Josh Allen’s bad two years

[vanhalen26]

Josh was supposed to watch year 1, can’t hold that year against him.

[Shaw66]

On 3/25/2022 at 1:44 PM, Logic said:

I haven't read through this entire thread. Maybe this has already been said, but...

To me, it's simple.

When people talk about Josh's "bad first two years", they tend to forget two key things:

1.) Josh was sushi raw coming out. Didn't get much QB coaching at Wyoming. Had tons of mechanical flaws. Never did the 7-on-7 camps or had the private QB tutors.

This fact alone gets overlooked by so many who want to compare their young QB's first two years to Josh's first two years. Take Tua, for instance. Tua DID have all the 7-on-7 camps, the tutors, the great coaching at a big time school, etc. He -- and most other young QBs that get drafted highly -- were much closer to finished products than Josh Allen. Not NEARLY as raw as Josh. The sheer amount of growth and improvement he needed coming into the league was pretty rare for a 1st round pick.

2.) In both his 1st and 2nd seasons, Josh showed flashes of transcendent physical talent and will/leadership that couldn't necessarily be quantified in statistics. People like to look at Josh's stats his first two years vs the stats of their young QB and make a direct comparison. It wasn't ABOUT stats with Josh, though. We KNOW a lot of his stats (completion %, for instance) stunk. It was about the throws he made. The runs he made. The plays he made that made you jump out of your seat because you couldn't believe what you had just seen. The leadership and will and grit he showed on numerous occasions. You saw flashes where you went "wow...if he can round off the rough edges and make those good plays more routinely, he'll be an all-time great".

So my questions to people who are touting their young third year QBs, Tua or whomever, are as follows: Can you honestly say that your guy has as high a physical ceiling as Josh Allen? That he came into the league needing as much refinement as Josh? And more importantly, this: Forget the statistics. Did you see, with your own eyes, specific plays throughout the first two years that give you hope that this guy can be THE guy? 

Josh was an extremely rare case at QB. An absolute anomaly. But to the surprise of just about no one, he has become the case that everyone looks to in order to justify their faith in their own young QB. Lots and lots of teams are going to get burned expecting Allen-like progression. Dude's a unicorn.

First, I gotta say, this is fabulous.  This description of the early Josh experience captures the story.   Great stuff. 

 

To add a couple of thoughts:  As to your 1), that's a great point.  I mean, he'd played and been coached, and he'd had a fair amount of success, so it's not like he was 'Liza Doolittle.  Still, he had never been pushed to his potential, and that's unlike most everyone else coming out.   Baker Mayfield is the perfect example of some guys coming out of the big colleges.  

 

As to 2), absolutely!  The REASON he finally made it to junior college, and the REASON he made it to Division I, was that the kid did amazing things and his teams won more than their share.  He was so unpolished, people thought he was a hopeless hick from the sticks, but there were just enough coaches who saw the amazing things and thought, "I can do something with that."  

 

It amazes me now to think at the draft, the Browns, the Giants, the Jets, and Broncs all failed to see it.  

 

Who knows what the future will bring - all kinds of things could happen as Josh's story unfolds.  But from where we sit today, Josh is looking like he's going to be an all-time great, in the top 5 or top 10 discussions.   I like Mahomes, of course, but the only guy I see being that kind of transcendent talent is Deshaun Watson.  

 

Again, great post. 

[ganesh]

5 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

First, I gotta say, this is fabulous.  This description of the early Josh experience captures the story.   Great stuff. 

 

To add a couple of thoughts:  As to your 1), that's a great point.  I mean, he'd played and been coached, and he'd had a fair amount of success, so it's not like he was 'Liza Doolittle.  Still, he had never been pushed to his potential, and that's unlike most everyone else coming out.   Baker Mayfield is the perfect example of some guys coming out of the big colleges.  

