Thurman#1

Well, if your main point was that there are three people out there who still don't like Allen and were holding on to bad takes .... fair enough. You're on the internet here. You could find three people to say that San Francisco was destroyed by an atomic bomb dropped by the Russians in the '60s and that what we see today is a clever simulacrum constructed by aliens from Alpha Centauri. Of course there are a few nutbags out there. I mean, look how many wackjobs are saying that COVID is not real and that masks don't help. I'd expect three bizarros on pretty much any issue you could cite. You shouldn't have said there were "many" if you didn't have anything to back that up with but two crackpots and an organization that now has him as ... what did you say, Gunner, 8th in the league?

So, the guy on the right (Dominique someone?) says, "he turned out to be an OK, above average quarterback." IMO that's still underestimating him, but is that what people said when he was drafted? He absolutely has come off his old take. I don't think he is willing to see all the upside that appears to be there, but his old take was absolutely NOT that Josh Allen was an "OK above average quarterback." He says, "He is much better than I thought he was going to be at the draft." So while I think he's still missing out, he's absolutely not stuck on his old take. He's been forced to upgrade it. The guy in the middle makes it clear he sees that in the last fourteen games he's been much much better, though he admits he had called him terrible in the past. The guy on the left cracked me up, "He's exactly the same except that he has improved doing some things." Um, what? Yeah, OK, dude. So, I think it's fair enough that you can count the guy on the left. The guy on the right appears to have changed. But OK. Let me be kind and give you both of them. That's three people. I asked for ten. If there really are "many," it'll be easy to find ten.

Two problems with this post. First, Allen was knocked out of the first Pats game in 2019 for the concussion protocol, and it was when he was running for the sticks. Second, the data doesn't show what you're saying it does. About what it says is that with the way they can massage the data and be sure of these things, they can't prove that running QBs get injured more than pocket QBs. Not that it doesn't happen, but that they can't prove it. And I haven't yet found that any of them have found a way to look at the data to show whether running QB careers are shorter. Which they may be. When pocket passers lose a gear or two as they get older, they can still play the way they had. Not so with the running QBs, who have to try to re-learn to play the game with one of their biggest weapons missing. A few running QBs have lasted, especially guys who didn't have a lot of designed runs, and who slid a lot. Steve Young played till he was old, but he had a lot less wear on his tires through his first seven years than most. Randall Cunningham too. But look at Vick, a spot player by 32. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/extra-points/2019/injury-proneness-running-qbs-overstated

Ah ha.

First, telling what Romani, Foxworth and Keyshawn DIDN'T say does absolutely nothing for your argument. What DID they say? Let's hear exact words. Bill Simmons and Cousin Sal were "Meh"? Well, that's clear as mud. What did they say? You said: ... and yet so far you've produced exactly one. Let's hear the specifics. If there are "many" it ought to be easy to find ten, a fairly small number. But let's hear the specifics of what they say. Being "meh" about something unspecific someone said isn't "holding onto the old narrative." Should be easy to find ten if there are "many" out there.

Um, so is PFF "many"? I would call it one internet source. You say "many" are still holding on to the old narrative, and yet you only show one. Show me, say, 10 sources still holding onto the old narrative, OK? Then I'll start to be convinced there are "many." As for now, you've got one. And, most people weren't judging him by his college performance. During and after his first year that's what they mostly looked at. But his 52% completion rate wasn't about to inspire confidence. After his second year he was mostly judged by that. He'd improved significantly but was still below 59%. And yeah, if you adjusted his drops to average, his %age went above 60% but was still well somewhere around the 36th highest completion percentage last year, which wasn't good. So evaluations got better but remained unconvinced. The way we know people were looking at his most recent performances is that now that he's performing extremely well, the vast majority of opinions have changed quite a bit.

Actually, I think most have been right on target through most of it. A few have been too negative. A few too positive. Most have been in the right neighborhood, which is that he was improving but in the end might or might not improve enough to be a franchise guy. The reason the narrative is changing is because Josh has made a huge and sudden leap upwards. The narrative should change when that happens. You say it's slowly changing and that appears very wrong to me. It's changed very rapidly over the course of three weeks. Do you realize the success rate of QBs drafted in the top ten? Throw out the overall #1s, because Allen wasn't one, and because they're the most likely to succeed. They succeed at a higher rate than those not drafted #1 overall. Look at the success rate of QBs drafted #2 to #10. It is below 50%. So you can expect teams to make the proper picks if you want, but in reality that's not generally the way it works out over time.

