If Allen redshirted in 2018

[SydneyBillsFan]

I started thinking about his trajectory from year one to year three and compared it to Mahomes, who had the luxury of sitting behind Alex Smith in his first year.

 

What if he didn't get thrown to the wolves in game one at Baltimore?

 

What if we retained Tyrod and had him sit for the entire year?

 

Would that have benefited or hindered his development?

[BillsFan130]

I certainly don’t see how that would benefit him based on his play this year.
 

He’s an MVP candidate 

[FireChans]

Hindered. Josh needed to throw the ball all over the field to figure it out.

 

Playing ball control and having your young QB throw 18 passes a game is bad for development.

 

You want your QB throwing 30-40 times a game. Let him find his own rhythm. Find what guys he trusts in big moments.

 

Daboll got crushed for letting Josh sling it last year, and now Josh is slinging it for real.  Why? Because he learned how.

[CEN-CAL17]

Josh is fine. If you’re drawing this conclusion based on last night against the best team in the NFL that ain’t fair....

 

Remember he was dominating teams at times this year. With a mediocre oline at times, zero running game and questionable play calling.

 

Even last night my buddy asked...”he has zero time to throw the ball, but yet the WRs are all running 15 yards down the field, why not run crossing routes, rub routes and quick hitched every other play?”

 

I said Dabolls system doesn’t really do that, team can’t even run a RB screen even though they blitzed like mad men!!!

 

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by CEN-CAL17

[Thurman#1]

No thanks on Tyrod, but yeah, IMO a redshirt year would have served him well. I wish they'd brought in Anderson and Barkley earlier.

 

Josh has still made amazing progress. But that first year he had to spend a lot of time on specific game plans and such rather than spend time on the more global things Mahomes was able to work hard on his first year, like mechanics, HT diagnose defenses, dropbacks, etc.

 

Benefitted.

 

No, you absolutely do NOT need to throw to learn and get better. That's nonsense. Rodgers and Mahomes are only two of many examples of guys who learned what they needed to know without being in the game and throwing.

Edited January 26, 2021 by Thurman#1

[K-9]

Sure, redshirting him a year would have been great...if he had Hill, Kelce, Hunt, and two Pro Bowl tackles waiting for him. Instead, Allen had NO receivers and a putrid O line. 

[The Jokeman]

3 hours ago, SydneyBillsFan said:

I started thinking about his trajectory from year one to year three and compared it to Mahomes, who had the luxury of sitting behind Alex Smith in his first year.

 

What if he didn't get thrown to the wolves in game one at Baltimore?

 

What if we retained Tyrod and had him sit for the entire year?

 

Would that have benefited or hindered his development?

Hindered. If he didn't play he wouldn't have known to work on to improve in the off-season.

[Mike in Horseheads]

Tyrod seems to get replaced by rookie QBs wherever he goes, that says it all.

[billsfan89]

I think no matter what 2018 was a doomed year, even if the team had Tyrod or a better QB option in front of Josh it is most likely Josh would have gotten 6 to 10 starts that year. That season would have been lost half way in or just about and then you have to put the rookie in to see what you got. 

[78thealltimegreat]

4 hours ago, SydneyBillsFan said:

I started thinking about his trajectory from year one to year three and compared it to Mahomes, who had the luxury of sitting behind Alex Smith in his first year.

 

What if he didn't get thrown to the wolves in game one at Baltimore?

 

What if we retained Tyrod and had him sit for the entire year?

 

Would that have benefited or hindered his development?

Yes but he got thrown to the wolves cause they where so bad under Peterman that there where whispers of McDermott getting fired if he didn’t start him 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

4 hours ago, SydneyBillsFan said:

I started thinking about his trajectory from year one to year three and compared it to Mahomes, who had the luxury of sitting behind Alex Smith in his first year.

 

What if he didn't get thrown to the wolves in game one at Baltimore?

 

What if we retained Tyrod and had him sit for the entire year?

 

Would that have benefited or hindered his development?

 

That's a really good question.

 

I think it would have hindered his development, but it would have possibly prevented or reduced some of the press narratives about Mr. Inaccurate.

 

I think a year of sitting helped Mahomes tremendously because he was brought into a playoff team.  They'd gone to the playoffs 3 of the previous 4 years under Reid with Smith as his QB.  They had a lot of their offensive weapons - Hill, Kelce, Robinson, and Hunt of course (though that didn't work out long term).  Mahomes got to watch a capable NFL QB have a career year in passing yards, TDs, INTs etc.  He got to see how he prepared, how he handled calling protections, how he went through his reads and progressions, all that stuff.  Meanwhile he worked on his passing mechanics.

 

Even if he sat behind Tyrod Taylor, Allen would not have had that chance to watch a mature offense captained by a proficient NFL pocket passer setting protections and going through his progressions.  That's not who Taylor was.  They tried to see if he could be that guy in 2017 and the conclusion was "he couldn't".

 

Also I think Allen's head was in a different space.  He'd come up scrapping and being told what he couldn't do, then doing it.  He needed to actually play and see for himself what he could and couldn't do to be able to process and improve.  Essentially I think he needed a bit of the "School of Hard Knocks".