Will other teams make draft mistakes because of Josh?

[Albany,n.y.]

2 hours ago, Muppy said:

QB evaluators make their analysis and then choose whom they think will be a valid starter in the league long term. It of course is no exact science. They can't measure work ethic, coachability, willingness to learn and apply what they learn, football intelligence.....yes they can measure height but they cant measure a guys pride or heart either. What Josh Allen has is not only the physical tangibles but the mental and psychological intangibles PLUS the Right coaching, mentorship and surrounding cast to make his success more possible.

 

I give HIM the credit for the hard work along with willingness and natural ability to become a franchise QB for our team. Would this have been the case in a different franchise? Im glad and hope we never have to find out....career in WNY baby he's OURS. HA!

 

Actually,  you can measure work ethic, coachability, willingness to learn, and football intelligence.   The Bills interviewed Josh 3 times- Senior Bowl, in Wyoming and in Buffalo putting him through mental as well as physical drills in at least the two visits to Wyoming and Buffalo.  They talked not only with him but with his coaches.  They looked at him on the sidelines interacting with teammates. They reviewed every play in college.  They did due diligence that many clubs don't do.  If this group had scouted either Ryan Leaf or Jamarcus Russell they would have rejected both of them.  Here are stories I've heard on both of those busts.  At the combine Leaf showed up out of shape and blew off the Colts who had the top pick.  After Leaf was drafted and the Chargers were asking him to come to SD to be introduced, he told them he was partying in Las Vegas and he would come when he was ready, not when they asked him to.  The Russell story is from his Raiders days.  He was so lazy they gave him a test.  They gave him a video tape and asked him to watch it.  When they asked if he watched it he said he did-he didn't and the reason the Raiders knew he didn't was because the tape was blank.  This staff would have caught the 2 busts flaws during the draft process.  Their due diligence allowed them to properly evaluate intangibles that another team might miss.

[YoloinOhio]

2 minutes ago, Albany,n.y. said:

Actually,  you can measure work ethic, coachability, willingness to learn, and football intelligence.   The Bills interviewed Josh 3 times- Senior Bowl, in Wyoming and in Buffalo putting him through mental as well as physical drills in at least the two visits to Wyoming and Buffalo.  They talked not only with him but with his coaches.  They looked at him on the sidelines interacting with teammates. They reviewed every play in college.  They did due diligence that many clubs don't do.  If this group had scouted either Ryan Leaf or Jamarcus Russell they would have rejected both of them.  Here are stories I've heard on both of those busts.  At the combine Leaf showed up out of shape and blew off the Colts who had the top pick.  After Leaf was drafted and the Chargers were asking him to come to SD to be introduced, he told them he was partying in Las Vegas and he would come when he was ready, not when they asked him to.  The Russell story is from his Raiders days.  He was so lazy they gave him a test.  They gave him a video tape and asked him to watch it.  When they asked if he watched it he said he did-he didn't and the reason the Raiders knew he didn't was because the tape was blank.  This staff would have caught the 2 busts flaws during the draft process.  Their due diligence allowed them to properly evaluate intangibles that another team might miss.

There are stories about mayfield and Rosen as well that I believe would have dropped them off of the Bills board. I don’t know if they were dropped, but I would bet that they were. 

[Charles Romes]

I laugh every time I hear how the organization gave Josh the perfect environment to succeed. They did everything to destroy his career his rookie year surrounding him garbage that is essentially entirely out of the league just two years later. The starting veteran quarterback was Nate Peterman and the number one receiver was Kelvin Benjamin.The fact that Josh somehow made it through when given nothing is just another testament to Josh’s greatness.  

[C.Biscuit97]

I still think the prospect with Allen’s profile in college will fail far majority of the time. The Bills’ front office, to their extreme credit, found a 🦄 that is somehow a better quarterback in the NFL than he was at Wyoming.  I have never been happier to have my doubts proven wrong. 

[Bruffalo]

11 minutes ago, Charles Romes said:

I laugh every time I hear how the organization gave Josh the perfect environment to succeed. They did everything to destroy his career his rookie year surrounding him garbage that is essentially entirely out of the league just two years later. The starting veteran quarterback was Nate Peterman and the number one receiver was Kelvin Benjamin.The fact that Josh somehow made it through when given nothing is just another testament to Josh’s greatness.  

 

I'm going to bet that they weren't planning on putting in Allen during his rookie year at all.

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

Because of is an odd take. He is another data point  in a high stakes process of trying to predict the future.  But josh isn’t the only unicorn here. Russ is one, Brady, Brees... Big Ben went to Miami of Ohio.

 

any time these guys end up great they are unicorns.
 

