Josh's passing stats for 2019 aren't as bad as many people think.

[TwistofFate]

14 minutes ago, MJS said:

No, it's not adding attempts, it is completing two more of his already attempted passes per game (and Allen attempts less passes than most QB's as it is, having a smaller sample size and a smaller margin for error).

 

And really this highlights that there really isn't a big difference between 58.8% and the magical, arbitrary 60%. They are virtually the same.

 

Allen was over 60% as a passer for much of the season. He then faced some of the NFL's best defenses late in the year which dipped him below that number.

 I'm not adding attempts. In week 16, he would need to complete 32 passes for 100% accuracy hit the mark you're talking about.

 

Again it's not as minuscule as you make it seem.

 

What you're attempting to do is one of the oldest sales tactics in the book. It's like saying hey you can drive this beautiful car for only $15 a day for the next 5 years.

 

$15 a day?  People spend more than that on a pack of cigs and a coffee every day. Its nothing!

[MJS]

1 minute ago, TwistofFate said:

 I'm not adding attempts. In week 16, he would need to complete 32 passes for 100% accuracy hit the mark you're talking about.

 

Again it's not as minuscule as you make it seem.

 

What you're attempting to do is one of the oldest sales tactics in the book. It's like saying hey you can drive this beautiful car for only $15 a day for the next 5 years.

 

$15 a day?  People spend more than that on a pack of cigs and a coffee every day. Its nothing!

This isn't my thread. Take it up with the OP, I guess?

 

I personally think Allen could throw for 59% completion his entire career and have a great career. There is basically no difference between that and 60%, but people can't stand it when a QB doesn't hit that magical number even if the results on the field and in the win column are the same or better.

[BruceVilanch]

My biggest issue with JA is missing simple reads, he has 2-3 throws a game that make your jaw drop because of how amazing they are and 2-3 that make your jaw drop because he missed wide open targets. I love his progression so far and for sure think we have our franchise QB. once he stops improving his game is when I will start to panic but right now I think he is well ahead of where most experts thought he would be going into year 3. 

[GoBills808]

2 hours ago, TwistofFate said:

 I'm not adding attempts. In week 16, he would need to complete 32 passes for 100% accuracy hit the mark you're talking about.

 

Again it's not as minuscule as you make it seem.

 

What you're attempting to do is one of the oldest sales tactics in the book. It's like saying hey you can drive this beautiful car for only $15 a day for the next 5 years.

 

$15 a day?  People spend more than that on a pack of cigs and a coffee every day. Its nothing!

I’d take a new car for $15 a day

[CorkScrewHill]

3 hours ago, TwistofFate said:

 I'm not adding attempts. In week 16, he would need to complete 32 passes for 100% accuracy hit the mark you're talking about.

 

Again it's not as minuscule as you make it seem.

 

What you're attempting to do is one of the oldest sales tactics in the book. It's like saying hey you can drive this beautiful car for only $15 a day for the next 5 years.

 

$15 a day?  People spend more than that on a pack of cigs and a coffee every day. Its nothing!

I tend to be on the Josh is on an upward trajectory bandwagon, but your analogy is excellent.  2 passes a game does not seem like a lot, but it adds up.

 

A couple of things in Josh's favor:

1) He does have a high number of drops, but that is in part on Josh. I remember Vinnie Testeverde had lots of drops from his WRs because he would rifle it in when the pass could have been handled with touch. Josh seems to have a bit of this.

2) I have seen so many WRs make the spectacular catch which would have gone down as a drop or a straight incompletion, but the Bills WR have not at least recently made many of those. I am hoping Diggs will take care of that.

3) He does take more shots (not always good shots) down the field which by definition are lower percentage chances.

 

Bottom-line: He has the leadership and a lot of potential, but with the weapons he has we need to see that potential result in more positive plays .. which would include a higher percentage of completions.

[BigBillsFan]

The 2 passes could go against him too. He could complete 2 less passes.

 

In other words you can't argue a hypothetical which didn't happen. A hypothetical is for things that haven't happened.

