commentator.  And then at a SB party, I met a 25 year old upcoming pop star and boom, 2nd marriage and 4 more kids.  Life is great. ?

[Sherlock Holmes]

On 4/5/2020 at 12:14 PM, Shaw66 said:

I was wondering this morning what Josh Allen's season would have looked like if the Bills had had Stefon Diggs in 2019.

 

It's not perfect, but what I did was add Diggs's receiving numbers to the Bills' totals, and subtract McKenzie's numbers and Duke's numbers, because they were the two guys who were the primary third receiver.   The numbers are interesting.  

 

Receptions go up 24.

 

Attempts go up 36.

 

Yards go up over 700!

 

Touchdowns go up 4.   

 

Interceptions go up 1.  

 

Allen's passer rating goes up to 91.0, 17th in the league.

 

Now, I know there are all sorts of reasons why it might not have played out that way, but at least it's some measure of the difference Diggs could make.   Browns and Beasley's targets might go down.  On the other hand, completion percentage probably goes up, because Allen's receivers would have been open more often.   And even though their targets might go down, their yards per catch probably go up.   There's no way to undrstand fully the impact of Diggs being on the field.   Substituting the data at least gives us some kind of picture.

 

The biggest difference is yards.   700 yards a season is over 40 yards a game.  Yards per attempt go up from 6.7 to 7.6.   

 

That kind of improvement would have made the Bills a much more potent offense.   

I think all your calculations and such are great but I think what we are all really wondering and what is most important here Shaw is... Would this have brought Josh Allen's total passing yards per game to over 300?

Edited April 6, 2020 by Sherlock Holmes

[Orlando Buffalo]

20 hours ago, GoBills808 said:

Might not have been playing on wildcard weekend, I can point to at least two games (Ravens and first Pats) too of my head that were lost pretty much singularly on receivers not being able to separate and come down with a contested catch.

The one ball on sidelines, which I think sealed Zays trip out, would have been a catch most likely for Diggs and no way an interception. (It was not an interception by the rules anyway but not my point)

[Doc]

2 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

They were winning the game handily well into the 3rd Q.  They didn't go on to lose for the lack of another stud WR.  Basic Offensive game management would have sealed it.  Run the ball with a big lead in the second half in the playoffs.

 

Huh?  Better game management would have won the game but another stud WR would surely have helped win the game despite the game management.

[Orlando Buffalo]

I am glad Diggs was not here in one way, Brown and Allen have a  feel for each other now. Allen will now have his " favorite" reciever and a new stud reciever to go along with his smaller guys. I expect a big step forward for Allen since Brown will be getting much more one on one coverage and should be open much more.