Thurman#1

They didn't miss anything. And I think you're mis-stating what was said about him. That he had a good chance of being the next Locker or Boller? Fair enough. That his ceiling was Mallett? Please. Maybe a guy here or there blew it this badly but the consensus knew that his ceiling was very very high indeed, but questioned the likelihood of reaching that ceiling. He was generally considered a first-rounder even though he was also thought to require two years of development, though some said even more. Guys who need development are less valued, and for good reason. Teams would rather have a guy who will be ready quicker, and it is correctly understood development is hard. Relatively fewer developmental guys become good than guys who require less development. And more, a developmental guy is far more dependent on having an excellent environment. The situation has to be excellent. Allen on the Jets might well have not succeeded. More, there's another problem with development guys, which is that even in good circumstances, plenty of them can't develop. Changing mechanics is hard. Some guys prove unable to make those changes. And there's no way to accurately predict which guys can change and which can't. They actually nailed the Josh Allen evaluation. They said he was a hard worker and a great kid, and they were right. Without that and the terrific environment the Bills provided, he wouldn't have become what he has. There were an awful lot even a fair amount of Cam Newton comps, which appear to have been exactly what this group saw.

Stats do indeed describe the past, not the future. So does the eye test. So does every possible form of intelligent looking at data and projection. Predictions, forecasting, foretelling, prognostications and intelligent guesswork ... all of them share the problem that they can't look into the future and see what will happen before they predict it. So yeah, stats have the problem that they can only look at the past ... but they share that with every known form of data gathering. It's not a problem of stats, so much as a problem with the physics that prevent us from managing to travel in time. You can guess about the future. That's actually all you can do about the future. You can make your guesswork as intelligent as possible, and that will absolutely mean looking at the past, including stats, trends, etc. DVOA has proven itself as a good way of predicting. There is no perfect way of predicting and DVOA doesn't pretend to be one. And as Hapless pointed out, DVOA doesn't work as well early in the season (nor does any method of predicting, by the way), but it still has some predictive value from looking at preseason DVOA, which includes the last few games of the previous year, as they do. Put more specifically, it's their other stat, DAVE, which they use early in the season that has significant predictive value early. Like DVOA (and everything else), it's less predictive early than late. But it still has some value. DVOA absolutely is a meaningful statistic, more meaningful than most. But it's far from perfect, and they're totally up front about that. The fact that they're willing to look back at times when DVOA has predicted more poorly reflects well on the openness of their minds and their unwillingness to be blinded by confirmation bias.

"Because Allen is playing so well, it feels like this is the best Buffalo start to the season in quite a long time. It's not. It's really not. Buffalo started 3-0 just one year ago! But it's more than that: Buffalo has made a habit of doing this for years now. For the last decade, no team in the NFL has made a habit of starting strong and then stalling out quite like the Buffalo Bills. This is the seventh season in the last ten where the Bills started the season either 3-0 or 2-1." Hunh. I did not have that sense at all. Very interesting. Thanks for posting it, Coach Tuesday. Interesting and thoughtful.

Blandino doesn't work for the NFL. He used to , but he's now media. Why wouldn't a member of the media think first about which media market is more important? This is about as far from showing the NFL is fixed as you can get. EDIT: Ah, I see you're about half-kidding. Sorry.

Can't see it happening, but yeah, it makes total sense. Instead, though, money will rule as it does pretty much every time at the league level.

Not entirely buying that thesis. Yeah the players you mention are terrific. Playmakers? Yeah. Wreaking havoc? Yeah. But if you compare Tremaine Edmunds with Luke Kuechly, their tackle numbers are much the same, forced fumbles, INTs, sacks ... all pretty similar. No, we don't have any major stars. Yes, we do have some terrific players who go far beyond good. That Carolina defense Kuechle was on was much like this D, a scheme-based group that played together very well and didn't have many weak spots. It'd be great if we could come up with a superstar. And if we become an excellent team this year, likely some of our guys will become very famous and generally accepted as difference makers, including particularly Oliver, Edmunds, Tre (who already is pretty accepted as an absolute premiere corner and could probably be used to attack your argument) and Milano being the best candidates. Hopefully they bring in new guys in trades and drafts and FA down the road, but this appears to be a very good personnel group on defense right now, though they haven't played great the last two games. IMO, losing Star really did have a real effect on the run defense. It's not a mistake that McDermott always brings in a guy like Star for his D; it appears to be something he feels is necessary for his scheme. Hopefully with more film, McDermott can do some planning and improve things from their current level. My guess is that he will do so. Yes, agreed, and nicely put.

