Thurman#1

That's not low standards. It's a different idea about how the best results will be obtained.

Then I guess you don't know what to tell me. What you've got there is a justification. Watkins played in eight games. He was healthy enough to get 154 yards in one. And yet he wasn't productive overall in long balls. It's a justification. Again, Goodwin played in 15 games, Clay played in 15 and was open long. Tyrod simply wasn't hitting the long balls the way he had been in 2015. You said that the new regime getting rid of Watkins and Woods destroyed his long ball stats. Not true. They were pretty much the same in 2016 as they were in 2017. Bad. And what showed up in the stats was easily visible to the naked eye. Overthrow after overthrow. Yet again, I hope he solves the problem and does well with the Browns. He's a good guy.

I'll listen later, when I have time and can give a more informed opinion. But the answer's right there in the question and on the boards. He's talked himself into Josh Allen because that's what a certain kind of Bills fan does. They talk themselves into whoever wears the Buffalo jersey. We've seen it thousands of times since the draft. People went from "you can't pick Allen because you need a guy who can make an impact in the first year and Allen is a guy who will need one or probably even two years to sit and learn," to "Allen doesn't need time to sit and learn, he's fine." It doesn't make sense. But it's what a certain kind of fan does. And a large amount of the Bills fanbase is that kind of fan. Not that any other teams fans are better, I don't think they are. People tend to believe what they want to be true.

The very easy schedule, and the lucky way that even when we played the few good teams we caught them in slumps. And that we never beat ourselves under this regime, something that always happened in past years.

He doesn't say "Be faithful to the process." It's trust. Trust the process. He's talking about religion. But I don't think he's ever said others need to have faith in God. He's just talking about his values. I mean, do you think he'd exclude a good player who'd applied for emancipation from his parents? Or divorced? He's just saying that football should only be behind your very few most important priorities. If it's Faith, Family, Sizzurp, Game of Thrones on high-def TV, chicks, booze, lawn darts and football, you're not the kind of guy they want.

Peterman isn't awful. He was awful, briefly. And then a decent rookie backup. Who apparently they love and think is improving. Way. It's certainly unlikely, barring injury, but way. Agree with you about the Denver analogy. That seems a solid guess to me. Agree also that we are likely to see turnovers go up a bit. But maybe passing game production too. I'm a bit more hopeful about McCarron than most on here seem to be. A bad prediction doesn't destroy credibility. If it did, nobody would have any. We all make bad predictions reasonably often, being human and all. It certainly was a bad prediction, though.

Rosen isn't entitled. He's an injury risk and has his own mind and interests and won't shut up easily. Some coaches wouldn't deal with that, but McD doesn't seem to have a problem with it. IMO if the Cards had traded to 7 and taken Allen we would've traded to 10 and taken Rosen.

No, I don't. He had Watkins for the first half of the year in 2016 and he wasn't completing a lot of long balls. Goodwin started 9 games and played in 15. In 2015 when you saw Tyrod throw long you thought he was going to complete it. After the first few games of 2016 seeing him miss a lot - an awful lot - of open guys, when you saw him go long I just felt nervous. Tyrod wasn't as good at long balls, it really was pretty clear. Tyrod didn't throw a lot of highly contested balls. It was a problem with him. When he went long there was almost always someone open. And yet he completed a much lower percentage after his first year, and it was visible that he simply wasn't doing it as well. As I say, I hope he gets that back. He's a good guy, a hard worker, a guy you hope succeeds.

Hey look, typical conservative response. See how that works? Either side can say "typical." And it means nothing beyond that someone is angry. Folks, mellow out. The facts will out. What you're arguing about here is still a very very incomplete story.

You're right that the OC will be right on McCarron's hip during the season if he's the starter. Luckily, Allen has two functional legs and freedom of movement and can plant himself right on the OC's other hip. And a lot of the coaching given a starter is less about how to play QB well than about how to specifically run this particular game plan and attack this particular defense. Which isn't a bad thing for a rookie to hear and try to process but it also shouldn't be the only thing he focuses on. Developmental guys need to work on more global QB skills like mechanics, dropbacks, how to watch film, how defenses work to stop offenses, how to get along with teammates, how to be a leader and so on ... rather than specifically how to defeat the Baltimore Ravens defense using the specific packages put together by the OC that day, which is what the starter tends to be spending all his time on. It isn't a waste to coach AJ. It's not like they send Allen to a basement somewhere while they do so.

