What did so many of the draft experts miss about Allen?

[DCbillsfan]

Bills saw a very raw talent who didn't have much coaching who is a leader, has a strong desire to improve, is coachable, humble, and has a huge desire to win.  Beane is a wizard.

[finn]

I'm not sure the real experts underestimated Allen that egregiously. Do we know of any teams that had him lower than the second round? They knew about his upside but also knew taking him high was a gamble, which it was at the time. The "experts" in the media are another matter. They've learned they don't need to watch tape, meet the player or consider intangibles like motivation, competitiveness and football intelligence. Their job is to f*llate the darling of the day (Mayfield, in that draft) and parrot other "experts" on the other picks, which evidently is what fans want to read. And they're the ones, most of them, who are still refusing to acknowledge they were wrong. 

[Hebert19]

Honestly its the same as diggs.   

 

Big ass chip on shoulder.   He won't fail.

[ehfeuh57]

Mel Kiper did have him 1 at one point on his big board

 

https://www.sbnation.com/2018/1/18/16905840/nfl-mock-draft-2018-mel-kiper-jr-josh-allen-wyoming-cleveland-browns

Edited October 1, 2020 by DrDare

[GreggTX]

I seriously doubt anyone could have forseen a 12% jump in completion% from year 2 to year 3. I've been watching football for 60 years and I've never seen a QB do that before. What Josh is doing now is unique, not his numbers  but the improvement.

[NoSaint]

Just like all the others, he was a long shot but not impossible.

 

we are trending towards him beating the odds, which is great.

[Kwai San]

A lot of really really great replies to this thread...after making it this far I would lean towards 2 things.  Heart and Hard Work.  JA has the heart and lord know he has done the hard work.  Great time to be a Bills fan now.  Remember he is going to have some flat out stinkers from time to time but it sure seems like he is on his way to a lot more really solid games.

 

Go BILLS - Go JA!!

[DCOrange]

As many have pointed out, people underestimated how hard he'd work to improve his game. I also think he was simply hard to evaluate the last season at Wyoming. It was a common occurrence to see a team rush 3 or 4 people and have multiple people get through to him untouched. His WRs looked like they had feet for hands. That last season of his was about as unwatchable as it gets from a supporting cast perspective.

 

I also think some teams just don't look at the QB position the right way. IMO, the key with drafting QBs is going for guys that you think have a chance of being truly great. The worst position to be in in the NFL in my opinion is to have to give a massive second contract to a QB that is average at best. But I think a lot of teams value stability over ability and that leads to teams valuing guys like Rosen over Allen.

 

I also think one of the mistakes that was made with both Allen and Lamar is underrating how much a QB's running ability can lift up the rest of their game. For someone like Rosen that was a sitting duck in the pocket, the margin of error to becoming a great QB is just so small because if he doesn't turn into an elite passer, he has nothing else to fall back on. Guys like Allen and Lamar have much greater margins for error because their running ability will result in more passing windows to throw into (not to mention the ability to pick up yardage when no passing window exists). That also makes guys like Lamar and Allen playable early on, because they could survive while being a little slow in their reads or a little off on their passes while other QBs could not.

 

And lastly, as I've said many times over the years, Allen is the exact kind of physical tools guy that you want to bet on because he exudes confidence and supreme work ethic. That's the kind of mental makeup you need to be able to make the most out of your raw tools.

 

TLDR: Allen was more pro-ready than he was given credit for due to his athleticism. I think teams just don't value the QB position correctly when it comes to the draft and that is at the expense of someone like Allen. And lastly, his final season at Wyoming was pretty much unwatchable.

Edited October 1, 2020 by DCOrange

[colin]

so josh allen shows the limits of nerd analytics in football.  it works well in baseball because you have so many IID trials, and such a huge data set you can get meaningful information even on situational stuff.

 

in football, every play can have so many variables that the numbers generated are not fungible and thus one has to perform a deeper analysis using qualitative data.  in that regard, the eye test can very easily beat out a hundred tabs of data.

 

the point made about josh being a late bloomer in this thread is a good one.  there have been lots of interesting things written about how early bloomers get a big advantage in terms of coaching and competition in American sports.  

 

the best example of stat dorkery vs eye test and gut feel for things like leadership and other inflatables might be between the two joshes.  rosen had a great pedigree, but some bad attitude red flags.  Allen was no one from no where, but everyone who met him saw him as having a good football temperament.  rosen had polish and great stats vs pac 12 opponents, allen was up and down like a yo yo and didn't consistently dominate much lesser competition.  at the end of it tho, rosen is a petite weak clownshoe of a man with a slender effete neck and the face of a whiny quitter, while allen is man child dynamo with a wide eyed optimism and a contagious spirit.

 

sometimes the eye test really is what counts and stats really are for losers.  the PFF and internet snark football dweebs have egg on their face.  you love to see it!

