Thurman#1

You may have tried to point out a flaw, but you didn't succeed. Your analogy is looking at something that is not in my posts. Look, if you really want to get involved here, go read the back history of this argument. Then see if you disagree with me. Yes, as I clearly have said about six or seven times, improved accuracy at this point might not stick. But even you admit that he improved. "Improved accuracy." Exactly. He has improved. That's a fact, a fact that he simply denies. It's a dumb argument that he is making. Again, if you really want to join this conversation, go back and read from where he came in. The post he responded to was made by me at Thursday at 3:11 p.m. on Page 8 of 17 for me. Or my post yesterday at 2:52 a.m. on Page 14 of 17. I wouldn't involve myself, if I were you. I wasn't insulting you, I was insulting him and for pretty good reason if you read the posts.

And I'm saying I think you're wrong about that point. "MOST" Bills fans will not be crying at the first ill advised pass or pick. Yeah, there will be a mouthy 20% who'll comment wildly. Most fans here are smarter than that. But certainly not all of them. There are people not smart enough to have patience. And they're loud. But most people have a better understanding. Long row to hoe? Yeah, fair enough. Not much to be said really, beyond "we'll see," at this point. You're wrong about that. It's not a given, it's just not. But it's certainly a very real possibility.

Dude, you haven't followed the argument. I said he's improved a lot but there's still a major question about whether it will stick. He said no he hasn't improved. It's stupid.

I wish this was so. For a team that has drafted consistently in the late 20s, he's done a damn good job keeping the team at that level. And yeah, sure Brady and Belichick's own abilities have meant a lot. But nonetheless they've managed to keep that machine stoked and rolling for a very long time. He's drafted well, partly because he arbitrages picks so well. But drafting late is a handicap that never seems to have troubled them. That's good drafting.

Yeah. But Allen doesn't need to learn to be a QB. He needs to develop some areas of his knowledge and mechanics. If he's successful this will have been a brilliant move. You're focusing on entirely the wrong question. The right question isn't how long it will take for him to be a starter. It's whether he will be a top ten or top twelve starter. And that we don't know.

Probably because they think of him less as a project and more of a development guy. There's a small difference there in that project QBs are sort of maybe possibly after a while types while the idea behind a development guy is that with development he stands a good chance. Clearly the Bills think he's more than a project. Besides, the whole "he has to be able to start immediately" thing is more a fan concern than a team concern. The teams tend to hope they start immediately but be willing to spend time if it's necessary, though plenty of teams then end up bowing to pressure and playing the guy too soon and undermining their chances. Hopefully this administration will be stronger than that.

Really hard for me to give a specific grade. If they'd picked Rosen instead, I'd have given it an A++. I understand why they picked Allen. He's got a legit chance to be great. But if he busts and Rosen is terrific, this will look like a D- even if Edmonds is terrific. On the other hand, if Rosen turns out to be injury prone and Allen is a big success it will look like maybe the single best draft in Bills history. To me, this is simply going to take a lot of time. Too early to evaluate, IMHO.

Well, yeah, if you're stupid, you could argue anything. You could say "Improvement isn't improvement until I personally decide it is." Sure. You could also say there's ZERO way to say he's gotten stronger until you see him playing even though he's improved his lifts in the offseason. But either way, you 'd be wrong and you'd be a dummy.

Bills fans don't have any patience? They'd better get some. He should get however much he needs. And no, 90% would not have written off Goff, that's nonsense. Yeah, a mouthy 20% maybe but most Bills fans are actually pretty sensible and aware. You hope he's ready in a year, but if he needs more you deal with it, be patient and deal with the frustration of the fans. That's for starting. The bust thing has the same answer for everyone. Nobody is a bust in less than 3 three years to smart fans ... nobody ... unless they're out of the league. And some need even more. Eli Manning's light didn't come on till the last few games of his 4th year.