Yeah, they were vets, but solid? Brees sat on the bench behind the "really solid vet" Doug Flutie in a a season when Flutie was tearing the league up to the tune of 56.4% completions, 15 TDs and 18 INTs, a 6.6 YPA and a QB Rating of 72.0. How is that solid, or anything but crappy, really. And while I liked Drew Bledsoe overall, he wasn't having success or being "really solid" in Brady's rookie year. 58.8% completions, 17 TDs and 13 INTs, a terrible 6.2 YPA and a 77.3 QB rating. So that's not just not true. But more, even if it had been completely true, it would still have been beside the point. By far the most important thing that will happen at the Ralph this year is Josh Allen's improvement or lack thereof. San Diego won five games that year. Flutie was a place-holder, an absolute footnote to the fact that the building blocks were starting to fall in place behind Brees' facemask. Same with New England who also won five games in Brady's first year. The fact that they had decent QB play that year means nothing to New England fans then or now. They were building for the future and that was by far the most important thing that went on that year is that building, what was happening inside Brady's head and the heads of a bunch of other players figuring out how Belichick's system was supposed to be run. Yeah, they had vet QBs. We have one too. And in the long run the veterans play meant nothing. What meant something was what was happening inside the minds of Brees and Brady. Rodgers certainly did have solid vet play ahead of him. Which again was far less important in Green Bay than what was happening inside Aaron Rodgers. Same here. Unless McCarron is better than we all think - not impossible - he's likely to be what Flutie and Bledsoe were in those years. Which will mean pretty much nothing to how quickly Allen learns. How good the QBs ahead of a young guy are don't mean much to his development unless it means he starts playing early. Which if it's too early might be a very bad thing.

Yes, I pointed specifically to the success of probably the three best QBs in football. To repeat, probably the three best QBs in football started by taking a year on the bench. Yeah, some guys have started right away and done pretty well. There are also a ton of guys you didn't mentiion who started right away and did ****ty. Most of those guys who started and did well - unlike Josh Allen - were not thought of as developmental guys before they were drafted. At most they were thought of as guys who might possibly need to sit, but that far understates what the consensus was on Allen. And plenty of Bills fans on here were arguing that we shouldn't pick Allen specifically because he'd need to spend a year or two on the bench. Now that he's ours most of those same posters have decided that that need has conveniently disappeared. Different guys have different needs. If a guy doesn't need development, fine, play him. But the point is that it's pretty much near-unanimous among non-Bills fans that Allen does need development and a lot of it. You're right that sitting QBs hasn't been done much lately. But that's not a good reason it shouldn't be. It's not presumptuous to assume that sitting him is far and away the most likely way to maximize the guy. If anything it was the consensus before the draft. And yeah, now the consensus has changed in Buffalo where people want to open and drink their Christmas present bottle of wine at 7:00 a.m. on the 25th regardless that some wines really really need aging and that our vintage is widely considered to be one of those. That impatience should be completely ignored.

Sorry, Scott, but that's really not true. The Bills were absolutely terrific at deep passing plays when Tyrod came aboard. I have to agree with you there. But that stopped extremely abruptly after the first year. They were not good at long balls in 2016 and a pretty fair amount of that can be laid right at Tyrod's feet. He threw poorly a bunch of open long balls that year, balls he'd have hit the year before. It wasn't the new regime's fault they couldn't do it anymore last year. The long ball had already been absent in 2016. 2015 21-30 yards, 13/34, 38.2%, 339 yards, 9.97 YPA, QB Rating of 90.6 31-40 yards, 8/21, 38.1%, 314 yards, 14.95 YPA, QB rating of 105.7 41+ yards, 7/14, 50%, 360 yards, 25.71 YPA and 135.4 QB rating Total yards on passes of 21 yards or more, 1,013 yards, on 69 attempts 2016 21-30 yards, 9/28, 32.1%, 228 yards, 8.14 YPA, QB rating of 35.1 31-40 yards 3/17, 17.6%, 168 yards, 9.88 YPA, QB rating of 83.3 41+ yards 4/8, 50%, 237 yards, 29.63 YPA, QB rating of 135.4 Total yards on passes of 21 yards or more, 633 yards on 53 attempts It really is a pretty reasonable argument that after teams caught on to Tyrod he had big problems with longer balls after that first year. I hope Tyrod starts throwing long balls well once again, personally. He'll have a shot at doing so, I think.