 

Allen's biggest weakness is his mental processing. That's not easy to fix. In fact rarely if ever fixed. In the Dallas game post 1st quarter he threw amazingly precise passes. Something in his mental process was just ON, but the whole rest of the season with few exceptions that wasn't the case. He wasn't accurate like you'd expect a entrenched starter. Matt Moore had more timing on his passes last season.

 

Point is he needs to be the Allen of Dallas and BETTER because even though we won, we weren't offensive juggernauts and throwing for 230 yards isn't all that impressive. It will win you enough games with a great defense, but you'll love more than you win if you are playing the Saints or Chiefs.

[formerlyofCtown]

5 hours ago, TwistofFate said:

You plainly explain his accuracy issues, after you claim he doesn't have accuracy issues. 

 

*smh*

What do our team wins have to do with Allen's accuracy? 

 

I find it ludicrous that anyone can sit and say Allen doesn't have accuracy issues.  

 

It's completely mind boggling to me. 

 He is good enough and plenty dangerous.

[BillsFanThru-N-Thru]

6 hours ago, TwistofFate said:

 I'm not adding attempts. In week 16, he would need to complete 32 passes for 100% accuracy hit the mark you're talking about.

 

Again it's not as minuscule as you make it seem.

 

What you're attempting to do is one of the oldest sales tactics in the book. It's like saying hey you can drive this beautiful car for only $15 a day for the next 5 years.

 

$15 a day?  People spend more than that on a pack of cigs and a coffee every day. Its nothing!

Allen had 28 dropped balls by receivers last year and the league average was 17 so that's at least 11 drops above the average.  Adding the 11 drops would bring his average to almost 62%.  I think you're discounting the numerous dropped balls just to justify your point.

[Thurman#1]

13 hours ago, tomur67 said:

       In 16 games Josh  completed 271 passes in 461 attempts for a 58.8%.  If he had 2 more completions per game, that would give him 303 completions for a 64.3% average, which is in the range of most NFL quarterbacks.  Yes, there are some QB's with higher completion averages.  For example,  Drew Brees  led the NFL with a 74.3 completion average, but his completion yardage was 2,979 yards, less than Josh's 3089 yards. It looks like Brees and a few other QB's are throwing a few more screen passes or dump off passes than Josh threw.  Plus you have to figure in drops.  All in all, I'm not worried at all about Josh"s accuracy issue,  In my humble opinion, it's not an issue.

 

 

This kind of logic, "If he had 2 more completions per game, that would give him 303 completions ..." always cracks me up.

 

Essentially what it says is that if you changed his stats, they'd be different. Yeah, fair enough, but with zero logical force. Sure if you changed things they'd be different. But they aren't different. They're what they are. If you changed every other QB's stats, they'd be different too.

 

And yes, Brees had even fewer yards than Allen this year. Think that might be because he missed more than five games with an injury? In any case, Brees' yards per attempt, a much better gauge of how long the passes you're throwing are than total yardage, are significantly higher than Allen's, 7.9 YPA (10th in the league) vs. Allen's 6.7 YPA (27th). 

 

And yes, drops have an effect. But you also have to factor in what caused the drops. Some of Allen's were caused by throwing short passes much too hard without touch. Plenty were on the receiver, but when you have the problem Allen does with not yet having incorporated enough touch into his game, the drops will go up. There are all kinds of different figures for drops, because which incompletions are drops is pretty subjective. 

 

But let's pretend that the QB has no effect on this stat and just look at the numbers. The Bills had 26 drops last year according to most sites. The NFL average was 18. That's a difference of eight passes, half a drop per game over the average. Allen went 271 for 461 last year. Change that to give him the same number of attempts and eight more completions and his completion percentage would go up just over 1.5%. That would put him 31st in the league in completion percentage, without adjusting any other QB's stats. That's not a significant improvement when compared to other QB completion percentages.

 

Not that completion percentage is an especially great indicator of accuracy. But it's the one you used, so I pointed out the flaws in the numbers that you used.