What they actually said about Tebow was that because he was trying to improve his mechanics he wouldn't be throwing at the combine. See the difference there ... Allen had already improved by the Senior Bowl and again at the combine? Then later they said Tebow's with the Broncos and trying to fix his mechanics. Then two or three more times they said he was working on his mechanics, but he was still working on it years later, well after it became obvious that he did have accuracy problems but that his main problem wasn't so much his accuracy but more an inability to go through progressions and make good decisions You know who else they said had improved their mechanics? Tom Brady. And Aaron Rodgers too. Plenty of very successful others as well. Look, your argument has been butt stupid from the beginning. I said he'd improved. You denied that, which was just stupid. It's something everyone who's looked at him progress through the offseason has said. It's a fact, he's improved. I had gone out of my way to say that his improvement didn't prove that he would be a success. That it still had to stick and it might not, but that he had absolutely improved. And now you're trying to make a point by pointing out that some guys who improved didn't succeed? Wow, if I hadn't already said that, you'd really have made a point against me. You've lost this argument already. The point you made was that he hadn't improved. Which is wrong. Now you're trying to switch the ground of the argument, a loser's argument, but you're also switching it to say something I've already said. Hard to lose an argument more conclusively than that. All I've said is that he'd clearly improved, and that that didn't prove he would succeed but that plenty of guys who'd wanted to improve their accuracy by working on their mechanics had never really showed improvement. Allen has. If you want to reply to me, disagree with some of this. There are some perfectly reasonable arguments against Allen. This isn't one of them. Nor are the tweets unless he turns out to actually be a racist rather than to have said something stupid one time while 16.

Got none for the players, but mine? "By the time they get to Phoenix, I'll be sleeping." Glen Campbell is the man. That and "Wichita Lineman." Made for football, that one.

This is how I'll feel if they draft Allen. Or Mayfield or Rosen or Darnold. I'll be hopeful but I won't believe. Why would I? Don't believe till you see, but be hopeful, that's my policy. But according to Peter King and a couple of other folks who canvassed some pro scouts and personnel folks, Allen is #1 or #2 for a lot of them. Allen won't require more work to make me hopeful than any of the others. Fans don't like Allen but the pros do ... and that's much much much better than the other way around. He's my fourth preference, but fans don't get to see these guys on the whiteboards, or interview them or see the reports from the private eyes or talk to the college coaches to see what reads they might have been supposed to make on what plays ... The pros know more than we do. Which doesn't make them perfect but does make them a ton more informed and knowledgeable.

You don't. It wouldn't take everything we have to get to 5. Here's what we have: Two 1sts, two 2nds and two 3rds, a 4th, a 5th and a 6th this year. An entire draft next year. And an entire draft the year after that. We aren't going to run out of ammunition, especially since going from #12 to #5 is 500 points, basically the value of the #40 pick. It'll likely cost more than that to go up, but surely not anywhere near as much as you're imagining. Trading up twice is a very reasonable possibility, particularly as the Giants don't seem to want to drop down to #12 if they can help it.

As usual, you're the dizzy one. I'm replying to a post which said that every year big athletic guys are mocked high. Since in fact there are extremely few QBs (or humans) who are both big and athletic, and certainly you can't find one every year, I assumed he was talking about big guys, and athletic guys. Apparently this leap was beyond you. And by the way, aren't you the guy who promised like ten days ago you wouldn't write to me unless I specifically addressed you? Yup. It was you. Yet another example of saying one thing and then directly contradicting yourself if you ever feel like it. Gave your word. Then broke it in extremely short order.

Yup. It's a new world.

Because sometimes non-stories look like stories for a few minutes or hours. People said it was a result of mechanical problems. Now he's fixed the mechanics and his accuracy has improved a great deal. He absolutely can accurately throw a football. Still more to see, but this is far more than most guys with mechanical problems are able to do before they're even drafted.

Fine, you're not interested in facts. You see improvement and pretend it doesn't exist? Fine. Wanna play, "I ain't lookin' and if I don't look, it doesn't exist?" Fine. But you're actively ignoring real evidence. He did improve, step by step, his accuracy. Does that prove that he can do it in a game? No, but neither does absolutely anything else in the offseason. If you ignore that you should logically also ignore every single thing that happens between the last college game and the first real NFL game. None of it proves squat. And you're not going to do that any more than the rest of us are. The guy improved where plenty of people can't. It's been observable and commented on by everyone, including folks who still don't think he should be picked early.

If you move up to #5 now, you greatly improve your chances of a second trade up to #2 or #4, especially #2.