Nick Foles didn't win a Super Bowl. The Philadelphia Eagles did ... and if they'd had Foles as their starter through the season they almost certainly would not be holding the trophy. 80% Carson Wentz, 20% Foles, that was the recipe. Philly couldn't have gotten much luckier on the timing of that injury to Wentz. They got Phil Simms-Jeff Hostetler lucky. It's the perfect way to maximize what you get from the second-stringer. Have the starter, Wentz, go 11-2 and get the team in great position to have home-field advantage. Then have three really easy games for your second-stringer, against a 3-13 team, a 6-10 team and a 9-7 team and they go ... surpriiiiiiiiiiiise ... 2-1. Then have home-field advantage thanks mostly to how well the team did with Wentz in charge, so you can have two weeks to put in a very different game plan for the rest of the season to maximize your sub's abilities and minimize what defenses have seen on tape of what you're running. They almost certainly don't win a title last year without Wentz behind center for those first 13 games. And yeah, the Jags with Bortles at QB got to the championship game. Did they get to the Super Bowl? Did they win it? Exactly, and a lot of the reason for that is because their offense just wasn't good enough despite a terrific running game. Fair enough that you shouldn't say that with Tyrod you have no shot. The Ravens won with Dilfer. You don't have no shot. You have a microscopic shot. And you want more than that. But that's no reason not to play Tyrod a lot, maybe even all season this year. The Browns aren't winning a championship this year. They haven't got the roster. What their goal should be is raising the odds that Mayfield can become a franchise QB, and there's a terrific argument that he can do that as well or better from the bench in his rookie year.

Benoit's a smart guy but he's wrong here. Jackson has seen how Mayfield has handled the playbook and Benoit hasn't. Jackson knows what verbiage, playbook, responsibilities, route trees and progressions Mayfield used in college an awful lot better than Benoit does. Jackson knows how well the OL is likely to be better than Benoit. He's spent more time with Mayfield. He simply has more data to make the decision with. Having said that, I think Hue is bloviating when he says it won't change. It might. It'll depend on how things go with the two. Of course they expect Mayfield to be the guy, but they may well have a plan to sit him for a fair amount of time. He'll get his chance, but when that chance will be is Hue's decision.

It was a very thoughtful and interesting article. But really really off the point and it deeply confuses opinions and facts. He says, "Now, here I am in early May making the case that Allen likely gives this team the best chance to win." Maybe he does give the team the best chance to win. Maybe not, but maybe. Who cares? Or more specifically, whoever cares shouldn't. What is going to be important next season is maximizing Josh Allen's development. And that will likely best be done on the bench. What will not be important pretty much from January onwards is the difference between winning five games and seven games, for example. It just won't matter in the long run. This team isn't going to win a Super Bowl this year. They simply don't have the roster for it. So once you know that the question should become, "What can we do to make that day, the day we win a Super Bowl, come sooner?" That should be by far the main priority. The article misses that. And that is huge. The article also seriously confuses fact and opinion. He says, "Allen is just better than the other two guys – he just is." And that's nonsense. You could say his ceiling is higher than the others. That's pretty much a fact. But right here right now he's better? That is an opinion, plain and simple, and a very questionable opinion at that. Having said that, I love what 26CornerBlitz is posting. The breakdowns in that article were interesting and he's posted several things that were really good reads or watches. Thanks, 26CornerBlitz.

Yup, you learn more on the field. But some of the things you can learn are really really negative. Look at David Carr. He learned a lot, like how to feel shell-shocked. You can learn to concentrate on the plays and the defense while your mechanics go to hell, for instance. When you're feeling lost out there you're not learning positive things. As for Newton, yeah he had 850 yards in his first two games, but also eight sacks, 3 TDs and 4 INTs, in two losses. And he ground it out for the first four years not ever convincing anyone for sure he'd be a franchise guy until that fifth year. Could he have sped that up by sitting and learning? I don't know. But I know that while Cam had people saying he might well not start, it wasn't nearly as unanimous as the pre-draft word on Allen. More, Cam didn't exactly win the job on great performances. His pre-season totals were 42.1% completions, 1 TD and 0 INTs and 5.3 YPA and a 64.9 QB rating. Derek Anderson was much better for them that preseason. I've said this before, but the three best QBs in the NFL right now are probably Rodgers, Brees and Brady, yeah? All of them started with a year or more on the bench learning the things a QB needs to know from the fundamentals up rather than from the game-plan down, which is what the starter is generally worrying most about.

With that lineup, 1-31 was not unexpected. The Browns know this better than anyone. That's why Hue is still there. In that case, bust please. I'll be much happier if we don't see him on the field for any more than token appearances this year.