Just like turbunski isnt. See Mahommes draft concerns They  read like Joshs : 

 

Biggest concerns:

• Plays undisciplined too often.
• Inconsistent footwork, loses his base but tends to make up for it with his arm.
• Tendency to drift in the pocket in all directions when it’s not necessary.
• Bad habit of breaking from clean pockets too early when the pass rush dictates him to stay in there.
• Forces too many throws and tries for the hero play too often.
• Steep learning curve 

[Sammy Watkins' Rib]

4 hours ago, Watkins101 said:

 

Love was not drafted because of Josh Allen. Josh Allen had not even shown to be a franchise Qb by the time that Love was drafted. I don’t think Allen was even a driver in the decision to draft Love.

 

I think he could have been a bit of a driver. Allen was basically either going to be a huge bust or a success. Even by the end of last season it was obvious Allen was not a massive bust. He wasn't the MVP caliber QB he is today but he had already guaranteed  himself not being a huge bust. Packers could have evaluated Love and thought, "this guys is better right now than when Allen came out and he has the same upside. Allen didn't bust so good chance Love won't bust either"

1 hour ago, Charles Romes said:

I laugh every time I hear how the organization gave Josh the perfect environment to succeed. They did everything to destroy his career his rookie year surrounding him garbage that is essentially entirely out of the league just two years later. The starting veteran quarterback was Nate Peterman and the number one receiver was Kelvin Benjamin.The fact that Josh somehow made it through when given nothing is just another testament to Josh’s greatness.  

 

So true. Thank God they turned that around quickly!

[DabillsDaBillsDaBills]

I think Lamar Jackson would be the perfect example of a team making a "mistake" by drafting a future QB with similar skillset. 

 

Jackson is 27-7 as a starter and won league MVP in his 2nd season. I do not think his success will be long term, and I would be shocked if he wins a superbowl.

 

The next example would be Patrick Mahomes. Another QB who won league MVP in his 2nd season (and a SB mvp in 3rd season to go with it). I think his success will be long term, and I'd be surprised if he doesn't win multiple superbowls. He's really the prototype for "mostly unproven college QB from an unusual school with lots of potential". Josh will always be second fiddle to Mahomes unless (until?) he wins league MVPS and superbowl MVPs. 

 

TLDR:

Allen's success (to this point) will absolutely NOT make other teams make draft mistakes

 

 

[Norcalbillsfan]

I think Wentz had some factor with Allen going higher on draft boards. I know Wentz doesn't look great right now, but everyone was skeptical about eagles drafting unproven qb from small college, then he was lighting up the NFL. Then comes along josh from a small college. I think the haters would have been alot louder draft day if there wasn't a Wentz in the league proving small school QBs can be franchise guys at the time Allen was drafted.

54 minutes ago, DabillsDaBillsDaBills said:

I think Lamar Jackson would be the perfect example of a team making a "mistake" by drafting a future QB with similar skillset. 

 

Jackson is 27-7 as a starter and won league MVP in his 2nd season. I do not think his success will be long term, and I would be shocked if he wins a superbowl.

 

The next example would be Patrick Mahomes. Another QB who won league MVP in his 2nd season (and a SB mvp in 3rd season to go with it). I think his success will be long term, and I'd be surprised if he doesn't win multiple superbowls. He's really the prototype for "mostly unproven college QB from an unusual school with lots of potential". Josh will always be second fiddle to Mahomes unless (until?) he wins league MVPS and superbowl MVPs. 

 

TLDR:

Allen's success (to this point) will absolutely NOT make other teams make draft mistakes

 

 

Agreed, I think jackson at some points limits the ravens.

[eball]

7 hours ago, Ethan in Portland said:

 

Just to be clear the same organization drafted and same coaching staff started Nathan Peterman

 

In the FIFTH round. Not sure why that fact belongs in this thread. 

[eball]

2 hours ago, C.Biscuit97 said:

I still think the prospect with Allen’s profile in college will fail far majority of the time. The Bills’ front office, to their extreme credit, found a 🦄 that is somehow a better quarterback in the NFL than he was at Wyoming.  I have never been happier to have my doubts proven wrong. 

You still don’t get it, or maybe you’re just not smart enough to understand it. The answer is in your own post. Allen is rare; his “profile” is not common. How many guys who didn’t grow up playing QB and had to solicit college offers even make it to a D1 program to begin with? You took the lazy way out looking at stats (like so many others) and didn’t do the digging that the Bills obviously did. And worse, even after seeing Allen’s jump from Y1 to Y2 you were still one of those predicting he had reached his peak. And you made fun of those of us who saw and predicted continuing improvement. I’m glad you’re “happy” to have been proven wrong because man, you were dead wrong, and a jerk in the process. 