There are plenty of things you can say if you don't believe in a guy but don't want to say he sucks. You can say, "He gives 110% on every play, and you're going to get the best he's got to give." You can say, "He's a winner. He's just a winner. That's all you have to know about the guy is that he does what needs to be done to win." I got a million of them and I'm sure so do you. Palmer is extremely specific about what he likes about Allen. That's good, when guys are specific they're generally being truthful. He also talks about where he needs improvement. That's also good. None of which proves he'll be successful but Palmer doesn't have to be as supportive as he is. He was paid at the beginning in a lump sum by the agent. He won't see anymore money from Allen. He could slide into the meaningless clichés. Yet he isn't. Were Mayfield's tight window throws further downfield than Allen's, the same length, or shorter? That's a major factor. As is what Peter King said in his recent column about team sources saying Allen is hard to evaluate because he had so many free rushers headed at him, far more than the others in the top four. That'll affect your numbers plenty. "When NFL teams have scouted Allen, they’ve noticed how Allen seemed to be under pressure far more than any of the other five first-round candidates. And they’ve noticed how poorly he responded to that pressure. It’s not just the 56.3 career completion percentage that bothers teams; it’s how he has responded to pressure. And, as one official from a quarterback-needy team told me, how difficult it was to scout him because he had so many free rushers coming at him consistently. "So I asked analytics service Pro Football Focus, which also studies college players in preparation for the draft, to do a workup on whether Allen indeed was pressured significantly more than the other quarterbacks in the draft, and how he performed under pressure. The answers were rather startling." https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/04/18/josh-allen-draft-cleveland-browns-mmqb-peter-king There's plenty more there, good and bad. My guess is that the major improvements he's made in accuracy since the season ended are going to stick, particularly if his team is smart and benches him for a year. I'm more worried about decision-making and going through progressions in a situation that will be a lot more complex than what he's seen so far. That's where most QBs who have problems have them, and I expect it always will be. I would worry about that for anyone we draft.

Yeah, he's visibly improved. If you throw passes against air and you have improved at the Senior Bowl, and then you have further improved at the combine and then you have further improved at your pro day, that's improvement. Visible improvement. No, it's not proof that that will all stick. But yeah, it's a very good sign. Plenty of people never even make that improvement. And that's just not true that big athletic guys are mocked higher every year. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't. Mike Vick was 6'0" and he was mocked and drafted #1. Dan Orlovsky was 6'5" and he was ranked behind the 6'4" Alex Smith and the 6'2" Aaron Rodgers. Sean Mannion was 6'6". Remind me, was he mocked above Winston and Mariota? Manziel was mocked higher than Carr, wasn't he? Plenty of times the tall athletic guy IS mocked higher, and then proves to be better. It works both ways.

I agree with most of your post here, but not the main point. Yeah, you have to think the Giants can win in the short term to not pick a QB here, IMHO. Agreed. Simply, it looks to me like the Giants think just that. They seem to think that it was a few key injuries and a few areas of severe need that caused this, along with a serious locker room / coaching problem. IMO they may be right. I think it's a very reasonable argument. And Nate Solder and Jonathan Stewart (more as a leader than an RB) are decent steps in the right direction. Should depend how quickly they can get their new 3-4 defense to work and that should depend partly on how many good young fits they can draft. As I say, if I were their GM, I'd pick a QB. But I think there's a very reasonable argument both ways. Which is why nobody is sure what they'll do. It's just not as obvious as you're saying here. Agree with your finish. We'll see. Should be interesting, either way.

The expectations did differ. What was not expected then nor anytime since was that Favre's completion percentage jumped 10 points between college and his first NFL year. He made a huge improvement. The good point that you make about stats being worse back then is very true, but irrelevant. Favre's completion ratings weren't very good even when compared to his contemporaries in college and then suddenly improved a great deal when compared to his contemporaries in the NFL. For example, in Favre's last year in college, he completed 54% of his passes, his second-best year in college. That same year, the top ten looked like this: 1) Jason Palumbis Stanford 68.6% 2) Ty Detmer BYU 64.2% 3) Jason Verduzco Illinois 63.7% 4) Dan Enos Michigan State 62.3% 5) Casey Weldon Florida State 61.5% 6) Todd Marinovich USC 60.9% 7) Mike Romo SMU 60.7% 8) Shane Matthews Florida 60.6% 9) Matt Baker Temple 60.4% 10) Matt Rodgers Iowa 60.3% Favre was 46th. He was 64th in yards, 82nd in YPA, 65thin QB rating, 68th in TDs ... Two things to pick out of this. He got drafted in the 2nd. Clearly teams weren't convinced he was awful by his bad college stats. They were able to see that sometimes bad performances can have other explanations than bad QB talent. And sometimes guys can improve between college and the pros. Needless to say, sometimes bad stats simply mean the guy is bad, and sometimes guys don't improve between college and the pros. But the fact that he's widely considered a top ten pick should tell you that the teams think that he has a good chance of success. In other posts I've come up with more contemporary examples. They are out there. Stafford, as a quick example. You'd better be right is indeed problematic. It's also simply factual on pretty much every single pick of a quarterback in the first round. Be right or be prepared to lose your job three to five years down the road, Mr. GM.