Starting a guy can really help him improve. Or it can help him get worse. It doesn't automatically improve you. There are plenty of ways it can hurt you. People don't seem to get this but it's true. It can ingrain bad habits. It can destroy good habits which are in development but not fully ingrained. It can cause your mechanics to degrade at a time when you can't concentrate on repairing them because as a young starter you're much more focused on specifics of game-to-game preparation and adjustment. It can destroy confidence when you fail at times when a better-prepared QB would have succeeded. Concentrating on the wrong things can make you miss out on what you should be concentrating on. And of course it can result in physical injury. When you're prepared and ready, playing is less likely to cause bad habits, as the good ones are already ingrained. You don't have to focus on basics which would otherwise require thought and take away from your handling of the game's subtleties and refinements. What we need to be working on as our #1 priority this year isn't winning this year. It's developing a team that in the middle-term future will be consistently good enough to challenge for titles each year. You don't do that by valuing the short-term over the long-term. Beane and McDermott are highly aware of this and have stated that's what they're working on. The single most important thing that will lead to that is getting Allen ready. Not playing him. Getting him ready. Most likely the best way to do that is to spend a year or so learning from the bench. McCarron and Peterman are plenty good enough to not throw Allen out there right away. Because winning this year's games is less important than developing Allen for the long-term. Because McCarron and Peterman could easily be better than you think. And because it's likely better for Allen. It's great that Allen spent time with Jordan Palmer this year. That could easily cut down the development time he needs. But he's still very likely to need a bunch more than many here want to give.

At the time it was obvious the Pegulas liked him from the beginning. But within a week or two stories came out saying that watching him work had given them tremendous faith in him. He'd been hired to work with Whaley but within that one or two weeks they trusted him a lot more than they had ever trusted Whaley. They saw that in the interviews that he had good plans. When he came in and started working they saw he had the wherewithal to make those plans work and to get things done in an organization.

They aren't. Some are broken by national reporters and some aren't. Anyway, that's like saying "If oranges are so respected how come apples are delicious?" These two things are sometimes sometimes related and sometimes not. There are plenty of ways to get respect. Just in the last couple of days, Graham broke the Brandon story. Nothing wrong with disliking any writer (or movie star or player for that matter). But generally the dislike flows when someone says something bad about the home team, who have been a mediocre to bad team for a very long time.

That and the Triple Crown they also won. And a long history of respect.

You're right that we can't be sure in advance. But Gruden said Wentz was the most NFL-ready guy in years. https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/news/one-nfl-analyst-thinks-carson-wentz-is-the-most-nfl-ready-qb-in-years/ Plenty of people disagreed at the time but it was a bit more of the "He might not be ready," type of thing than the "the team that drafts him will need to give him time to develop" that had been the consensus on Allen ... until Bills fans found he was on our team and got excited.

By camp of, say, his third year? I would feel absolutely terrible. In his first camp? Absolutely fine. No problem at all. It's what to expect. In fact, it's what you expected and rabidly told us for months was true, right? Until he was drafted by Buffalo and so the rose-colored glasses came out in like a day and a half. And using the word bust in a player's first year is flat-out ridiculous. By that standard, Brees is a bust.

Yeah, but Russell Wilson was considered NFL-ready from minute one. It's correct that guys like that don't need to sit. But that's the opposite of what Allen is considered. He's a guy who needs development. Yeah, he's done some of that with Jordan Palmer. But he's no Russell Wilson, who was considered mentally ready but questionable whether he'd ever be tall enough. That ain't Allen. And yeah, Bills fans have changed their mind on how ready he is. But deciding something is true because you want it to be true is a path to be wrong nearly every time. Find, say, three pre-draft evaluations that say he's NFL-ready. Pre-draft, back from when Bills Nation wasn't desperate to see him start as soon as possible. Four quick ones that suggest sitting: Mike Mayock, Peter King, Dane Brugler, Jordan Palmer said he'd benefit from a year to sit. And I could find more, easily. Allen's OC at Wyoming, Brent Vigen. "I think he needs to be put in a situation where they're willing to coach him," Vigen said. "Because there's still room for growth as far as his understanding and how to apply it. I think, obviously, a situation where he could sit and learn, that would be the best for him. But if he is forced into it, what are the pieces around you? What's the defense like? What pressures are put on you to score points? All those things come into play." http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/23244329/josh-allen-wyoming-cowboys-ultimate-boom-bust-2018-nfl-draft-prospect