transplantbillsfan

Loved Monk. One of my all-time favorite shows that I still watch and re-watch. But that wasn't really a storyline. You could very very easily watch any episode from any season out of order and be none the wiser and very entertained.

Free throw shooting... AGAIN!!! I call shenanigans to anyone saying Boeheim emphasizes free throw fundamentals. Brissett is awful when he shouldn't be and Battle is super inconsistent.

Here is that game where Allen completed 52% of his passes for 82 yards and 1 INT. Interception and drive killer on what was an accurate pass--with pressure right in his face--that should have been a 15+ yard pass and continued the drive at least into a Field Goal opportunity. But nope. You cite that interception like it's meaningful as far as Allen's accuracy is concerned. If that one pass alone were caught, his completion % goes up 5% in that game.

I dunno, Jeremiah has him as his 5th best prospect. Kiper has him as his 10th best prospect. This is a real possibility at 9, depending on how he measures out and everything. I don't know much about him, but if he's great as both a pass catcher AND blocker, he could be worth it. We only have 1 TE on our roster right now. Could be that Beane already has an eye on a particular TE prospect in the draft with plans to draft him. He was on record over a year before drafting Allen that he liked him, so perhaps the state of our TE position right now is a sign we're seriously considering, if not already planning on drafting him at #9.

Yes. There's a chance he could. I predict--very early prediction--that he'll pass for 4,000+ yards and rush for 500+ yards and score a combined 35+ TDs

I like Better Call Saul better than Breaking Bad... and that's saying a lot. It's absolutely much more of a slow burn than Breaking Bad, but I'm loving it. The acting, directing, and storytelling is everyone on their A-game in that show. Is that good? Honestly the biggest reason I saw that and was interested is because I saw Olivia (don't know the actress's name) from Fringe is one of the main characters in that show and she was awesome in Fringe. Plus, I liked Criminal Minds--up until the main guy punched some guy on set and got kicked off the show--and Mindhunter kinda looked like Criminal Minds, though maybe less of a procedural.

The exception to this, at least so far, is The Good Place. Great show so far and it's a completely linear story--although in some ways, you can argue it's completely non-linear, but that's part of the fun of the storyline. Absolutely laugh out loud funny throughout. But it just finished its 3rd season and I'm starting to wonder how many more seasons this show can stretch itself out.

The Walternate stuff is when the series got weird. Such a shame. Fantastic shoe before that.

I'd predict Allen gets somewhere around 58-60% next year. He'll improve. But he won't be in the 65%+ range. I just think he's always going to throw the ball downfield significantly more than most QBs. Yes, Allen would be an outlier, but honestly, he already is. Can you find a QB who played at a small school against crappy competition and had a poor completion percentage who was drafted in the top of the 1st round--hell, 1st round alone-- who historically came in to contribute to a .500 record in games he started and finished, lead a couple 4th Quarter comebacks and a few game winning drives? I had the same argument your making here as for why we shouldn't draft him. Statistically, he'd be an outlier. I guess the closest example you could find was Rodgers. I guess you can say Cal is closer to Wyoming than it is Alabama as far as talent goes, but not by much. Here's the thing many people forget about that Cal team Rodgers was on. Rodgers had a solid to really good OL in his 2 years at Cal (4 OL he played with in those 2 years were drafted to the NFL) and had FANTASTIC running backs who were FANTASTIC at Cal. Remember, JJ Arrington had over 2,000 yards rushing in 2004, the year Rodgers had nearly 65% completion percentage. And that same year was Marshawn Lynch's Freshman year where he threw in 700+ yards on the ground. Ya think that running game and OL didn't factor into Rodgers' overall play and even more specifically, his completion percentage? And it didn't hurt that he was throwing to a guy in Chase Lyman who would ultimately be drafted in the 4th round. Rodgers had some serious talent surrounding him. Name all the drafted talent surrounding Allen in college... He'll, name the comparative NFL talent Allen had to the 31 other NFL teams on offense his rookie year. Allen played a lot of Hero Ball in college and even his 1st year in Buffalo... often for good reason. I expect talent surrounding him is about to get much better.

That's what happens when you can't shoot for crap. Syracuse has ALWAYS irritated me with free throw shooting. We actually outplayed Duke on Saturday, too. They really only won because of JT Barrett.