So Peter King is quoted as saying that Allen did poorly when under pressure? But that's a very strategic way to cut and paste what's a complex and interesting point and isolate the most negative part. Here's a way to do the opposite. Same source material. "When NFL teams have scouted Allen, they’ve noticed how Allen seemed to be under pressure far more than any of the other five first-round candidates ... And, as one official from a quarterback-needy team told me, how difficult it was to scout him because he had so many free rushers coming at him consistently." https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/04/18/josh-allen-draft-cleveland-browns-mmqb-peter-king See what I did there? Picked out the most positive part and threw away the rest, the exact opposite of what happened in the OP. Here's the whole thing, unexpurgated. There's positive and negative, both. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "It’s been reported far and wide that Josh Allen of Wyoming could be the first overall pick, to Cleveland. The Browns like him. With ex-Bill Tyrod Taylor in the house, they seem set on whoever they draft having 2018 as an NFL redshirt year, which is probably the smart way to go for a franchise that has rushed too many passers, from Tim Couch to DeShone Kizer, into action. Allen, it would seem, would desperately need that redshirt year. "When NFL teams have scouted Allen, they’ve noticed how Allen seemed to be under pressure far more than any of the other five first-round candidates. And they’ve noticed how poorly he responded to that pressure. It’s not just the 56.3 career completion percentage that bothers teams; it’s how he has responded to pressure. And, as one official from a quarterback-needy team told me, how difficult it was to scout him because he had so many free rushers coming at him consistently. "So I asked analytics service Pro Football Focus, which also studies college players in preparation for the draft, to do a workup on whether Allen indeed was pressured significantly more than the other quarterbacks in the draft, and how he performed under pressure. The answers were rather startling. "Allen under pressure: Of the 47 draft-eligible quarterbacks with 175 or more dropbacks in 2017, PFF found that Allen was the fifth-most-pressured quarterback, at 41 percent of his pass drops. Of the other top prospects, Lamar Jackson was pressured 36 percent of the time, Sam Darnold 31 percent, Josh Rosen 29 percent, Baker Mayfield 28 percent and Rudolph 23 percent. Clearly, Allen’s performance should have been affected by pressure more than the other quarterbacks. "Allen’s performance under pressure: not good. According to Pro Football Focus numbers, you can see Allen struggles against pressure. Look at Allen versus the field in NCAA passer rating (more liberal than the NFL rating, but for comparison sake, I’m using the NCAA standard) to see the comparison: "Allen is a dedicated guy scouts and coaches and GMs have grown to love in the pre-draft process. A California farm kid who grew up working the land before he ever had a thought of being a big-time quarterback, he knows the value of hard work. There are some scouts and coaches who look at Allen and see Ben Roethlisberger, a tree trunk of a guy with a big arm and athletic skills. All that is good. "But there’s the reality of Allen’s rawness too. These numbers show it. He has difficulty taking the snap, knowing his alternatives depending on the rush he faces, and executing successfully. That’s not going to get fixed in one training camp. Whoever picks Allen, he’s going to need a strong, unwavering, patient plan to get him ready for opening day 2019. He might progress faster than that, but let’s say Cleveland picks him. The Browns aren’t winning the Super Bowl this year. Isn’t it in their best interests to tutor Allen with smart football people, to give him consistent chances in practices through the season? Training. Coaching. Learning. A few quarterbacks in our lifetime—David Carr most notably—have left football before their time because they played too much too soon. Let Allen’s college numbers at Wyoming, and football history, be a lesson to the team that chooses him to be its quarterback of the future." https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/04/18/josh-allen-draft-cleveland-browns-mmqb-peter-king ---------------------------------------------------------------------- And also King said this in his weekly MMQB column this week. "• The final word on the quarterbacks. I asked one longtime and well-connected scout about what he’s hearing regarding the order of top quarterbacks in this draft. In other words, if teams with a quarterback need could show their boards, what order would they go in? “Allen one, very slightly ahead of Darnold. Then Mayfield. But the people who like Mayfield love Mayfield.” Watch for Arizona trading up on Mayfield if he gets past the Jets and Broncos."

Correct answer ... ... because the OP is convinced it will happen that way.

Allen. There's a reason he's generally mocked higher. He's already visibly improved a great deal in his accuracy since the season ended. In any case, I don't see Allen making it to #12. Jackson, maybe.