Why the Josh Allen hate (draft reaction)?

[WhitewalkerInPhilly]

1 hour ago, Shaw66 said:

I so hate this take.  There was nothing one-in-a-million about Josh.   Mechanically, some things were tweaked in him, but anyone with half a brain could look at Josh Allen throwing a football in college and tell that he was fundamentally a great thrower.   Stand him on the fifty and ask him to throw footballs at targets 10, 15, 30, and 40 yards downfield, and he'd hit those targets over and over.  A guy with bad mechanics can't do that, but Allen could, because his fundamental throwing motion was really sweet, better than Mayfield, Darnold, Rosen, or Jackson.  

 

It was pretty clear that Josh's "accuracy" problem wasn't that he was fundamentally inaccurate.  His problem was that he didn't have the athletic discipline that comes from years of quality coaching.  He wasn't going to the best QB clinics in high school.  He played at a podunk high school, a podunk junior college, and a podunk college.   Rosen, on the other hand, had the benefit of all the coaching that was available to a rich kid from LA, which is what he was.   That meant what you saw was what you were going to get - no one was going to make Rosen into a better thrower than he was.   

 

Allen's a one-in-a-million talent, but he wasn't some kind of athletic miracle who transformed himself from a substandard college thrower, mechanically, to a great thrower.   He was always a great thrower, just undisciplined. 

Fair enough. Perhaps I should rephrase.

 

I would say that there is a reason why players with Josh's talent often get that level of refinement. It astounds me how big of a business that college football is to the extent that you saw Harbaugh eff off to Michigan for almost a decade after never having a losing record as a NFL head coach and making the NFC Championship game three years in a row. College scouts are heavily motivated to kick over every rock imaginable for a superstar, that it's amazing that Allen had to go to JuCo, then to the Mountain West conference (not a historically competitive one) without being poached. And kudos to the Bills scouting staff for finding those things you mentioned, that his mechanics were fine but that he hadn't had top tier coaching and WR support.

[Plano]

best of the draft, what's not to love?

 

I went at it with an open mind. Nobody knows who will perform in the NFL, it's all speculation.

 

People get too worked up about these things. Too much time on their hands. 

[Another Fan]

14 hours ago, Low Positive said:

You don’t have to wonder what people thought. Here it all is in glorious detail:

 

That thread has probably been edited a lot over the years to no man I loved the pick. LOL 

[TheBrownBear]

LOL.  I was one of those people.  I didn't really love Rosen, but I preferred him over Allen due to his pedigree.  I'm a UCLA guy and knew that Rosen, despite his unlikability factor and occasionally suspect decisionmaking, could really spin the football.  I saw a little of Allen in the Mountain West and wasn't particularly impressed with him as a QB.  How wrong I was.

[TheBrownBear]

3 hours ago, Jay_Fixit said:

It was probably 80% unhappiness. Just look through that old thread. So if 80% isn’t universal, you may be technically correct. Even through you’re not.

What's interesting to me is that some posters literally decided to die on that hill.  Looking through that thread there was a guy named "T-Bomb", apparently a Tyrod fan, who was apoplectic after the Allen selection, made a ton of histrionic posts in the 24 hours following the selection, and then never made another post on the board again.  This was a guy with over 1000 posts over the years.  I wonder what happened to these fans.

[PromoTheRobot]

15 hours ago, Process said:

Everyone wanted this guy 

 

The fans are never wrong.

[davetra]

Also...

You pick a guy like Allen if you feel you have the coaches to coach them up.  Raw talent with sub par instruction (Coaching) equals a flop in the NFL.

 

[HomeskillitMoorman]

Far and away Beane's best moment here. He did something that was relatively unpopular and stuck to his convictions. 

 

You couldn't have found a more perfect fit for Buffalo. And I won't pretend I knew that then. 

[muppy]

The drafting of #17 was a high risk high reward pick. We hit LOTTO

 

Its never an exact science. An analogy is he was a lump of coal that turned into a diamond 

 

and he is ours! Haters can suck it  as far as I’m concerned. 

Edited January 31 by muppy

[JerseyBills]

I was absolutely thrilled, I'm not a big cfb guy so stay outta mock drafts but after watching his pro day I wanted him bad, pause, I would have taken him 1, by far the most untapped potential in that draft

[muppy]

One last thought. He clearly ( and except for douchy bottom feeder media types) Has proven himself so worthy of his draft position. 
 

it just goes to show no one is right about everything. Cheer up all you bad prognosticators. It was a fun read back in time 

 

posters do drop off the radar. A few I miss reading but a lot do still post.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 31 by muppy

[MJS]

16 hours ago, The Jokeman said:

That and Rosen felt Brady esque in that he didn't have an elite arm but was good at reading defenses. Able to lead his team back (see win at USC). He just seemed to be the safest QB to draft. 

I've learned since then that the safe choice is never the right choice when it comes to QB. Draft the guy who has the ability to be elite physically and hope for the best.

 

The QB position is not what it used to be. It isn't enough to be a cerebral pocket passer who can make the right read and deliver it with accuracy. You have to be at least somewhat of a dual threat. You have to make off-schedule plays. You have to do things that make people's jaw drop from time to time.

[The Jokeman]

1 minute ago, MJS said:

I've learned since then that the safe choice is never the right choice when it comes to QB. Draft the guy who has the ability to be elite physically and hope for the best.

 

The QB position is not what it used to be. It isn't enough to be a cerebral pocket passer who can make the right read and deliver it with accuracy. You have to be at least somewhat of a dual threat. You have to make off-schedule plays. You have to do things that make people's jaw drop from time to time.