But Ozark is ongoing. Even if it's great now, it might go downhill as it tries to wrap up. Part of the reason I liked Breaking Bad was because it did take that development to heart. It made you invest in Walt and made you that much more invested in the character. Regardless, I was hoping for a TV show that's already ended in order to evaluate it as a whole, not in part. Though Ozark does sound like a show I'll have to start watching.

I recommended the show Breaking Bad to a friend because I loved that show. She finished all 5 seasons--not surprisingly--in about a week and a half. But she was upset about the ending. I won't spoil things about the show for those who haven't seen it, but she felt that it wasn't an "honest ending." Personally, I disagree in general. I loved that show from the very beginning to the very end. I think it did exactly what it was trying to do. But it got me thinking about TV shows in general. Most of them are about the journey, not the destination. That's why I feel like endings of a lot of these shows are kinda awkward, almost like the creator is fumbling for an ending--Seinfeld!!! Fringe is one of my all time favorite shows. But the last season and a half were just weird... you could tell the creator just had the foundational ideas for the show planned, not the ending. Lost was gripping up until a certain point, at which point the same thing Fringe suffered from seemed to happen. Love The Walking Dead, but I'm really just losing interest at this point. There have been a couple opportunities in the last season or so to just end it and wrap everything up well. Haven't even picked it back up since it started again a few weeks ago. The Blacklist is another show I really like, but it's starting to suffer from the same problems, though I'll see where it goes 'cause it still has a chance. I'm absolutely loving Better Call Saul, but right now it's at an inflection point, and I'm curious if it wraps itself up into its obvious conclusion this season or if it stretches itself out and falls into the same trap. Almost the opposite can be said with Game of Thrones, which went from almost a slow-burning big budget TV show for the first 3 or 4 seasons and just felt rushed in its last season, to the point of being outlandish at points... even for a Fantasy show. And with just 6 episodes left, I'm wondering where it ends, though if the ultimate victor is the character I want it to be, I'll probably be satisfied. So I guess I'm throwing this out for 2 reasons: 1) I'm curious if anyone can think of a show that was a knockout from beginning to end. And that doesn't necessarily mean a happy ending... but it means a perfect, or near-perfect ending for that particular show and 2) I'm always looking for good shows to watch... so preferably some warnings about spoilers, first

Look at those images. It's pretty clear they're talking about precision. And that image is problematic to me because it's highly highly subjective. They even put value weighting on ball location, which is even more subjective. And have you read up on how PFF does its work? Last I checked, it was people who did the film work, not a computer model.

I've really been seriously trying to get someone, anyone--including posters like Thurm and Foxx who seem to strongly disagree with me on just about everything--to do the same exercise to cross-check my numbers. So far racketmaster has done some, but it's clear we're using different criteria. I would really love someone to just watch Allen and then go back and watch Wentz's rookie season, which is like a tale of 2 seasons: 1st 4 games vs last 12 games.

Absolutely. Processing was Allen's biggest struggle, but you could tell it immensely improved after the injury. As for accuracy, Allen's catchable ball % pre-injury vs post-injury was pretty similar, actually.

Forget it. Guess we're just talking around each other.