 

As to 2), absolutely!  The REASON he finally made it to junior college, and the REASON he made it to Division I, was that the kid did amazing things and his teams won more than their share.  He was so unpolished, people thought he was a hopeless hick from the sticks, but there were just enough coaches who saw the amazing things and thought, "I can do something with that."  

 

It amazes me now to think at the draft, the Browns, the Giants, the Jets, and Broncs all failed to see it.  

 

Who knows what the future will bring - all kinds of things could happen as Josh's story unfolds.  But from where we sit today, Josh is looking like he's going to be an all-time great, in the top 5 or top 10 discussions.   I like Mahomes, of course, but the only guy I see being that kind of transcendent talent is Deshaun Watson.  

 

Again, great post. 

Mel Kiper had many several good reasons (on draft day)

 

* Accuracy - Allen threw only an average of 25 times a game whereas the big guns threw 40 times a game...The margin of error on completion % for Allen was way too high.

* Success - Wyoming lost multiple players on offense to the NFL in Josh's senior year.  You cannot load up in Wyoming.  

* The kid has heart and works very hard at his craft.  He is a best fit for the city of Buffalo

 

* 

[SoTier]

On 3/25/2022 at 1:44 PM, Logic said:

I haven't read through this entire thread. Maybe this has already been said, but...

To me, it's simple.

When people talk about Josh's "bad first two years", they tend to forget two key things:

1.) Josh was sushi raw coming out. Didn't get much QB coaching at Wyoming. Had tons of mechanical flaws. Never did the 7-on-7 camps or had the private QB tutors.

This fact alone gets overlooked by so many who want to compare their young QB's first two years to Josh's first two years. Take Tua, for instance. Tua DID have all the 7-on-7 camps, the tutors, the great coaching at a big time school, etc. He -- and most other young QBs that get drafted highly -- were much closer to finished products than Josh Allen. Not NEARLY as raw as Josh. The sheer amount of growth and improvement he needed coming into the league was pretty rare for a 1st round pick.

2.) In both his 1st and 2nd seasons, Josh showed flashes of transcendent physical talent and will/leadership that couldn't necessarily be quantified in statistics. People like to look at Josh's stats his first two years vs the stats of their young QB and make a direct comparison. It wasn't ABOUT stats with Josh, though. We KNOW a lot of his stats (completion %, for instance) stunk. It was about the throws he made. The runs he made. The plays he made that made you jump out of your seat because you couldn't believe what you had just seen. The leadership and will and grit he showed on numerous occasions. You saw flashes where you went "wow...if he can round off the rough edges and make those good plays more routinely, he'll be an all-time great".

So my questions to people who are touting their young third year QBs, Tua or whomever, are as follows: Can you honestly say that your guy has as high a physical ceiling as Josh Allen? That he came into the league needing as much refinement as Josh? And more importantly, this: Forget the statistics. Did you see, with your own eyes, specific plays throughout the first two years that give you hope that this guy can be THE guy? 

Josh was an extremely rare case at QB. An absolute anomaly. But to the surprise of just about no one, he has become the case that everyone looks to in order to justify their faith in their own young QB. Lots and lots of teams are going to get burned expecting Allen-like progression. Dude's a unicorn.

 

Absolutely true.  There's not a single QB drafted since 2000 who has progressed as much as Allen did in his first three seasons -- and then he put together 2021. 

 

I think the only 2 QBs since 2000 who rival Allen from where they started and where they ended are Tom Brady and Tony Romo.   Brady came in more polished than Allen but as a sixth round pick, it remains remarkable that he was able to make the most of his opportunity.  Matt Cassell, another QB drafted late by the Patriots a few years later, also got a chance to start as a rookie/sophomore QB just as Bray had but failed to develop.  Romo was an UDFA who spent 2 or 3 years learning to be a QB, including revamping his mechanics as Allen did, before he became the Cowboys' starter but he was never as good as Allen is now.