 

[All_Pro_Bills]

Draft "experts" are not talent evaluators.  They are accumulators of statistics and information.  They looked at Allen's stats and the program he played in and made their conclusions. 

[racketmaster]

First off, the draft has always been a bit of crap shoot and depending on the criteria used to determine a successful draft pick or not it ends up being somewhere around 50% success rate for drafting a quarterback in the first round (might even be lower depending on how high your success standard is). So a lot of people are wrong and it is not that unusual to miss on a prospect, especially a quarterback. I liked EJ when he was coming out and thought he could be an above average starter in the league, especially with the shift in using a quarterback's mobility but it just did not work out (maybe in a different situation he becomes an average starter or maybe it was just a bad draft class with no prospects who were good enough to be franchise quarterbacks). 

 

What makes Allen a little different is that he was such a polarizing prospect. There seemed to be no middle ground and the lines were drawn in the sand on him whether he was going to be good or bad. It was very much like our current political environment where you are basically on one side or another and very few people were in between. When evaluating Allen, I recall being immediately impressed by his size, athleticism and arm talent. I loved his toughness and determination. I loved that he was smart, coachable and was very intrigued with his back story (late bloomer, JUCO route, then Wyoming). You saw that he had little talent to no talent around him his last year at Wyoming and it was all Allen and having to throw into tiny window and playing hero ball because there really was no other option. If you went back and watched his games from the previous year where he threw 28 tds, you saw that he had a little more talent around him and that his play was more productive as a result. However, there was the valid inaccuracy questions and you would see poor mechanics at times and wonder if it was something that could be corrected. So I actually fell into the category of being interested in Allen and hopeful that he could be good but I certainly could not claim that I would have put all my chips on the table in support of him. I recall the debates defending Allen as a prospect and the other side had valid points with the accuracy issues and it would often cast doubts in my mind whether he would actually end up succeeding. I actually thought Darnold would be the safer pick and was hoping that the Bills would land him. After the draft fell the way it did, I was just excited that Denver passed on Allen and that we chose Allen over Rosen (I just thought he was the next Jeff George or Cutler at his best and that was not what I wanted). 

 

After Allen was drafted, here again it was a little unusual as people had become so invested in their "guys" that if you were not an Allen guy you were depressed and had no faith that he would be any good. Usually, your team drafts a qb and most people get on board right away and are hopeful, but not with Allen. People had really went to extremes to trash him in the draft process and it was hard for many to come back from that. Little by little, Allen began earning the trust of his fans and the local media. It was first, his teammates genuinely like and respect him and believe he can be the guy. We knew he was tough and was a more impressive runner than most anybody could have imagined. He had some ability to pass the ball and maybe was not as bad as some thought but still not good enough. Second year Allen did not start out well but he picked up steam and by the end of last year, his critics became mostly silent (at least locally). Silent in that they were now willing to see more for him and not calling for him to be replaced by another draft pick. His biggest critics remained skeptical that he could make the leap to a top tier quarterback but even they saw that he could at least be an average to below average quarterback with his grit, big play arm and running ability. The national media by and large remained more skeptical coming into this year but that is because they don't watch him like we do and go more off narratives that have been assigned to him (classic group thought). Allen had some supporters like Chris Simms but by and large most of the media thought Allen was below average to bad and that it was all the Bills defense that carried this team. They were not totally off base but I think most Bills fans had seen steady progress in Allen and knew his special case background gave us legitimate hope that there was still more inside him. We saw him elevate his game in the 4th quarters of games and knew that this was not something most of his predecessors had done where as they tended to shrink in the biggest moments. And so many were cautiously optimistic that he could become above average this year and there was a significant portion of his fans that believed he could become a top ten quarterback or even a star. And so the first 3 games have happened and as one of those who believed Allen could be a star from the beginning, I can't say that I am surprised by his play but I can say that I did not expect this much of a leap this early in the season. I figured he would get better and better and maybe by the end of this season or next year he could be a top 5 guy but he is playing like that right now. And so at this point, everybody is basically on board with Allen but we also know that there are plenty of people in the national media and even locally that will be quick to turn on him when he has a bad game or two (which is to be expected). Because it is still new and because some people thought Allen would be so bad, he will have to play great for a longer period of time than most in order to get "crowned" a top tier quarterback. And that is okay, if you believe in Allen like I do it does not matter because it is all inevitable. It is just a matter of time before he proves that he is a top 5 qb to the country at large and there will be few doubters. It may take a year or maybe two and for some nothing short of a SB win but I believe in Allen and this organization that at some point in the next 5 years we will be a SB team. Just like many Bills fans, I sleep well at night knowing we have our guy and that is really all that matters. 