I think I have explained this a million times, but once again, what actually happened was that after we drafted Allen, I was miserable because I thought we made a terrible choice. However, my basis for that opinion was such a teeny tiny amount of game-watching and almost no background research into the kid. I truly was convinced we wouldn't make what I believed--based on an extremely inadequate research/game-watching--that we would NOT draft Allen. Someone early in the thread asked why I believed that. I believed it because I was convinced--based on an extremely inadequate research/game-watching--that Buffalo was going to trade up to #1 or #2 for Darnold OR trade up to the #4 to #10 range for Rosen or Mayfield. Mayfield was the guy I wanted exponentially more than any other QB, but I would have been happy with Darnold and would have settled for Rosen. But, based on an extremely inadequate research/game-watching, I loathed the idea of drafting Allen. I truly didn't think Mayfield would go #1 and thought we had a great shot at him. I thought his height and "attitude" would keep him from being drafted #1, so I actually felt pretty confident we'd find a way to get either Darnold or Mayfield. I was just so confident Beane would work magic and get "his guy," and I think he did, but it happened to be a guy I had barely researched/game-watched. Keep in mind, I hate college football. It's weird, but I love the NFL, but find college football annoying. So I barely watch it until draft time comes and I can only see highlights. But just looking at Allen's stats, the team he was on and the competition he played against before looking at some of his highlights, I just thought there was no way in HELL we'd draft him. And I was massively wrong. And he was now the QB for the team I loved. And it made me sick. And so I did what I should have done before the draft. I stayed up the night we drafted him and watched just as much YouTube "gamefilm" along with some background videos on him and read up on him. And that was what changed my mind. Drafting him was what forced me to do what I should have done before the draft. My problem with a lot of the "experts" is that I would've thought they would've done all that prior to the draft themselves considering it's, ya know, their jobs. And now a season has played out where Allen took on the Herculean role of carrying an offense most of the time he was on the field--much like I came to discover pre-draft he did at Wyoming--and several of these guys who had strongly negative opinions before the draft may have changed their opinions (can you direct me to those? Or were you just speculating?), but several clearly haven't: And here's another draft reaction from the Bill Barnwell run Ringer... though this article isn't wrtitten by him: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theringer.com/platform/amp/nfl/2018/4/27/17289496/2018-draft-winners-losers-buffalo-bills-josh-allen-lamar-jackson-baltimore-ravens The Winners and Losers From Round 1 of the NFL Draft Loser: The Buffalo Bills I would consider any team that used a first-round pick on Josh Allen to be the biggest loser of the first round. No good NFL quarterback has ever had statistics as bad as Allen’s college stats; his best-case statistical comparables include Brian Griese and Josh McCown. There are just so many videos of him missing easy passes so badly. Sure, his arm is strong enough that teams should value his potential, but “extremely strong quarterback who may never learn how to throw to receivers” seems to me like a Day 3 pick, not a first-rounder. I remain baffled that he was treated like a top prospect throughout the entire draft process. But the Bills didn’t just draft Allen. They traded up to get him, giving up two second-round picks to move up five spots. That’s a massive overpay on any draft value chart. http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25518645/nfl-rookie-quarterback-progress-reports-2018-draft-picks-shown-far NFL rookie QB progress reports: What 2018 picks have shown so far Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills Pick: No. 7 | Starts: 8 | Total QBR: 57.1 Bills fans who were frustrated by Tyrod Taylor's low-risk, modest-reward efficiency looked to get the polar opposite when the Bills drafted Allen out of Wyoming. His prototypical arm strength and propensity for attacking teams downfield was supposed to augur a new era for the Bills' offense. Instead, so far, the Bills have witnessed ... a less impressive version of Taylor. The same frustrated fans who were sick of Taylor failing to hit 200 passing yards in a game have seen Allen average 181.6 passing yards in his eight full starts. He is completing just 52.4 percent of his passes while throwing his average pass 10.5 yards in the air. (Over his three years in Buffalo, Taylor completed 62.6 percent of his passes while throwing them an average of 9.0 yards in the air.) Allen has added an unwanted propensity for interceptions, given that his nine picks are nearly as many as the 10 Taylor threw over his final two seasons in Buffalo combined. ... As a passer, though, it's difficult to see any signs of improvement from Allen. His numbers are horrific -- he ranks last among qualifying signal-callers in passer rating (62.8) and QBR on pass attempts (26.8) -- and don't bear any resemblance to the quarterback Allen was supposed to be coming out of college. His deep balls have been scattershot at best; on throws 16 or more yards downfield, his passer rating is 36.2, which is nearly 20 points worse than any other qualifying passer. His Total QBR on those throws is also last in the league.

Absolutely agree with all of this, especially the ridiculousness of people merely pointing to what he did in college without first actually having watched much/any of his college play (which I admit I didn't do until after we drafted him) and especially disregarding how relatively inexperienced he is at the position (multi-sport athlete in High School who didn't attend all those big QB camps like most highly touted rookie QBs have) and how much of a late-bloomer he is. Remember, Allen was a mere 6`3 and 180 lbs late in High School.

Thank you. Again essentially helping to prove the central premise that Allen is NOT inaccurate unless you consider virtually every other highly touted rookie over the last I don't know how many years inaccurate. There are so many interesting stats here I think so many would just be immediately dismissive of, though.