The Pats D was the best last year. Major losses have left them in the general area of very good but not dominant. They're no Baltimore, Chicago, Steelers or Niners, IMO. God, why am I still here?

This is a poor thread.

One of my favorites. Always open. Always smiling. Rarely seems to drop balls. And the exact opposite of a diva. I'm a big fan.

Don't think so. Edmunds is the leader. He's not the fire and brimstone leader that fans love, but he's a young and emerging leader, as is Tre. No way to know from the outside but that is what the team is saying, and there's no reason to doubt them. We also don't know how the new guys are fitting in, guys like Addison, Norman and Butler. Milano and Edmunds are the two guys on this defense - outside Tre - who are most needed at 100%, though Oliver is headed in that direction. And they aren't at 100%, nor is Oliver. And as people said above, they were terrific till one of the better offensive schemers in the league got well into the third quarter. Way way too early to worry yet, and no reason to suppose leadership is the problem even if there indeed is a problem.

Phillips didn't have all that many pressures last year. He was lucky enough to turn a large number of his pressures to sacks. But he wasn't the answer. Losing Star was big, bigger than most wanted to admit. Hopefully the D can adjust using scheme and tactics. And by getting healthy, which is certainly a major part of the problem.

We don't have the money. They will save the $4 mill they have left for any replacements they need to make for injuries. Equally there are very few offenses that will run through most defenses well enough to win close games regularly. You need both to be good and hopefully one to be excellent.

I hear they called him and set up a meeting at KFC. When Marcel still hadn't shown up an hour and a half after the appointment, they took off. Then he texted them he'd missed the bus. If you could put a new brain in that body, maybe, but short of that, can't see it.

Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes. I mean, I don't think even they are that crazy, but who knows.

I think you're on to something there. :- ) And Hap, I didn't realize that the third guy there was Aaron Donald. How did Josh get away with straight-arming him without drawing back a bloody stump? Holy Cow.

I didn't say that he (or Brady) never thinks about it. I said that it isn't that important to him, that other things are more important. And I think the same thing is true of Brady. You didn't see Allen trying to force things to Jalen's guy. It isn't that important to him. If the guy is open, great, throw it. But it very clearly wasn't a priority for Allen.

Good point. Also, Josh Allen is #17. Also, hamburgers are actually not made of ham.

Not entirely. It happens sometime, and if the offense has a terrific year, Daboll will be in the driver's seat and might not find an opening that looks good enough. He might find that waiting a year or two to find the right chance could be the best strategy for him. I mean, even if they offer it to you, is it a good idea to take the Jets job right now? Do you believe in the GM? A lot of times the teams looking for coaches are toxic environments. Now if you're a borderline candidate, you might take the job no matter what. But if your alternative is staying on a team for another year with Josh Allen as your QB, an excellent defense and head coach, and Josh Allen as your QB, you don't have to take every chance that comes along. Funny that now that we've got a bunch of players on the offense who execute, he's a genius for the same fanbase that wanted to blame him for problems rather than say anything bad about Allen the past few years.

Who cares? Plenty of smart and open-minded media out there to read.

Is he playing against them? Or the Rams? Not buying the revenge thing in the slightest. A make-em-eat-their-words tour, maybe? Nah, I don't like that either. I just don't get the sense that it matters that much to Josh. They say he does hear it, but it doesn't seem to rent space in his head. He uses it for motivation, it seems like, but proving people wrong seems like a maybe a fifth priority for him, well after winning and playing for his teammates, IMO. The prove people wrong thing seems like it's much more important to fans than to Josh. Look at how he handled the Jalen Ramsay thing last time when he led them to a win against Jax.

Yes, his record against teams with winning records isn't good. That will happen during a rebuild. It's par for the course, and much more so for a team in the same division as the Patriots with Brady. If it continues this year, it will be worth noting.

I don't think strength is a problem with Epanesa, not at all. More like the game is still too fast for him this early in his career.

Yeah. Or not. The only sure thing is that it's way way way too early to spend brain time on something that is a guess that we wouldn't know about for another several years.

Yeah, probably right, but the 5th year won't be all that cheap. Assuming we pick up his 5th year option before we give him the extension, his fifth year would still cost us around $24.8 mill. Or at least that's the transition tag for QBs this year, and the top few QB salaries, which raise those tags, are going up up up this year. The top ten QBs all get $30 mill or up according to Spotrac, in average salary, though the way Spotrac calculates those - basing some of the numbers on deceptive averages of extensions rather than total the player will receive - makes it an impenetrable thicket at this point. It'll be interesting to watch.