Happy, you're a great poster. Consistently so. But there's no way you, a guy with no access whatsoever, can reasonably say that "But there's no way 20 senior analysts (rough estimate using their numbers) are comprehensively reviewing every single grade submitted by their graders." You simply don't know that. Saying that 20 guys can't comprehensively review 32 games in 20 hours (assuming the 1:00 game scores are posted at 10:00 a.m., for example) it just doesn't make any sense. Of course they could. As for the All-22 film, here are some questions I don't know the answers to. Do you? Do they have early access? Do they have their own film? Do they put guys up in the stands to film? Do they post all scores the next morning ... or only some? Assuming they don't have access before the NFL makes their own film available, do they go back and change things based on the All-22 when it becomes available? They say they use All-22 as part of their scores, as I quoted above. Are you calling them liars, with no evidence whatsoever? Doesn't make sense, Happy. As for the link asking for applicants for "analyst" positions, what's wrong with hiring interns with the promise that if they're successful they might get paid work down the road? This is extremely common for corporate America. Not all hiring is done this way, obviously, but you aren't showing that PFF does all their hiring that way either, just that they may be hiring some interns who may get paid work down the line if they do a good job. This is how internships work and internships are commonplace throughout America. And your assumption that those interns' work will be what makes up the scores ("their grades are done by unpaid interns," you said) doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I was amazed when you said that, and went to check. I don't know, man, it doesn't appear to be true. Here's what they say: https://www.pff.com/grades "WHO IS DOING THE GRADING? "PFF employs over 600 full or part-time analysts, but less than 10% of analysts are trained to the level that they can grade plays. Only the top two to three percent of analysts are on the team of “senior analysts” in charge of finalizing each grade after review. Our graders have been training for months, and sometimes years, in order to learn, understand and show mastery of our process that includes our 300-page training manual and video playbook. We have analysts from all walks of life, including former players, coaches and scouts. We don’t care if you played. Each grade is reviewed at least once, and usually multiple times, using every camera angle available, including All-22 coaches’ tape." Doesn't mean their grades will be perfect, by any means, but what you said doesn't seem to be true. Although the "convoluted manual" part appears to be right on the money. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, though, IMO. It's a good question as to what they did without the footage when the broadcast broke down. Someone should ask them.

I think the reason you haven't heard is because we don't know.

Yeah, their video was dumb. And yeah, two of them tried to praise him and indicate that they were wrong without saying it. It was dumb. But I already gave you credit for the two of them. You win on those two guys. But you didn't say there were two guys who were sticking with their narratives. You said there were "many," and then you doubled down on that. That's why I challenged you to show us ten. But you haven't managed to find even one more. Where's #3 out of these "many"? Your best option would be saying somethig like, "OK, I was wildly exaggerating. There aren't many. There are basically two. I certainly shouldn't have doubled down on "many." But it pissed me off." Everyone would understand. But yeah, barring that, your next-best option is probably what you did here ... walk away with your fingers in your ears saying, "I'm not listening." Honestly, good luck to you, hope you enjoy the season and that your next foray here turns out better. I was a fan back in '72 myself. Rooted for them to lose the last game of the year so they could draft OJ, and it was awesome seeing them start to use him after Knox came back. Have a great season.

