Historical Fiction: How would drought coaches have fared with Josh Allen?

[GunnerBill]

23 minutes ago, Bill from NYC said:

Agreed and the Levy/Jauron combo was about as bad as I have ever seen on any team in any sport.

 

And Levy wasn't doing anything. He was GM in name only. He literally fell asleep in draft meetings. It was the Levy/Modrak/Jauron trio. 

[JohnNord]

10 hours ago, Chaos said:

In my opinion, there are two primary factors separating the drought era Bills teams from the Allen era Bills teams.  The first and foremost is having Josh Allen as QB.  The second factor which may be equally as important is having the financial resources to compete in free agency. 
 

Among the drought era coaches I think I liked Chan Gaily the best.  I credit him with being the inventor of the Fitzmagic. 
 

It would have been interesting if he and Allen had aligned in time. I am not sure if any of the other drought era coaches would have been anymore interesting than the Allen era coaching  staffs have been. 
 

How would others like to rewrite history?

IMO Beane, McDermott (and Daboll) don’t get enough credit for selecting Josh and putting in a plan to support and develop him as a QB.  While he had a lot of physical traits and intangible, the majority of draft pundits had predicted he’d bust.  
 

Given the track record of the decision makers during the drought, they’re probably a decent chance that Josh turn out to be Kyle Boller, Jake Locker or Paxton Lynch 

[Goin Breakdown]

I would like to see a mix of Chan and Schwartz with Josh. The Goon Squad with Josh at QB might have been pretty darn good. 

[GoBills808]

Depends

 

Do they get the same AFCeast sans Brady that we currently enjoy?

 

If so I would say about as well as we have under McDermott 

[Albany,n.y.]

I'll never understand the love for Chan.  The guy was a horrible head coach.  He lost me forever when he punted from the opponent's 34 yard line.  

[Albany,n.y.]

9 hours ago, Orlando Buffalo said:

If the Bills had drafted Allen under Marrone we never get to the point where Josh is Josh. Marrone made sure EJ Manuel never had a chance to grow, and Josh would have sucked his first 3 games and never seen the field again. We seem to forget that Josh was AWFUL his first 6 games, so bad even I thought we might have screwed up drafting him. And before anyone thinks I am saying EJ was gonna be similar to Josh, I am simply saying EJ was better his first few games than Josh but was never shown how to grow at all 

Josh was not awful in his 1st 6 games.  I remember the Bills dominating Minnesota as double-digit underdogs in Josh's 2nd career start.  I also saw a lot from his 1st season behind no O-line & making a guy like Robert Foster look like a real NFL WR.  As a rookie, I saw glimpses of greatness in rookie Josh that EJ Manuel never showed.  Also Josh started 11 games including one he got hurt that Peterman blew, and it was almost miraculous that he willed a bad team to 5 wins in the the 10 games he started & finished.  

Here's another thing.  In 2019 I was so confident in Josh I bet Bills futures before the season and won all my futures bets including the Bills making the playoffs. (You can look it up in the archives). Meanwhile when EJ announced that he was setting up stock in himself, I said I wish I had the money to short his stock after seeing him play.  

Maybe EJ looked better on paper, but on the field as rookies, Josh towered over EJ.  

[Chandler#81]

Interesting topic, thank you OP. 

We've had some doozy’s during the famine and thus deserved to be terrible. I think of all these disaster coaches, Marone would have been most detrimental for Josh. All the other shleppers would have realized quickly what we have in him and committed to providing him players to capitalize on his talents -even Rex.

But ‘Moron’ would have been jealous and try to derail him, imo.

[Albany,n.y.]

5 minutes ago, Chandler#81 said:

Interesting topic, thank you OP. 

We've had some doozy’s during the famine and thus deserved to be terrible. I think of all these disaster coaches, Marone would have been most detrimental for Josh. All the other shleppers would have realized quickly what we have in him and committed to providing him players to capitalize on his talents -even Rex.

But ‘Moron’ would have been jealous and try to derail him, imo.

I can't buy that.  I never saw Marrone as jealous of his players.  I saw him as a selfish guy who quickly realized EJ wasn't the answer & played Orton because he knew EJ was going to make him look bad & he wanted to look as good as possible, especially since he knew he could bail.  As soon as Orton retired Marrone had no intention of sticking around & going down with EJ as his QB.  If Marrone had Josh, he would have had a long career as Bills coach, and seeing him in practice every day would have never bailed.  

[LeGOATski]

Doug Marrone with Jim Schwartz at DC would've had a great team and broken the drought.

[McBean]

The better question is, how much better would the drought QB’s have been if they had HC Sean McDermott?

 

Sean made Josh. Not the other way around. Know this.

[Mikie2times]

2 hours ago, McBean said:

The better question is, how much better would the drought QB’s have been if they had HC Sean McDermott?

 

Sean made Josh. Not the other way around. Know this.

McD the QB whisperer. By all means, don’t be afraid to discuss your thought process. 

[dgrochester55]

Rex Ryan would have him averaging 50 points a game while the defense gave up 60

 

Chan Gailey would somehow get a pro bowl season out of him with a WR unit of Hollins, Isabella and Claypool but also have atrocious defenses.

 

Dick Jauron would have Allen handing it off on nearly every snap which the exception of a few check downs to Gilliam and Morris.

