Thurman#1

Did Cleveland clear the way for their rookie QB? Arizona? Most teams ... do different things depending on how ready they think the rookie QB is. And yeah, there'll be drama among fans. The locker room? No reason to think so. They handled the Peterman - Tyrod deal just fine even when it blew up. They hung in with McD. They'll almost certainly do so here as well.

Nah, he's worth the money NE pays him. If he wasn't, Belichick would cut him in a heartbeat. He does what they ask him to do, and he's productive. Hogan's the 57th highest paid WR in football.

I'm glad I never have brain farts or make careless mistakes.

No particular reason to think that's true. Yeah, right now it's the headline, but he doesn't need a Super Bowl win, just a couple of years as a starter somewhere, one of which is pretty good. Having one awful performance ... as a rookie ... isn't a career definer. It certainly is a rookie year definer, and is reasonably the first thing people think about right now when they think of the one most memorable thing about him. But if he hangs around for a while and does some things, those will supercede this. Yup.

I know that this board and everyone's exact position on Allen has become such a bizarre obsession for you - same as it was during your near-insane obsession with Tyrod and a few before - that you think that people stay away or come here the way that you do ... tactically and with near complete preoccupation. That's not me, particularly these days. I don't "go into hiding," as if anyone would have to hide from the likes of you, a bizarre and funny idea you have about your importance and the importance of the whole issue. I simply have one of those things you show no signs of having ... a life. I came back now because I had a bit of time during my insanely wonderful six week trip back home in the U.S. And while I don't remember for sure when or how much, I've absolutely been here commenting on the past couple of preaseason games. Just haven't papered the walls with obsessions the way you do. I found five or ten posts to be plenty. I get it that that might seem bizarre to a guy who has, after looking back at your record, written 16 posts in the last 24 hours, every one in threads about Allen or Peterman ... a guy who you have to go back around 35 posts to find anything not about Allen or his competitors or even ex-crush that you just can't let go of, Tyrod ... yeah, I guess a guy with a posting record like that would find it bizarre that people might actually not have a somewhat disturbing obsession with a Buffalo Bills QB. But in fact, the guy who you replied to above had a very reasonable opinion. And you, as is your habit, misstated what he'd said ... and then labeled his opinion "incorrect". Again, typical for you to confuse your opinion for a fact. And yes, you were wildly mis-stating what he said. He said, "I don't understand why everyone is trying so hard to forget that he was a major project coming out of Wyoming." And you immediately replied , "Please stop pushing the narrative Allen is still a huge project who needs 2-3 years on the bench." A typical straw man setup from you, misstating what someone said and then attacking your own words as if they'd been said by someone else. And as for me saying he had a five percent chance to start week one ... well, sorta. What I actually said was that he had around a five percent chance ... unless the other Bills suffered injuries that set them back, and unless Allen was a whole ton better than he is expected to be. And he has been better, though not a whole ton, obviously. And an injury absolutely has pretty much set McCarron out of the competition, not that he was setting the world on fire anyway. The odds have changed. I'd probably give him a 25 or 30% chance now. And as for what people predicted, wasn't it you who said he had a chance of starting week one that was well over 50%? And are now rooting hard against it? The fact that the OL is likely to be pretty poor surprises nobody but you. It's been one of the main reasons cited since about the day after the draft for why Allen shouldn't start early and possibly not at all this year. ------------------------ Anyway, enough of Transplant's nonsense. Shouldn't have bothered with such tripe anyway. People are saying in this thread that sitting doesn't help you develop, that that's nonsense. Who disagrees with that? Josh Allen among others. "... sometimes quarterbacks can get thrown in there too early and that can have a snowball effect on them during your career. So coach is going to do the smart thing." - Josh Allen https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2018-nfl-training-camps-bills-wont-rush-josh-allen-into-starting-qb-role/ I love that the guy is this smart. But his lack of experience is huge. For those arguing he's ready, it sure doesn't look that way when he says something like this, "Sometimes when the play clock got a little low and I couldn't really dissect what they were doing and understanding what they were doing, it's tough on a quarterback." "The rookie admitting that he 'couldn't really dissect' what the defense was doing is more disappointing than the five sacks." http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000951742/article/bills-josh-allen-blames-self-for-five-sacks-vs-bengals Exactly. And the schemes were relatively vanilla this time of year. He needs more time and development.