 

He isn't especially accurate. He throws dimes one moment and misses badly the next. He's inconsistent. He can improve, and he seemed to improve some last year. But it's likely to be a problem down the line to some extent. Perhaps he can improve other facets of his game to make up for this problem. That seems reasonably possible to me.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Thurman#1

[Thurman#1]

55 minutes ago, BillsFanThru-N-Thru said:

Allen had 28 dropped balls by receivers last year and the league average was 17 so that's at least 11 drops above the average.  Adding the 11 drops would bring his average to almost 62%.  I think you're discounting the numerous dropped balls just to justify your point.

 

 

26 and 17.84 to be more precise.

 

https://scores.nbcsports.com/fb/tmleaders.asp?type=Receiving&range=NFL&rank=232

http://hosted.stats.com/fb/tmleaders.asp?type=Receiving&range=NFL&rank=232

 

The difference there is not 11 drops, it's 8.16 drops above average. If we subtract those 8.16 from Allen and then use that corrected figure to put him in the NFL rankings for completion percentage, that would put him at 31st in the league among guys with 100 or more receptions. 

 

And again, part of the reason he had more drops is that he is still throwing too many short passes without touch. 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Thurman#1

[BillsFanThru-N-Thru]

14 minutes ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

26 and 17.84 to be more precise. The difference there is not 11 drops, it's 8.16 drops above average. If we subtract those 8.16 from Allen and then use that corrected figure to put him in the NFL rankings for completion percentage, that would put him at 31st in the league among guys with 100 or more receptions. 

 

And again, part of the reason he had more drops is that he is still throwing too many short passes without touch. 

Different sites have different stats, seen the washington post stats with what you posted.  However, not sure if it's touch so much as the result of 1 receiver which in this case is Dawson Knox.  He was the direct result of 10 dropped passes alone.   

[thebandit27]

If people are obsessed with the 60% benchmark, then I have a very simple, logical way to assuage you:

 

Allen had the highest percentage of dropped passes in the NFL at 7.2%. If you were to merely normalize that number to the median percentage (~5% across the top 32 pass attempting QBs), then that would be 8 fewer drops (and accordingly 8 more completions). His adjusted completion percentage would then be 60.5%.

[1ManRaid]

12 hours ago, tomur67 said:

       In 16 games Josh  completed 271 passes in 461 attempts for a 58.8%.  If he had 2 more completions per game, that would give him 303 completions for a 64.3% average, which is in the range of most NFL quarterbacks.  Yes, there are some QB's with higher completion averages.  For example,  Drew Brees  led the NFL with a 74.3 completion average, but his completion yardage was 2,979 yards, less than Josh's 3089 yards. It looks like Brees and a few other QB's are throwing a few more screen passes or dump off passes than Josh threw.  Plus you have to figure in drops.  All in all, I'm not worried at all about Josh"s accuracy issue,  In my humble opinion, it's not an issue.

And if my aunt had a dick, she would be my uncle.

[Thurman#1]

8 hours ago, MJS said:

No, it's not adding attempts, it is completing two more of his already attempted passes per game (and Allen attempts less passes than most QB's as it is, having a smaller sample size and a smaller margin for error).

 

And really this highlights that there really isn't a big difference between 58.8% and the magical, arbitrary 60%. They are virtually the same.

 

Allen was over 60% as a passer for much of the season. He then faced some of the NFL's best defenses late in the year which dipped him below that number.

 

 

Mathematically, you're right. If he completed only two more of his already attempted passes per game, that would fulfil the requirement. Thing is ... in the real world, he did not complete those two passes per game. It's only if you go to fantasyland and start pretending that he completed those passes. And you're quite right that 58.8% isn't very far from 60%. That's true. It also isn't very far from 57.6%. Equally far, actually. Should we start spinning fantasies about how close he is to that too, if only things were different, which they aren't?

 

He did what he did. Talking about what he didn't do is irrelevant. Because he didn't do it.