 

Wade Phillips would have them playing like contenders as Allen had an MVP caliber season until he decided to start Trubisky in Week 18 during mop up and be so impressed that he started him in the playoffs

4 hours ago, LeGOATski said:

Doug Marrone with Jim Schwartz at DC would've had a great team and broken the drought.

 

Marrone left a bad taste in everyone's mouth by walking out, but having them the verge of the playoffs with Kyle Orton as the QB was an impressive feat.

 

If that unit had Allen, they are in the playoffs. I even think they would have made it in with Tyrod Taylor in his 2015-16 form.

[Rampant Buffalo]

19 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

Yep. It might not be popular with some but we don't just have a better QB than all of those years we have a better Head Coach too. Josh is a bigger and more important upgrade than Sean is. But they are both definitively better than what went before.

 

Think about the playoff drought. I wasn't impressed with the Gregg Williams/Jerry Gray blitz happy scheme. It was great at bullying teams vulnerable to blitzing. But if a team was good at blitz pickup, and if their QB (Tom Brady) got the ball out quickly, blitzing isn't really what you want to do.

 

I'd say our best drought era defensive coaching came during Doug Marrone's time as HC. Marrone himself wasn't much of a coach, but he sure knew how to pick good defensive coordinators. Pettine's defense was good against the pass but below-average against the run. A good defense overall. Schwartz's defense was also good against the pass, and noticeably better than Pettine's against the run. If I was hiring a defensive coordinator, I'd take either of those two over Sean McDermott. Why? Because Sean McDermott is a very good DC a lot of the time. But other times, he's a terrible DC (soft zone/prevent defense). Pettine and Schwartz provided greater consistency in their efforts, rather than McDermott's binary oscillation between very good and completely terrible.

 

As for offensive coordinators: during the drought, the only OC who accomplished much was Chan Gailey. Gailey was the anti-Marrone: he was a good coach himself, but terrible at hiring defensive coordinators (Dave Wannestadt). Like the OP, I credit Gailey for doing a great job of setting Fitzpatrick up for success. Ted Marchibroda left the team in the early '90s. I think of all the OCs we've had since then. The two which stand out are Gailey and Daboll, if your goal is to build around a passing QB. And Greg Roman, if you want to build your offense around a running QB.

 

If I could cherry pick from the playoff drought, I'd take Gailey as OC and Pettine or Schwartz as DC. You're getting better performance at OC and DC than what we received this past season. Then, I'd take the OL we put in front of Tyrod Taylor. My RBs would be Fred Jackson and either Spiller or Lynch. I'd take the defensive cast we had while Pettine/Schwartz were around. Lee Evans is one of my WRs. I'd love to have Eric Moulds as my other WR, as long as I can get a reasonably young version of him. If not, I'd take Stevie Johnson as a poor man's Moulds. The playoff drought teams didn't exactly have a lot of great players at WR. But put Josh Allen in at QB, and the team I just described would be a very serious contender for the Super Bowl.

[JerseyBills]

Rex would've been interesting with Josh

[Rampant Buffalo]

15 minutes ago, JerseyBills said:

Rex would've been interesting with Josh

 

Interesting, in the sense of the ancient Chinese curse. "May you live in interesting times."

[GunnerBill]

43 minutes ago, JerseyBills said:

Rex would've been interesting with Josh

 

Rex wouldn't have been interesting with anything. He was a mailing it in has been by the time he got here. More interesting in his brand than his team.

[SirAndrew]

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

I'll never understand the love for Chan.  The guy was a horrible head coach.  He lost me forever when he punted from the opponent's 34 yard line.  

Agree, I also disagree with the idea that Chan was a brilliant offensive mind. He made his name as a position coach with the 80’s Broncos. If you look at his other stops, he didn’t have very successful offensive teams. Fitz just did what he does during Gailey’s time in Buffalo. He put together a stretch of magical games, and had a decent first half of the 2011 season. That’s what Fitz did at every stop after. Gailey didn’t do much after his time in Buffalo, and did little in the years before. That doesn’t sound like a guy with anything innovative. 

[Buffalo_Stampede]

Impossible to know how Allen would’ve developed in a different system and structure.

 

MVP Allen would’ve had all our drought coaches in the playoffs though. Maybe not consistently but at least once.

Edited May 21 by Buffalo_Stampede

[Buffalo03]

I had a friend ask me yesterday how Chan Gailey's offense with Fitz at QB would have looked with Josh at QB the way he is now. It probably would have been amazing. It was already good with a bunch of 7th rounders and undrafted free agents and we never had a hard time moving the ball under Gailey. It was more of a defense issue during his tenure here. 

[Orlando Buffalo]

15 hours ago, DCofNC said:

Give it up, EJ SUCKED, he sucked at Florida State, held that team back from a couple championships.  Marrone saw it for what it was, he had a team that could contend and a pathetic QB holding him back, he did the right thing.   EJ couldn’t complete passes in shorts, without pressure, he was WAY less accurate than Josh ever was.  Not only that, Marrone not only played, but WON with Bortles who is the poor man’s version of JA.   Marrone might be an arrogant blowhard, but he was right about EJ and would have been just fine w JA. He did more with less than McClappy ever has.

EJ was better statistically than Josh in every passing metric through their first year. Literally yards per game, tds, interceptions, completion percentage, not sure how you think Josh looked better though his first 8 games, EJ progressively did less and less because Marrone told him to not lose games. Josh was allowed to grow and finally had a good game as a QB vs Miami in final game of season. Your love of Marrone makes you unaware of even the most basic statistics.