Again, the phrase "bad passer" is pointed towards Wentz, who he excoriates for two paragraphs. I'll put it all up, in context below, for those of you who haven't read this very positive look at Allen yet. And no, Fits is absolutely NOT his main comp here. He's there because he first mentions that out of the list of 18 most had tremendous success over the course of the season. It wouldn't be fair to just leave at that point. It makes sense to also look at what happened to the four who had the least success. And that list of four includes Aaron Rodgers, Dak Prescott and Fitzy twice. But at no point does he "compare" Fitz to Josh. He only lists those four years (out of 18) where teams ended up with less than 10 wins, in chronological order, which put Dak closest to Allen on the page, but he doesn't compare any of those four to Allen. He's only looking at the list of 18 and what happened to each. He's literally saying that truly bad QBs don't play the way Allen has - that only 18 people ever have - and that the absolute worst of those people was Fitz. But most of the people were folks like Mahomes, Peyton, Brady, Carson Palmer, Brees, Rodgers, etc. He's not saying Josh equates to Fitz. He's saying that Allen is now on that list and that that is one very good list. Here's the continuation, three paragraphs in a row, but put it all in context. There are two more paragraphs eveiscerating Wentz at the end but I left them off. It's quite clear that he's using Wentz as his bad example and Allen as the opposite. Which is what it says in the tweet: "Buffalo's Josh Allen has been stunningly good this season. Philadelphia's Carson Wentz has been shockingly bad. We put their ..." Here it is in context: "So no, the Bills' berth in the playoffs this year is not etched in stone, especially not with the Patriots showing they're not going anywhere anytime soon. But Allen likely isn't going anywhere either. The worst veteran on this list is Fitzpatrick, a member in good standing of the NFL's middle class of starting quarterbacks. Truly bad passers simply don't play like Allen has in the past two weeks. "Instead, they play more like Carson Wentz. Wentz, like Allen, played college football at a small school, North Dakota State. Unlike Allen, he had great numbers in college, and our QBase projections were cautiously optimistic. Wentz's career got off to a fine start -- he ranked 27th in DYAR as a rookie, then eighth in 2017 despite missing the final three games of the season. He also missed the postseason, and if you're reading this, you know the Eagles went on to win the Super Bowl without him. Ever since, Wentz's career has been on a steady, declining slope. He ranked 14th in DYAR in 2018 (in part because he missed five games) and 17th in 2019. His DVOA ranks in those seasons followed a similar pattern, moving from 27th as a rookie to sixth, to 13th, to 20th last year. "So far in 2020, Wentz has been worse than ever. He leads the NFL with four interceptions. He also leads the NFL with eight sacks (tied with Houston's Deshaun Watson). As our quarterbacks page shows, he is last in the league in DVOA, QBR, and passing DYAR. He's also last with a combined -337 passing and rushing DYAR. In the last 12 years of Quick Reads data, no quarterback has been worse after Week 2." The article is extremely positive, and there are plenty more out there. You see MVP and Allen in the same sentence with fair frequency. People are being extremely positive on Allen, and for good reason.

You're cracking me up here. So now scoffing at MVP talk, prefaced by the fact that it's only talk, is somehow a way of clinging to old narratives? Puh-leeze!! And yeah, the old "I'm not going to scour the internet" bit. The last refuge of a man without the slightest bit of evidence. If "many," (you said it again, though it's getting kind of sad) people had said it, you wouldn't have to "scour the internet." It would have been posted repeatedly on these forums by other people with their panties in a bunch the way the PFF stuff and the other video above were posted and referenced again and again. You could just copy them over here. If it were there, it wouldn't be tough to find. Problem for your argument is it's not there. You did post names. You didn't post their words. Not that I expect you to. Because at this point we both know there's nothing there. Two people say bad things and somehow to you folks, that's "many."

Did you notice that the phrase "not truly bad passer" is proceeded by a negative? He's saying that Wentz is playing like a truly bad passer. And that nobody should be able to say that Allen is. What part of this is the slightest bit negative? The part where he says that like the Patriots, Allen isn't going away? You do get that that's a very positive thing to say, right? Or the part where after two games he says he's not willing to say the Bills playoff spot is etched in stone? After two games, that's very reasonable, but again, he is saying that of the short list of 18 who started two games that well (guys like Russell Wilson, Carson Palmer, Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers and Mahomes) a huge majority of them have gone to the playoffs, but not all, so you can't write it in stone. Again, this is a wildly positive look at Allen. And again, it came before the Rams game, when they'd played two pretty bad defenses. Yet he was saying that Allen looked like he wasn't going away anytime soon even though in the past they'd been extremely negative on him.

Dude, your last sentence says an awful lot more about your than it does about the guy who wrote the article, Schatz. That article is wildly, overwhelmingly positive about Josh Allen. It says he is kicking butt this year and that based on their historical data, Allen isn't likely to fade away. He says that out of the 18 QBs who had the 18 best two game starts since 2009, nearly all had excellent years, thirteen of the teams won a dozen or more games. It does say bad things about Carson Wentz. But not about Josh Allen. And it was written after the Miami game, when we'd played two fairly weak teams, before we played L.A. and Josh did so well. Sorry, Schatz isn't even slightly negative here. He does say that in the past they'd been wildly negative. But makes it very clear he's not saying that anymore. In fact he says that history says that most guys with starts like this have terrific seasons, and you can't help but notice that his list of 18 QBs is filled mostly with the best in football. So, when you say, "there exist an inordinate amount of paid professionals," ... if by that you mean the two airheads from that video above (Bomani and Dominique or whoever they are) and PFF which has put him as the 6th best passing QB and the 8th best overall (including the three fumbles in his running performance) ... then yeah inordinate for you. But since the word "inordinate" means unusually or disproportionately large, you will likely be the only person who thinks two guys out of the entire internet is "inordinate." Well, you and maybe the OP. I'm off to bed.

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.