transplantbillsfan

This post tells me a lot about you. You don't watch the Bills much, do you? I got 4 deep passes off the top of my head: John Brown TD against Denver John Brown deep ball on Game Winning Drive in Pittsburgh Dawson Knox pass that was originally ruled a TD but moved to the 1 in NE John Brown TD in NE Well this just isn't right at all. Can you do math? 31 drops 461 attempts 271 completions I don't know what you mean by "eliminating drops," but I would assume you mean counting those drops as catches since the throws were on target. 271 + 31 = 302 302 / 461 = 65.5% Don't know where the hell you came up with 62%

Matt Ryan wasn't dominant. Josh Allen lifted Wyoming as a team more than Matt Ryan lifted Boston College.

Our 2 primetime games this year were basically Dallas on Thanksgiving and Pittsburgh on Sunday night. Both on the road. What's wrong with those performances?

Funny... if Allen's weapons only had even a moderate amount of drops instead of the substantial amount they had this year, he would have already been above your criteria. You're probably wrong.

Well, our biggest culprit was Dawson Knox by far. Raw rookie Tight End who didn't catch many passes at all in college. His drops make complete sense to me, which is why I'm so excited moving forward. Knox is the one who really tips the scale. The rest of the offensive weapons may just suffer from being a rung higher on the totem pole than they should be; Brown isn't a true #1 NFL WR... but he's a fantastic #2.

Yes, there were multiple Knox drops in critical situations in critical areas of the field that sucked. If he can be more consistent catching the ball, he can be a BEAST for us for years.

Can you direct our attention to 2 of those passes where a WR had to do the "toe tap" or "toe drag" this year? I can't remember any. Yes, 7 more passes dropped than the league average. 7 more catches and Allen's completion percentage is 60.3%. Yes Allen needs to get better moving forward, but look backward and pause for a minute and comprehend that where Allen is in year 2 is the kind of really significant progress that can give us all hope, and if he makes a similar step from year 2 to year 3, there will be genuine reason to start the Franchise QB talk and work to potentially lock him up long term next offseason.

That Dawson Knox deep ball was a dime, too.

Yes, every drop is the same. It's a pass an NFL WR should have caught. It's really that simple. You guys are really trying to twist the narrative to somehow pin these drops on Allen and it's just ridiculous.

Watson was an absolute animal in college. I agree. He was. He was also surrounded by extreme NFL talent at all positions. Matt Ryan joined a D1 school that won 8 or 9 games in each of its previous 3 seasons before he started along with 3 consecutive bowl games. So you can say, by the same logic, that Allen carried the Wyoming Cowboys just as much considering the year before Allen got his season as a starter, the team won 2 games and had losing records the previous 3 seasons. Allen doesn't have to pass like Ryan because he plays a different style of QB. I don't think Allen will ever be in the upper tier of the NFL as far as completion percentage. He doesn't have to be. And not being there doesn't mean he can't still become an Elite QB. But these failures in logic some people are having is getting frustrating. We all want Allen to get better. But some of us are wildly encouraged by the huge step we saw from year 1 to year 2 in the NFL and we think it bodes, really, really well for his future. But the GM needs to help with that by giving him an Elite weapon or 2.

Again. Blaming Allen for the actual passes that were tracked as "drops" by the NFL is sheer stupidity. Those are balls that SHOULD have been caught, no matter who is throwing it or how they're throwing it. Allen can be blamed for his bad pass %, not for the balls his WRs drop. Unreal

John Brown's best season in the NFL is with Josh Allen as QB. His 2nd best season was playing with MVP candidate Carson Palmer in 2015 who was also throwing to Larry Fitzgerald, Michael Floyd, David Fells and Jermaine Gresham with David Johnson out of the backfield. Cole Beasley's 2nd best season in the NFL is with Josh Allen as QB. His best season was with surprise rookie Dak Prescott, who had his most efficient statistical season while also throwing to Dak Prescott and Jason Witten while handing the ball off to Zeke Elliot. If it's the QB and not the WRs, what is it saying that those 2 guys--who were never really considered #1 WRs and were never really expected to perform as such--had career years with Josh Allen at QB? It's the QB, obviously. It's also the Wide Receivers and other offensive weapons, obviously. We need to upgrade our offensive weapons. Allen needs to work on his game. Both are true.

True. Fortunately, deep passes are by far the lowest attempted passes by NFL QBs and Allen improved on those in the 2nd half of the season actually connecting on a handful of them.

Okay, Elite WRs like Deandre Hopkins and Julio Jones make Deshaun Watson and Matt Ryan look better, so can you also acknowledge the only logical counter that a WR corps without DeAndre Hopkins or other Elite WRs that drop more passes by percentage than any other WR corps in the NFL and can't competently accomplish a routine sideline toe drag make a QB look worse?