 

On 3/25/2022 at 3:42 PM, BullBuchanan said:

There is some real "hindsight is 20-20" here. Allen was pretty terrible throwing the football his rookie year. He missed passes by miles and had terrible judgment. His legs kept him alive. His second year was a modest improvement but was still filled with entirely too many erratic and frustrating plays. Had Allen never taken his year three jump, it's a lot more likely that we would have been in the Watson sweepstakes, than looking forward to having one of the brightest stars in the game for the foreseeable future.

I'm as ecstatic as anyone that he turned into the player that he did, but it took the greatest growth trend in the history of NFL QB play to get him here. To act like this was a forgone conclusion based off his rookie year is ridiculous.

 

A lot of posters have dissed your post but I think you are spot on.   As Bills fans, we watched every Allen play for signs of him having "it", so we saw "evidence" of it everywhere so we weren't nearly as "surprised" by Allen's development into an elite QB as observers who were less emotionally invested in him.  

 

For myself, I continue to be amazed by just how good Allen has become.  I have been a Bills fan for more than half a century.   The Bills again having a top level QB as good as Jim Kelly always seemed like a pipe dream.  It's still hard for me to get my mind around the fact that the Bills have one of the very best QBs in the NFL.

[BullBuchanan]

On 3/25/2022 at 3:52 PM, Shaw66 said:

No, it isn't, and wasn't ridiculous.  I was pretty much sold after his rookie year, and I wasn't alone. 

No, you weren't alone. You had Alpha and MJS and a few other guys around here. Allen's rookie year was objectively bad in every measurable way.

In order to be sold on Allen after his rookie year, you had to predict the single greatest year 3 improvement in NFL history. That's not hyperbole - it's what happened, and it's the reason he's a great player now.  If we ended up with the rookie version of Allen that never had that greatest improvement in history, he'd be on a practice squad somewhere by now.

If your judgment hinges on needing something to happen that's never happened before, you're going to be very wrong a lot more than you're going to be right.

[BullBuchanan]

On 3/25/2022 at 5:30 PM, CincyBillsFan said:

And yet a lot of his passes that were completed were jaw dropping throws.  That is what everyone is talking about here. 

 

I thought Allen was the best QB in that draft but like a lot of folks I was worried because so many of the experts were trashing him.  Then I watched every game his rookie season and came away feeling really good that the Bills had their guy. And I had that feeling not because he missed easy throws and made head scratching decisions, which he did by the boatload, but the throws he made - HOLY COW. 

 

 

What separates the guys that make it from the guys that don't aren't the exciting plays though, it's the routine plays. JP Losman has a  hell of a highlight reel, so does Fitzpatrick. Even EJ Manuel put together some great plays. Every bills fan was excited by the big plays, and everyone wanted Josh to be great because we bet the future of the franchise on him. That biased lens makes it really easy to look back when he was throwing terrible picks and missing routine plays and say that you knew it would all come together. You didn't. You hoped it would, because you had to.

I hoped Trent Edwards was going to turn into Joe Montana.

[HappyDays]

4 minutes ago, BullBuchanan said:

In order to be sold on Allen after his rookie year, you had to predict the single greatest year 3 improvement in NFL history.

 

No, you just had to bet that his upwards trajectory from training camp to week 17 would continue, and that the elite plays combined with steady improvement would eventually turn him into a franchise QB. There was clear and measurable improvement over the course of his rookie season. There was no reason to think that improvement would stop. His rookie season wasn't enough to predict that he would be in the conversation for best QB in the NFL in 3 years, but him becoming a starting caliber QB was very much a a reasonable prediction. It was just a matter of how far he would go. Some fans chose to ignore the improvement and assume his progress would stop for no discernible reason.

[HappyDays]

17 minutes ago, BullBuchanan said:

If your judgment hinges on needing something to happen that's never happened before, you're going to be very wrong a lot more than you're going to be right.