Which it isn't. It's quite a reasonable opinion. The fact that he disagrees with the guy who by his own admission has been so consistently wrong on QBs - for years now - is actually a pretty good indicator that his opinion is very legit and sensible indeed.

Benching rookies doesn't delay processes like this. You can learn nearly as well from the sideline, especially so when you're talking about a guy who doesn't know NFL defenses well yet. And while we're already seeing choruses of "Allen only had long throws called for him while Peterman had shorter ones," it's far more likely that Peterman just better diagnosed what the defenses were giving him, made smarter and quicker reads and get the ball out quicker. Which is not surprising when you're comparing a second-year guy to a rookie before his first season has even started. You can reach a point where you've learned about as much as you can learn from the sidelines and need to get in and play to make significant progress. That point is well over the horizon at this point. And they're still facing mostly vanilla defenses as you'd expect in preseason games.

Hate? Please. So many of you people don't know what hate looks like. What you're seeing her is what happens when a guy looks like he's not ready yet. Most people seem to feel that anything other than unqualified jock-sniffing fanboy love is hate. And that ain't so.

Yeah yeah yeah. And all non-positivity is totally unacceptable and must be eradicated. The Kool-Aid Brigade demands it.

Maybe the 2nd greatest thing. The greatest thing was the 2017 season.

Play whoever makes Allen better down the road. We aren't winning a Super Bowl this year. The next 15 years or so are far more important. Pre-season games should NOT be taken as predictive. They're not.

Yeah, that and Ramsey is taking shots at an unproven rookie while Benjamin targeted a former league MVP. It's not a double standard. Trash talking other teams isn't really problematic. Trashing a guy you played with, and so closely, is.

https://mattwaldmanrsp.com/2018/08/16/matt-waldmans-rsp-nfl-lens-lb-lorenzo-alexander-bills-pre-snap-psychic/ Nice breakdown on one play where Alexander anticipates and shoots a gap left by a pulling guard. Nice.

As a DC, maybe. As a head coach, I think he threw his chance away.

Brad Johnson had a really good year that year. Really good. 8th in TDs while sporting an insane 22:6 TD/INT ratio. 10th in YPG. 4th in passer rating. 8th in completion percentage among guys with 200+ attempts. They didn't win in spite of Johnson. Johnson was no journeyman. He was a guy who could be really good but only managed it inconsistently. Did the Steelers win that Super Bowl Ben's rookie year? Or did they lose it the same way they did a couple of years earlier with O'Donnell at QB. Only after Roethlisberger got authentically good did they win a title. I have to give you Dilfer, a game manager and not a great one but Flacco had a good year and a terrific playoffs. He's been pretty bad since but he was a major reason they won that SB. It's true that great defenses with a mediocre QB win a SB occasionally. (McMahon, Doug Williams, Dilfer, Flacco if you want to count him and maybe a few others, but not Rypien who was probably top two in the league that year before he took what at the time seemed an unexplainable nosedive before we heard about his concussion problems , not Foles who isn't in the SB without Wentz, and not Hostetler who also isn't in that game without Simms playing most of the year.) But it tends to happen around 10% of the time. That's not the route you want to model. You want to model the method that wins 90%.

Those games you're referring to were from 2015, right? McCarron's 2nd year. Mightn't he have improved? More, the four games you're talking about (I assume, anyway) there were against the 19th (Pittsburgh), 29th (San Fran), 1st (Denver) and 8th (Baltimore) ranked defenses, and Pittsburgh was actually 11th in defensive scoring allowed, they were better than they appeared. That was a tough slate, though SF was a nice little letup, but they scored 24 against SF. I'm not a huge McCarron fan or anything. I'm pursuing this half-heartedly. But those four games against tough defenses as a 2nd year guy just do not even begin to show he's not a good QB. Oh, and as for Average Andy, in 2015 he was on fire. 66.1% completions. 25 TDs in 13 games and 7 INTs, an 8.4 YPA and a 106.2 passer rating. The guy was ripping it up. Very few QBs were playing as well as Dalton was that year.

The league spoke pretty loudly, but with the little game time he's seen, what they were doing is guessing loudly. It's an educated guess, but a guess nonetheless. Sometimes the league gets it wrong.

Sure. But Oakland's not letting him go for a first. That just isn't happening.

Over the next few years, you're saying? Yeah, I agree. Not convinced yet, but the indications are really good, as good as I've seen since the Kelly-Polian-Rusty Jones era.