[Thurman#1]

6 hours ago, msw2112 said:

 

Yes, but...I believe EJ Manuel, JP Losman and Trent Edwards were all coachable.  Despite different personalities, all three (I believe) were hard-working kids that wanted to improve.  They all lacked some of the key traits required to be a consistent, successful starting NFL QB, or had some kind of experience that threw off their development and they never recovered.  (Edwards had the concussion in the AZ game, EJ had Kevin Kolb slipping on a rubber mat in training camp forcing him to be a starter before he was ready, and Losman had the drafting/competition with Edwards - Losman had a full semi-successful year as a starter after his broken leg, so I don't count that).

 

I don't think any of these 3 had close to the package of skills that Allen has, which will make him one of the best in the business, but if one or all of them had come along during the McDermott/Daboll Bills of the last 3 years, do you think any of them might have become a serviceable NFL starter?

 

 

IMO ... pure opinion and I recognize that ... Edwards and Losman might have made it under better conditions, Edwards maybe in particular.

 

If someone disagrees, I would totally respect that.

[Thurman#1]

3 hours ago, Charles Romes said:

I laugh every time I hear how the organization gave Josh the perfect environment to succeed. They did everything to destroy his career his rookie year surrounding him garbage that is essentially entirely out of the league just two years later. The starting veteran quarterback was Nate Peterman and the number one receiver was Kelvin Benjamin.The fact that Josh somehow made it through when given nothing is just another testament to Josh’s greatness.  

 

 

Come on. Nobody thinks he had "the perfect environment." Not even now. What they gave him was an environment where he was supposed to sit the first year while they were deep in the trough of that rebuild, and after that gave him consistent year-by-year improvement in the players around him. An environment that now has become excellent.

 

Beane has admitted that they screwed up the QB situation that first year, saying that when they got rid of McCarron they should have brought in Anderson immediately at that point.

 

 

[muppy]

4 hours ago, Albany,n.y. said:

Actually,  you can measure work ethic, coachability, willingness to learn, and football intelligence.   The Bills interviewed Josh 3 times- Senior Bowl, in Wyoming and in Buffalo putting him through mental as well as physical drills in at least the two visits to Wyoming and Buffalo.  They talked not only with him but with his coaches.  They looked at him on the sidelines interacting with teammates. They reviewed every play in college.  They did due diligence that many clubs don't do.  If this group had scouted either Ryan Leaf or Jamarcus Russell they would have rejected both of them.  Here are stories I've heard on both of those busts.  At the combine Leaf showed up out of shape and blew off the Colts who had the top pick.  After Leaf was drafted and the Chargers were asking him to come to SD to be introduced, he told them he was partying in Las Vegas and he would come when he was ready, not when they asked him to.  The Russell story is from his Raiders days.  He was so lazy they gave him a test.  They gave him a video tape and asked him to watch it.  When they asked if he watched it he said he did-he didn't and the reason the Raiders knew he didn't was because the tape was blank.  This staff would have caught the 2 busts flaws during the draft process.  Their due diligence allowed them to properly evaluate intangibles that another team might miss.

thank you for the clarification and insight you gave. I guess in reply I would say that the things I  said can't be evaluated I should have said they cant know how far those positive attributes  will go as a professional QB to advance his game. And to what extent those attributes will make him a franchise level guy. . If it were an exact science there would be no busts and QB's that were hard working, coachable and teachable would all excel but of course not all do. Desire isnt the entire story.  I read someone call Josh Allen a Unicorn in just how much he improved from when he was drafted. To use a draft term Josh Allens "ceiling" was seen as high as well as his potential floor Low. I think now the consensus is he may have blown off the ceiling 😉 Are there many Josh Allen types around? Yeah Id say thats a definite No. If there were it wouldnt have taken the Bills 20 years to find him.

[Thurman#1]

57 minutes ago, eball said:

You still don’t get it, or maybe you’re just not smart enough to understand it. The answer is in your own post. Allen is rare; his “profile” is not common. How many guys who didn’t grow up playing QB and had to solicit college offers even make it to a D1 program to begin with? You took the lazy way out looking at stats (like so many others) and didn’t do the digging that the Bills obviously did. And worse, even after seeing Allen’s jump from Y1 to Y2 you were still one of those predicting he had reached his peak. And you made fun of those of us who saw and predicted continuing improvement. I’m glad you’re “happy” to have been proven wrong because man, you were dead wrong, and a jerk in the process. 

 

 

Rare guys fail too. I haven't followed the argument here, I'm purely reacting to your post here.

 

And yeah, his profile isn't common. But Wentz and Kaepernick are much the same kinds of rare, in terms of coming out of small programs and being hard workers.