 

But what we discovered about Allen is that a QB like him is as rare as can be. Others that came before him don't matter. I'm not talking about the physical traits. I'm talking about the indomitable will to be great. The only other QB I have seen with Allen's level of determination is Tom Brady. If you didn't factor that into your evaluation of him after his rookie season then you were ignoring the human element that turns really good athletes into great athletes. A lot of failed QBs worked hard relative to the general population, but Allen's work ethic and practice habits could be defined as clinically insane. Combine that mental side with the elite physical traits and his ascension was predictable if not likely.

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by HappyDays

[Orlando Buffalo]

On 3/25/2022 at 3:42 PM, BullBuchanan said:

There is some real "hindsight is 20-20" here. Allen was pretty terrible throwing the football his rookie year. He missed passes by miles and had terrible judgment. His legs kept him alive. His second year was a modest improvement but was still filled with entirely too many erratic and frustrating plays. Had Allen never taken his year three jump, it's a lot more likely that we would have been in the Watson sweepstakes, than looking forward to having one of the brightest stars in the game for the foreseeable future.

I'm as ecstatic as anyone that he turned into the player that he did, but it took the greatest growth trend in the history of NFL QB play to get him here. To act like this was a forgone conclusion based off his rookie year is ridiculous.

If you watched him the last 4 games of his rookie year it was clear he was improving at a rapid rate. His first 4 we're awful, but generally you don't throw a raw player in with a garbage team who can't protect him, can't run without him, and drop the ball when he gets it to them. The offense without him went 3 games in a row with only 20 pts total. Lastly he was responsible for 5 tds the last week, which many recognized as his coming out party, apparently you missed it 

[Ralonzo]

From early on Allen did things like hard counts and try to take advantage of the Offside for big plays. He was always a QB, not an athlete with an arm being a dilettante at the position.

 

Dont practice till you get it right - practice till you can’t get it wrong.

[BullBuchanan]

1 hour ago, HappyDays said:

 

But what we discovered about Allen is that a QB like him is as rare as can be. Others that came before him don't matter. I'm not talking about the physical traits. I'm talking about the indomitable will to be great. The only other QB I have seen with Allen's level of determination is Tom Brady. If you didn't factor that into your evaluation of him after his rookie season then you were ignoring the human element that turns really good athletes into great athletes. A lot of failed QBs worked hard relative to the general population, but Allen's work ethic and practice habits could be defined as clinically insane. Combine that mental side with the elite physical traits and his ascension was predictable if not likely.

 

There's no argument about what he's become or why - just what folks were saying and thinking 3-4 years ago.

Was Allen's indomitable will to be great a major theme among coaches, analysts or a meaningful number of folks around here in 2018? If it was, I sure don't remember it that way.

I t would have been pretty interesting to hear, because he hadn't ever been great. He wasn't great in high school, he wasn't great in college and he wasn't great in 2018 or 2019 in the NFL. What he did to get to this point is unprecedented and I think acting like you saw it coming the whole time diminishes the significance of the achievement.

[Shaw66]

3 hours ago, BullBuchanan said:

No, you weren't alone. You had Alpha and MJS and a few other guys around here. Allen's rookie year was objectively bad in every measurable way.

In order to be sold on Allen after his rookie year, you had to predict the single greatest year 3 improvement in NFL history. That's not hyperbole - it's what happened, and it's the reason he's a great player now.  If we ended up with the rookie version of Allen that never had that greatest improvement in history, he'd be on a practice squad somewhere by now.

If your judgment hinges on needing something to happen that's never happened before, you're going to be very wrong a lot more than you're going to be right.

I think you're too lost in the statistical measures of his performance.  I get what you're saying, and it's true, insofar as we're talking about how far he had to come.   In a purely statistical sense, yes, Josh succeeding was something like a miracle.  

 

But there's more to human performance than counting the outcomes.  First a few people saw something in Josh, people who were willing to work with him and coach him.   What they saw was supreme athletic talent, and soon after that they saw his competitiveness and his intense work ethic.  Then some other people saw it.   Then McDermott and Beane saw it.   Once McDermott put him on the field in the NFL, others started seeing it.   It really was no different from Lamar Jackson.  No one saw him coming, either.   DIfference is that although Jackson is special, he's not Josh Allen.  And very few people saw Mahomes coming, either.  