Active, I would guess probably not. On the roster, sure. They might think Peterman would not be plucked if they put him on the taxi squad. If they think that it might make a good way to keep all three. Since they probably think that especially the early part of the year is purely developmental for Allen, I could easily see them keeping all three.

Not sure you're right about Mack vs. Donald, but you could be. I see the odds on the Bills getting either one as being infinitesimal. Just an opinion, obviously. They could use either guy but the new F.O. has said they don't believe in building through high-ticket FAs, and their history backs that up. We'll see, I guess.

Not everyone needs development. But most of the pros, pundits, front offices, etc, will make it clear they believe in it for some guys. And that it is possible to ruin a guy who might otherwise have had a chance. But most often the pressure comes and the guys who need the development get thrown in early. It's not a mistake that it's FOs with job security like Andy Reed and McCarthy with the Packers, FOs with a decent alternative (Jon Kitna keeping Carson Palmer off the field under Marvin Lewis, for example) that takes away the urgency to put the new guy in, those are the FOs who develop guys. Look at Mayock and what he said about Allen. Mayock has tons of contacts in personnel departments and scouting departments around the league and he often says that you shouldn't draft one guy or another unless you're willing to sit him and develop him for a year or two. (Exactly what he said about Allen.) He wouldn't be saying guys can be ruined if he wasn't hearing it from the personnel guys. It's the accepted wisdom from the guys who make their living at this. Oh, and as for pros who think being thrown in too early can hurt guys, throw in one more: "... sometimes quarterbacks can get thrown in there too early and that can have a snowball effect on them during your career. So coach is going to do the smart thing." - Josh Allen https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2018-nfl-training-camps-bills-wont-rush-josh-allen-into-starting-qb-role/

But that's not the only way it works. Some guys don't have it and get it from sitting on the sidelines and developing. Other guys might well have had it but they're thrown in early and end up embedding bad habits, stopping the work on their mechanics and begin to think that the reason they look bad is because they are bad. Lacking development, in other words. Which is why developing is a thing. Not everyone needs development. But most of the pros, pundits, front offices, etc, will make it clear they believe in it for some guys. And then the pressure comes and the guys who need the development get thrown in early. It's not a mistake that it's FOs with job security like Andy Reed and McCarthy with the Packers, FOs with a decent alternative (Jon Kitna keeping Carson Palmer off the field under Marvin Lewis, for example) that takes away the urgency to put the new guy in, those are the FOs who develop guys. Oh, and as for the short passes, the Bills are saying that he threw very few if any of those in college and it's almost a new skill for him. If true, that's a really good reason to think he might develop and be able to throw them later on. EDIT: As for pros who think being thrown in too early can hurt guys, throw in one more: "... sometimes quarterbacks can get thrown in there too early and that can have a snowball effect on them during your career. So coach is going to do the smart thing." - Josh Allen https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2018-nfl-training-camps-bills-wont-rush-josh-allen-into-starting-qb-role/

I hear you. Good post. I don't think the league disagrees with me. To me it seems more like there are plenty of cases where teams would rather sit a guy but instead finally feel too much pressure and put him in. Guys are indeed often thrown in. A lot of that is because - IMHO - first round QBs generally go to teams that are absolutely desperate for a good QB right away. The GM and coach are often on hot seats and the fan base is dying to see the new guy and get some wins. Guys like that do often get thrown in early, but not necessarily for good reason. And when a good team picks a QB that early, or when a team for different reasons sits him for a while, well, the development of Carson Palmer, Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers are pretty good ones to model. Didn't hurt them to sit for a while. With our QBs and hungry fans, I guess we'll probably see Allen sometime this year. I hope it's week 17, personally, but realize it could be earlier. Unless either McCarron or Peterman surpasses expectations and looks really good, there'll be pressure to see Allen on the field. If he does play, I just hope he's ready. Some guys are, but plenty aren't. I'm hopeful. Won't be convinced, though, by anything less than results.

Yes, yes, I know. The theory of gravity is only a high probability from the standpoint of the scientific method. From this viewpoint there's no such thing as a fact. But only a scientist would say that. It's why I several times used the words "accepted scientific fact" in the posts. I don't disagree with you that it has limits and depends somewhat on an individual's abilities. If you doubt that Allen has the mental and physical abilities to learn from mental reps at QB, I would have to politely disagree with you about that opinion.