Number one: I was genuinely confused by what you said. In part, it was the wording. But as I've pieced together what you've said, it's also because I'm being quite honest and pretty objective with Allen. Allen improved significantly in all aspects of his game from year 1 to year 2, but has some distance to go still before we can conclusively call him our QB for the next 10-15 years. In particular, he needs to work on deep ball accuracy, which he got worse in, touch, which he got better in, and decision making, which he got much better in, but still isn't up to par. He suffered from the highest drop percentage in the NFL by 1%, which is a wide margin when you look at the bunching of numbers below him. Bad throw percentage and drop percentage do not crossover in any way, thus it is ridiculous to accuse Allen of being responsible for his guys having the stat of highest drop percentage and 3rd most total drops in the NFL. His accuracy, while still a work in progress, falls within what I believe is acceptable range (less than 2%) of QBs like Aaron Rodgers and Kyler Murray and is better than the 2 QBs who played in the Super Bowl last year--if you're using something like On Target percentage as a true measure of accuracy, which you seem to. What I think you and some others do is look at QBs in the NFL and view them from some kind of cookie cutter perspective of where a QB should be statistically by which year and then use that as an opportunity for extreme skepticism. I think that's just stupid. I won't recount Allen's history for the 100th time, but considering his story from High School to now, where he is at the moment is beyond mass expectation for a 23 year old kid who has already played in a playoff game and accounted for 350+ yards of offense in his very first playoff game, which was also on the road. Dude has work to do, but I feel good about him doing it and taking another step next year. Maybe you should stop being intellectually dishonest about Josh and admit that you think he should have demonstrated he's a Franchise QB concretely already... because that's clearly how you feel. "It would make Josh look better but wouldn't make him a better QB." Clearly you will admit that it's only logical for you to admit that having a WR corps without DeAndre Hopkins that has dropped more passes by percentage than any other WR corps in the NFL and can't competently accomplish a routine sideline toe drag makes him look worse... right?

Huh?

And soooooo????? WTF is up with you and your incessant need to bicker with everyone.

No of course I'm not saying one of those 7 would be a TD... stop being so obstinate. Sheesh. So you believe they factor a single throw into 2 categories? You believe a throw by a QB is factored as both drop AND bad throw? Let me help you. It's not. This isn't the goddamn Olympics bro. Rankings in accuracy just don't matter if you fall in a window. You're right. Allen's on target percentage was 21st this season. I suspect last season it was dead last. Major improvement. Plus, this year his on target percentage was better than Matthew Stafford, Baker Mayfield, Jared Goff, Tom Brady, and Carson Wentz. He was 0.2% less accurate (because now I'm just assuming you're using that as a gauge for accuracy) than Kyler Murray. That number equates to LESS THAN one throw on Allen's entire season. He was 1.5% less accurate than Aaron Rodgers. Yeah. Allen can obviously get better. That's been acknowledged by everyone including him. But that doesn't mean we can't also acknowledge the significant improvement we saw from him in 2019. 6% improvement is significant improvement. Not blind fandom... this is a simple truth.

Yep. Duke and Isaiah catch those very catchable TDs--and unbelievable throws on Josh's part, particularly with the Duke pass--and Brown is able to do the routine WR toe drag--there's an entire friggin segment Nate Burleson does on GMFB dedicated solely to that very act--and the WC game flips from disaster for Josh to clutch road playoff win. Better weapons or at least more chemistry with the ones we have. Pretty simple. I'm honestly very excited about Dawson Knox. I believe he can be a dominant TE if he can catch the damn ball.

And our young QB did get better in his 2nd year. Significantly better. Peyton Manning threw 43 Interceptions in his first 2 years. In his rookie year the Colts were in the bottom 1/3rd in the NFL in total offense. They won 3 games his rookie year. This is Peyton freaking Manning, the best prospect to join the NFL since John Elway before him. Maybe you're expectations on improvement incrementally are just ridiculous.

But even that one was an alternate, so didn't matter in the end.

When 5 losses were 1 score or less? Yes. I'd bank on at least one. No. It's not. Bad throws are bad throws that couldn't possibly be dropped. Do you not understand how strictly these drops are tracked? Bad throws wouldn't even factor into them. At all. Yes. Allen has too many bad throws. Yes. Our receivers dropped more passes than any team in the NFL. These 2 things aren't mutually exclusive. Great. That's a significant improvement over dead last in 2018. 21st in completion percentage this year was 62%. Those equating accuracy with completion percentage can pretend that was the actual number. Not good enough. But not bad. That's exactly how I think his accuracy in 2019 should be described. Agreed. But are you talking about on target % or completion percentage? Not the same thing. Considering the jump he made from year 1 to year 2, I feel good about that jump. And soooo???? It doesn't? You're gonna have to explain how Allen having by far the highest drop percentage in the NFL shouldn't be considered when talking about his accuracy.

Bro... Bills have Allen locked up for at least 2 more seasons... 3 more if they pick up his 5th year option. waaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaayyyyy to early to have that discussion

Depends on if our receivers are still hanging him out to dry with the worst drop percentage in the NFL by a lot. Isn't as accurate as he needs to be for what? This team just had it's best season in 2 1/2 decades. Allen should work hard in the offseason on his mechanics and passing in general, but the Bills lost 5 of their 6 games by 1 score or less. 7 more catches on the season takes the Bills from worst in the NFL to middle of the pack in the NFL in drop percentage. Conservatively, I think that gives us one or two more wins, which potentially even leads to a 1st round bye... and then who knows???? The fact is that there were at least 31 passes, according to PFR, that were drops. 31 more catches and Allen's completion percentage is 65.5%. I can tell you from cross referencing that these are passes that SHOULD have been caught, not simply all passes that COULD have been caught. Imagine if we could start catching those, too? Now obviously all QBs get dropped passes... but I challenge you to find teams that have had drop percentages above 7% like Buffalo in 2019. Now, if our receivers are still dropping a ton of balls next season and Allen is in the upper 50% range like he was this past year, this argument goes forth. Allen improved his completion percentage significantly from rookie year to his 2nd year. Next thing is YPA. If Allen has the same completion percentage he has now next year but his YPA is 8 or above, that will be another pretty significant improvement. Josh Allen was such a truly raw prospect coming out of College and he's really exceeded the expectations of anyone reasonable already in his first 2 years as a pro. I suspect you see him take another step forward next season.