Whatever size window you think it is,--10 feet is just getting ridiculous... I can tell you absolutely that my windows as I watched were smaller than 10 feet and were essentially just the wingspan of the players along with factoring whatever momentum they have moving in whatever direction--your criticism of my method disregards one very important factor: I used the same method for 6 other QBs and Allen threw a higher percentage of catchable passes after excluding Throwaways and Spikes than Mayfield, Jackson, Rosen and the rookie versions of Watson and Wentz. So, if you want to laugh at equating a catchable ball as accurate, fine. But can we call an uncatchable inaccurate? Would there be a single reason to dispute that? And so if we were to say that Allen is very much within the rest of the rookie pack as far as throwing uncatchable passes--which he is--that he is not, therefore, more inaccurate than those other guys? And the very title of my thread stated that Allen is not inaccurate unless the rest of those guys are, too, And yes, the reason I did catchable vs. uncatchable was because it's easily countable. That was the point.

Oh.... my... God... Ummm... yeah. Clearly you know what my thoughts are better than I do. And clearly you know what my thoughts were at the time we drafted Allen better than I do. Clearly you need the last word, even if it's a long winded post with more holes than swiss cheese. I'll let that be the last word on this. but... It's just such a shame you're haughtiness is blinding you so much you legitimately can't recall one time--out of the several there were--that I proved you wrong, and then you ran away never to be seen in that discussion again.

Thurm, I can direct you to the thread of my negative views. You don't need to remind me and I'm not hiding them. You're wrong, though. I know that's hard for you to believe, but you're wrong, as you so often are. Evidence did change my perspective on Allen. And you can actually see that in real time in the link I provided if it goes to page 11. The Bills drafting him only forced me to go look at the evidence out there on him, since I'm a Bills fan and I was so convinced--and I truly was--that we wouldn't draft Allen and hadn't really looked much into him because I was so focused on Baker, Rosen and Darnold primarily, utterly confident we'd draft one of them. We didn't. I was forced to spend more time looking at the evidence for why we would make what I thought at the time was a colossal mistake in drafting Allen. And then the evidence changed my mind. I think it's funny when you address me directly because it seems to be when you're so incredibly confident you can embarrass me about some kind of wrong opinion or incomplete analysis. Then you get proven wrong. Then you turn into Ninja Thurm and disappear rather than admit you were mistaken. It's the Thurm way. Too funny.

Oh absolutely. My pre-draft feelings were certainly reminiscent of many of these negative posts. I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong, though. My pre-draft feelings of Allen--which were based on a very small amount of game-watching and mostly history and analytics--were almost hateful of the thought of picking him. But c'mon now, let's be real here, my responsibility to be thorough in any scouting of him was based on the "I was right!!!" nature of an Internet message board, not to a public paying my salary for my expert opinion. The problem and part of the fun of posting these, of course, is the fact that these guys don't change their opinions easily or willingly, in spite of the facts in front of them. Andy Benoit, for example, called Rosen the most "pro-ready QB by far" at draft time. And then, mid December with plenty of (terrible) film on Rosen and Allen: This is seriously just ridiculous. As someone who actually watched all passes from all QBs, it's downright irresponsible. See, much of the media is a lot like you in that sense, Thurm. They either go radio silence when they're blatantly wrong or they stubbornly cling to misguided opinions and do everything in their power to obfuscate as long as possible. I was wrong in my pre-draft feelings about Allen, bit frankly they were based on a pretty superficial dismissal of the kid. The media, especially guys like Benoit, should be better about this. They have a responsibility to be. It's one of the big reasons I went through every single pass from Allen and 6 other rookie QBs... I wanted to see if the narrative that Allen is somehow so much significantly more raw and inaccurate than other typical highly regarded rookies. He's not.

An article from Buffalo Rumblings... I'll post some gems https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2019/2/21/18228390/reviewing-what-the-media-had-to-say-about-buffalo-bills-drafting-qb-josh-allen-josh-rosen-2018 The media commentary was a mixed bag, with most feeling Buffalo should have drafted another Josh: Rosen. By John Boccacino Feb 21, 2019, 11:00am EST Mike Rodak, of ESPN had the following to say: From Jerry Sullivan, of The Buffalo News: Sal Maiorana, of the Democrat & Chronicle wasn’t shy when sharing his initial thoughts: Barrett Sallee from CBS Sports was less-than-impressed with the pick. Andy Benoit. SI.com Yahoo! Sports

You convinced me. I'll give it another try. 1st episode just started a little slow and I was around family.