Edited October 1, 2020 by racketmaster

[Gordio]

I watched Allen a few times in college and never came away really impressed especially when he would play upper tier opponents like Iowa opening day 2017.  It wasn't pretty.  What kind of changed my thought process about Allen was I was out drinking with my boss around Christmas time and his son & friend came up to meet us.  His friend went to Wyoming.  he told me "don't read too much into Allen's stats, he has no talent around him & throwing to a bunch of walk on receivers."  I started changing my tune about him.  I knew his tangibles were off the chart compared to the other QB's coming out that year.  With that being said, I would of took Rosen.  Glad I was wrong.  

[Chuck Wagon]

It's the difference in a trained scouting mindset vs an internet "draft expert".

 

Professional scouts focus on the things a player CAN do and how can they improve in areas that need help.

 

Internet "experts" focus on what a player CAN'T do.

 

Anytime a former player or someone with a scouting background talked about Allen as a prospect, they gushed about him.  The internet on the other hand focused on his games against P5 teams and said he'll never make it.

 

Frankly I think if the Browns had a stronger stomach and were better run, they would have taken Allen #1 overall, but they got crushed in the media when they floated that and went with Baker.

[mjt328]

Scouting is about applying the known (stats, physical traits, film) and trying to project it into the future.

It's not an exact science.  It's an educated guess.

 

As I've stated before, I don't think the draft experts necessarily "missed" on Josh Allen.  

 

All of the known information they had revealed a raw prospect with elite physical skills, but who needed tons of work on refining his mechanics.  Quarterbacks are always risky.  But even more so with major projects like Allen.  Draft history is loaded with QBs who were fantastic athletes, but couldn't fix their footwork or couldn't learn to process a defense.  EJ Manuel is a great example from right here in Buffalo.  I believe he also had the drive to get better, but it just didn't happen for him.

 

One of my friends is the brother of a scout on the Indianapolis Colts.  We had a conversation during the 2018 offseason, regarding Kirk Cousins as a free agent and the upcoming QB draft.  He stated that Internet analytics guys tend to lean towards the safer prospects (Baker Mayfield, Josh Rosen) who have shown more success at the college level.  But pro scouts tend to lean more towards guys with tremendous upside.  Although guys like Allen are way riskier and take more time/effort to develop, the payoff is much higher if you happen to succeed.  Hit on Mayfield and you have a playoff team.  Hit on Allen and you have a Super Bowl team.

 

[Bulldog]

It is so difficult to assess these college prospects. The elite physical skills can be relatively easy to evaluate - speed, strength. size, etc. However, so much of the game is mental - especially for a position such as quarterback. The most important questions to answer are often the most opaque - how well will the prospect adjust to the speed of the pro game, how well will he learn to read pro defenses, what will his work ethic be after he suddenly has more money than he ever had in his whole life (when he signs his rookie contract), what will his leadership skills be in a locker room and playing field full of men (rather than young college guys), will he driven to accept nothing less than championships or be happy to have achieved becoming an NFL player & achieving financial security?

 

The draft is an art more than it is a science. So many people missed on Josh Allen because the process of reviewing a college QB prospect is fraught with an enormous amount of speculation about personal attributes that are extremely difficult to quantify. Josh Allen checks off all the boxes on the "intangibles" - it took a lot of guts to roll with your feelings about the young guy rather than going with a so called "safer" choice like Josh Rosen. If these intangibles were so easy to evaluate - then Tom Brady & Russell Wilson wouldn't have been bypassed multiple times by every team in the league when they were on the clock for the draft. Kudos to McBeane for having the guts to make the hard choice - now they can reap the benefits that come with it.  And so can we ...

     

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

7 hours ago, Buffalo716 said:

I don't think that is not that he wasn't a running threat. He broke his collarbone his first year at Wyoming running

 

They didn't really run any read options for him his next year, and he only ran off improvisation

 

His Juco running stats are insane

 

It wasn't shown as consistently in college, for whatever reason.  And he's been better in the PROS is what I am getting at. As a rookie he put up the best rushing season since Mike Vick, until Jackson had his season last year. Nobody saw that coming.

 

 

 

 

[jimmy10]

Raw talent and coachability is my guess. 

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

1 hour ago, GreggTX said:

I seriously doubt anyone could have forseen a 12% jump in completion% from year 2 to year 3. I've been watching football for 60 years and I've never seen a QB do that before. What Josh is doing now is unique, not his numbers  but the improvement.

 

Josh "Anomaly" Allen

 

 

[Rick 'r Mortis]

My take...they did not 'miss' anything. They were spot on. Watch games from his first year...hell, read posts on this board from his first year.

He's improved, big time. While others like Rosen and that guy for the Jets look terrible to bad. Things change and I believe a big part is Josh's competitiveness.

[Just Joshin']

The case study is on why Allen is successful and Rosen is not.

 

IMO it comes down to what is hard to manage: attitude, coach ability, leadership and desire.  Allen is rich in these qualities while Rosen is bankrupt.