 

And the fact that his percentage was higher when he had faced bad defenses and then went down when he faced better ones doesn't imply that he was better than his stats. That's how stats work. You can't look at only the ones you like and take out the rest and think what you are left with means anything. If you try to figure out how good the passing defenses Allen and the Bills faced last year, you might look at how they ranked in defensive passer rating. Our opponents averaged out pretty close to average, 15.93th best in the league. The fact that a lot of the tougher ones came at the end of the year is beside the point. It only shows that the easier ones mostly came early. The two pretty much balance each other out.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Thurman#1

[TroutDog]

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/A/AlleJo02/gamelog/2019/
 

I believe the best way to look at Josh is this: look at the defenses he was playing against where he was sub 60%. They’re all the best ones in the league (NE x 2, PITT, Ravens). As he continues to learn to read defenses, those inefficient games should transition to where he was in the rest of the games: 63% or so. 
 

The kid is gonna be great!

Edited May 15, 2020 by TroutDog

[Mr. WEO]

12 hours ago, wvbillsfan said:

Another thing on this completion percentage 

If it’s 3rd down the ball is going past the sticks and I freakin love that about Allen. 
A lot of NFL qbs take the check down and punt. One even slid on 4th and 1 or 2. 
Give me the guy that understands it’s third down or fourth down. 

 

A lot of NFL QBs don't "check down and punt".

 

Anyway, Josh is most accurate on 1st down (but most INTs) and least accurate on 3rd down (too few 4th down passes to mention) and takes far more sacks.

 

We shall see how he's going to be this year.

[Don Otreply]

Allen’s biggest issue passing wise over the past two seasons is that by and large he has had mostly CRAP for receivers, the drop rate for the receivers group as a whole for the last two seasons has been abysmal. 

  We have lost or struggled in many games directly because of this issue.    How many times have we thrown our hands in the air and said WTF... when a pass has been dropped at a crucial moment in games?  (Hurts to think about it doesn’t it)
 

    It certainly takes two to tango no doubt , but the ever coveted passer percentage, yards per attempt, points and wins all get better when the receivers group isn’t dropping close to thirty five passes every season. 

 

   My shrink says I should work harder at expressing my feelings so that I am more clear about how I view this issue ??

 

Go Bills!!!

[TwistofFate]

1 hour ago, BillsFanThru-N-Thru said:

Allen had 28 dropped balls by receivers last year and the league average was 17 so that's at least 11 drops above the average.  Adding the 11 drops would bring his average to almost 62%.  I think you're discounting the numerous dropped balls just to justify your point.

No, you aren't taking into consideration the On Target throws that he's one of the worst in the league for.

 

I posted a video in this link of the terrible throws he's made this season and how many drops are in that video are from horrific throws that receivers were diving all over the field in an attempt to catch?

 

Drop statistics do not calculate how bad of a pass it was the receiver was attempting to catch.

 

You are trying to make it cut and dry black and white as if it's simply the receiver just dropping perfect balls which clearly is not the case.

[HappyDays]

2 minutes ago, TwistofFate said:

Drop statistics do not calculate how bad of a pass it was the receiver was attempting to catch.

 

Yes they do. If anything, the official drop statistics give too much leeway to the receiver. There have been several times where I have looked at a game's official drop statistics and been able to distinctly remember more drops than officially recorded. A drop is seemingly only officially recorded if the receiver isn't so much as breathed on by a defender and the ball hits him directly in the hands.

[BillsFanThru-N-Thru]

7 minutes ago, TwistofFate said:

No, you aren't taking into consideration the On Target throws that he's one of the worst in the league for.

 

I posted a video in this link of the terrible throws he's made this season and how many drops are in that video are from horrific throws that receivers were diving all over the field in an attempt to catch?

 

Drop statistics do not calculate how bad of a pass it was the receiver was attempting to catch.

 

You are trying to make it cut and dry black and white as if it's simply the receiver just dropping perfect balls which clearly is not the case.

Beg to differ ...

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

Basically, we're talking about blatant drops, not the ones where your old man leans over and says anything that grazed the receiver anywhere was a drop in his day.

"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."