 

The point is, one by one, people began to see it.  You shouldn't be so surprised that some people saw it before you.  There are always some people who see something special in players before some other people.  I didn't understand about Kupp until the playoffs this year.  So, I saw it later than a lot of other people.  

 

So, yeah, the chances of a guy like the rookie Allen becoming the 2022 Allen were statistically slim.  But he was putting on film a body of work that people were examining, and some people saw greatness in the early body of work.   They understood that the odds were not nearly so insurmountable as his story would suggest.  

[Shaw66]

1 hour ago, BullBuchanan said:

Was Allen's indomitable will to be great a major theme among coaches, analysts or a meaningful number of folks around here in 2018? If it was, I sure don't remember it that way.

I t would have been pretty interesting to hear, because he hadn't ever been great. He wasn't great in high school, he wasn't great in college and he wasn't great in 2018 or 2019 in the NFL. What he did to get to this point is unprecedented and I think acting like you saw it coming the whole time diminishes the significance of the achievement.

But you just don't remember.  First, McBeane talked about his will and spirit from the day they drafted him.  

 

And I'll post my quote again, from May 2019, after his rookie year and some OTAs, but before we saw any football in 2019.  

 

Quote

In Josh Allen, Beane and McDermott found their guy.   He loves to compete.  He loves to learn – you can see it and hear it in his interviews.   He’s so much more mature, he has so much more understanding of the game, than we saw a year ago.  He handles his duties in press conferences almost flawlessly, giving thoughtful answers, deftly avoiding difficult issues, rarely being flustered.   He desperately wants to do it right, on the field and off, and McDermott thrives on that attitude.  

 

Belichick got his ideal disciple in Brady.  McDermott got his in Allen.  And, by the way, McDermott also got 6’5”, 240 pounds, speed, mobility and a rocket arm.  I think Allen is destined for greatness, because he has all the tools, mental, physical and emotional, and he has the perfect mentor.  A match made, if you believe in that sort of stuff, in heaven.

 

I'm not a genius, but I saw it.  And I know others saw it too.   

[Another Fan]

I still remember vividly his last game against the Dolphins his rookie year in which I thought he gave his best performance that year.  Even when he threw a pick 6 he went after the Miami player to tackle him and try to go for the ball.  

 

At that point I still wasn't sold on him per say but I saw enough from him to think he wasn't gonna be a bust.  

[billsfan89]

My impressions of Josh in year 1 was that this guy has a high ceiling but he has several key things he needs to work on. I thought that he had Cam Newton's size and speed but Bret Farve's arm strength and a refined throwing form (which is kind of how Mel Kiper described him). But in 2018 Josh was really wild and had bad footwork. So for as dynamic as Josh was he was also still very much a work in progress and could still be a bust. 

 

Going into 2019 I thought Josh had two major weaknesses. One was his footwork. He had really bad footwork coming out of college and in 2018. Part of the reason he was so inaccurate in college was due to his footwork. The second weakness Josh had was decision making, he would often play "hero ball" and force plays that sometimes only he can make but also plays that would end in disaster a lot of the time. I knew that as Josh simply played more he would improve decision making but if Josh couldn't improve footwork he would likely never be a top QB. 

 

In 2019 Josh still had "wild" moments but played more within himself and to the strength of the team (that 2019 defense was really good) his footwork improved as he was dramatically more accurate in the short range. But Josh did regress throwing the deep ball a bit as I think he was still calibrating his arm and footwork. I came away from 2019 thinking Josh is definitely a "starting" caliber QB but if he could just continue to improve decision making and recalibrate his deep ball he could be elite. 

 

In 2020 Diggs giving him a true WR1 and his recalibration of his deep ball and tightening up of his decision making made him the MVP level QB he is today.