 

At that level, everyone's rare. While there are certainly types, these guys are all individual, all quite different and rare.

 

I thought well before the Bills drafted him that he would have a shot, and that he was worth a top ten pick. I even thought the Bills might (not "would," I'm not that smart) take him because of the Newton comparisons and how they'd brought Cam along in Carolina. I didn't judge him by stats. But pretty much everyone out there runs a very real risk of failure. Maybe a tiny fraction of guys seem like sure things, the Andrew Lucks and Peyton Mannings, but just about nobody else. Things can go wrong.

 

Or right. It's not as predictable as people like to think. And IMO an extremely large part of it is putting the guy in a good environment.

 

What good drafters (and Beane certainly does appear to be a good drafter) do is maximize the chances they get the right guy and then support the hell out of him. But none of that is any guarantee. The single thing you can't know is how well a guy can adapt to processing huge amounts of information, and making extremely good decisions in extremely short periods of time. College guys see greatly simplified situations, offenses and defenses and slower athletes. There's no way to know how the decision-making will go. Some guys with terrific leadership, commitment and work habits never develop that extremely rare ability.

[Thurman#1]

7 hours ago, Ethan in Portland said:

Say what??? He started 25 games in college.  Most QB prospects only play two years of college.  Joe Burrow 28 starts. Kyle Murray 14 starts.

 

 

Yes. But he was still raw, without question. And that isn't some new assertion, it's been the consensus, and the correct one, since before the draft process.

 

Raw has a lot of components. It can't be reduced to just games played. Josh was raw as a saddle sore.

 

But he developed.

Edited December 17, 2020 by Thurman#1

[cage]

4 hours ago, Charles Romes said:

I laugh every time I hear how the organization gave Josh the perfect environment to succeed. They did everything to destroy his career his rookie year surrounding him garbage that is essentially entirely out of the league just two years later. The starting veteran quarterback was Nate Peterman and the number one receiver was Kelvin Benjamin.The fact that Josh somehow made it through when given nothing is just another testament to Josh’s greatness.  

 

To say nothing of not having a qualified QB coach (David Culley had been a WR coach), nor a veteran in the QB room (Derek Anderson brought in later in season).  

[GunnerBill]

6 hours ago, YoloinOhio said:

There are stories about mayfield and Rosen as well that I believe would have dropped them off of the Bills board. I don’t know if they were dropped, but I would bet that they were. 

 

I posted on here after the draft that I was told categorically neither were on the Bills board by draft day. The Bills wanted Josh Allen or Sam Darnold. 

[Chandler#81]

12 hours ago, BisonMan said:

We've heard it over and over again. Josh Allen's growth from year 2 to year 3 is unprecedented. Nonetheless, it's likely that teams will look to repeat the Bills' formula by picking a QB with the dreaded "potential" without seeming to understand the internal and environmental factors that allowed Allen to thrive. 

 

Internal

Aside from his physical skills, Allen has two traits that have allowed him to have this massive improvement. First, Allen has a massive chip on his shoulders after being turned down by every college program when he came out of high school and got only one offer after his stint in JUCO. People think Tom Brady has a chip because he was drafted so late coming out of Michigan? Josh has been carrying this chip on his shoulder since high school. Second, Allen is a lot more studious a QB than people have given him credit for. His smarts have allowed him the ability learn more quickly than a lot of other players who never seem to "get it". Even this year, Allen has adjusted to changing defensive strategies to win games down the stretch. His drive has also allowed him to work more on his "craft" to become a better thrower of the ball. 

 

Environmental

The Bills obviously have a very strong coaching staff and culture. That allows players the support they need to mature and learn. The team also has put in the pieces around him to allow him to succeed and grow with what his potential allows. He's often compared to Roethlisberger, but Pittsburgh surrounded Ben with a strong running game to protect his lack of skills early in his career. The Bills created an environment to stretch Allen's skills. 

 

I can see other teams with a weaker culture and less stable management reaching for QBs with "potential" in the coming years to find a Josh Allen but his background, internal drive and skillset are very hard to replicate. Add to that, the difficulty of creating the right team around him makes what the Bills have done, very unique in my memory. I don't really see a ceiling for Allen at this point. He could easily get even better with more experience. 

 

Other teams should be very wary of trying to replicate what has happened in Buffalo. I see a lot of mistakes being made in the coming years with teams chasing the next Josh Allen.

Something can’t be very unique. It’s either unique or it isn’t.

You're Welcome.

 

[SlimShady'sSpaceForce]

58 minutes ago, Chandler#81 said:

Something can’t be very unique. It’s either unique or it isn’t.

You're Welcome.

 

 

Uniquely unique then?