True but you still need to be able to routinely move the ball with your arm otherwise you've got another LamarJackson V 2.0

[Brand J]

34 minutes ago, JerseyBills said:

I was absolutely thrilled, I'm not a big cfb guy so stay outta mock drafts but after watching his pro day I wanted him bad, pause, I would have taken him 1, by far the most untapped potential in that draft

It’s funny because I had the opposite reaction after watching his pro day. I felt he was trying to throw the farthest footballs he could rather than actually trying to complete the pass by hitting his downfield man in stride. Like he was trying too hard to show off what a cannon he had. I felt he was a physical specimen of a QB, but didn’t do all the other things well enough to ever be a good QB, much less a great one. It’s funny when I look back on it now, but you just never really know how a guy will pan out based on his college tape and measurables. 

[MJS]

21 minutes ago, The Jokeman said:

True but you still need to be able to routinely move the ball with your arm otherwise you've got another LamarJackson V 2.0

Elite arm talent and physical traits.

 

But I think Lamar Jackson is a top 5 QB in the NFL. He is unique, though.

[DrBob806]

2 hours ago, davetra said:

Also...

You pick a guy like Allen if you feel you have the coaches to coach them up.  Raw talent with sub par instruction (Coaching) equals a flop in the NFL.

 

Yep. 

 

I see some are bashing Mayfield here. One has to wonder if any other of the 2018 QB prospects would have survived a guy like Hue Jackson like Mayfield did. Mayfield's attitude was the only thing that saved him, I give him a lot of credit for that. In case you're in disagreement there, remember he had Nick Chubb on the bench for an aging Carlos Hyde. 

Edited January 31 by DrBob806

[Shaw66]

3 hours ago, WhitewalkerInPhilly said:

Fair enough. Perhaps I should rephrase.

 

I would say that there is a reason why players with Josh's talent often get that level of refinement. It astounds me how big of a business that college football is to the extent that you saw Harbaugh eff off to Michigan for almost a decade after never having a losing record as a NFL head coach and making the NFC Championship game three years in a row. College scouts are heavily motivated to kick over every rock imaginable for a superstar, that it's amazing that Allen had to go to JuCo, then to the Mountain West conference (not a historically competitive one) without being poached. And kudos to the Bills scouting staff for finding those things you mentioned, that his mechanics were fine but that he hadn't had top tier coaching and WR support.

Good points.  I don't really know, but I think the college coaches are the victims of all the scouting services and the showcase circuit.  That is, they rely on this whole establishment that identifies, grooms, and showcases high school talent, and they don't, really can't, run a nationwide scouting operation that is turning over every stone.  In turn, the people who run that infrastructure are like the sports media in that they listen to each other, and they form this sort of group think that is closed to new ideas.   

 

Spencer Brown is another example.  Both Josh and Brown came out of these tiny high schools playing in remote areas, and they were pretty much ignored.  Once a kid falls outside that system, the big-time coaches aren't likely to find them.   They end up at JuCo or small-time schools, not because they aren't good enough, but because the bigger schools, the schools that might actually develop them, aren't looking at them.   Someone called the coach at Northern Iowa and told him he should look at Brown, who was on no one's radar.   The coach was on a road trip and realized he could drop by Brown's town on his way home.  But for that, Brown might have been communications major at some school that didn't even have a football team.   Not every overlooked kid sends emails to 1000 coaches looking for a scholarship.  

 

So, the kid starts to show something in JuCo or at Northern Iowa.   It was before the transfer portal, so getting a kid to transfer and sit out a year wasn't very attractive to the kids, and the coaches aren't anxious to take a flyer on a guy who's just lighting it up in a second-rate conference; most big-time schools already have their guys, they're invested in their guys. 

 

Why do those scouting services ignore them?  Well, sometimes they're just lazy.   But the reality is that very few guys come out of those environments and make it anywhere.  They're local phenoms, but when they get into serious competition, they can't compete.  Yes, there could be a world class athlete playing in one of those tiny high school leagues, but much more often the kid is burning up the conference because the competition is so bad.  

 

I'll give you an example from my personal life.  Yesterday I watched my grandson play freshman basketball.   He had 30-something points.  Last week he had 37.   Is he a phenom?  Should the college scouts be flocking to see him?  Well, no.  He also plays on the JV team, kids are one year older, and there he looks like an ordinary player.  If I call a scout and say you should look at my grandson, he'll ask where he can see the kid play in real competition.  

 

Bottom line, kids still get missed.

44 minutes ago, DrBob806 said:

Yep. 

 

I see some are bashing Mayfield here. One has to wonder if any other of the 2018 QB prospects would have survived a guy like Hue Jackson like Mayfield did. Mayfield's attitude was the only thing that saved him, I give him a lot of credit for that. In case you're in disagreement there, remember he had Nick Chubb on the bench for an aging Carlos Hyde. 

I love Mayfield.  A rare combination of guts and a great, competitive attitude.   He just doesn't have the body.   Doesn't have the arm, the height, the legs.   Close, but not enough.  

[RobbRiddick]

8 hours ago, gjv said:

I believe it was Marv Levy who once said " if you listen to the fans, you will end up sitting with them".

I think this was the mistake Takeo Spikes made

[The Jokeman]

On 1/31/2024 at 10:06 AM, Westside said:

LOL! You're correct sir! I miss those days. Do you remember hogboy? I think that was his name. Didn't he call volunteer Firefighters arsonists? OMG, That was hilarious!

hogboy sounds familiar and a volunteer firefighter being an arsonist definitely ringing bells too.

[LeGOATski]

I wanted Josh Rosen, but I trust McD/Beanie. They broke the drought, after all. Hopefully this Josh Allen guy turns out good, but I just don't see it from watching his college tape. He's so inaccurate. We all know you can't teach accuracy.

 

Oh well.