transplantbillsfan

Who the friggin hell is ESB?

Aside from arguing the details of accuracy vs. precision, which QB would you rather have, the one who puts 83% of his passes in a place his WR can catch it or the one who puts 76% of his passes in a place where his WR can catch it?

I added the raw numbers into the OP for the sake of transparency to anyone who wants to try the exercise because they don't trust my %s.

Okay here's another point regarding methodology. Those "good D plays" are still catchable. And I labelled them as such. If the WR has a ball that comes pretty much into his hands but a CB makes a great play swiping the ball out between his hands, it's catchable. A Hail Mary into a crowd of both Bills WRs and DBs is BOTH catchable AND Interceptable. I was talking accuracy, so that great play by the DB where the ball meets the WR was a catchable ball. But if say an LB jumps and tips the ball midway through that path from QB to WR, it was a tipped/batted pass. If ball is out of bounds but WR can reasonably make an NFL WR catch and drag his feet in bounds, it's catchable. It's only a 5 minute YouTube video. I don't see why noting the places you see the uncatchable passes happen is so difficult.

No. That's literally how I defined uncatchable right in the OP. Ball hits outstretched fingertips = Uncatchable Ball hits outstretched palm = catchable There's a big difference between those 2. You see NFL WRs who make the 1st catch every week. You see NFL WRs who make the 2nd catch never in history.

Or the missed TD pass in the EZ in the 1st Miami (?) game to Zay that looked like a downright terrible throw to a WIDE OPEN receiver but you heard from Allen after the game in his PC that he expected Jones to sit in the open spot and Dabol's immediate reaction combined with his PC tell you he thought Zay should have done the same. I labelled it as uncatchable because I wasn't judging miscommunication. But on the flip side, take Allen's TD pass to Jones against Miami on his quick short crossing pattern that Allen threw slightly behind him. As it turned out, that throw guided Allen into his TD pass. Allen said after the game he made a bad throw and Say made a great catch, so we know what happened in this case, but what if that exact same pass and play were made by Tom Brady or Drew Brees... would PFF or ESPN stats label that as a bad pass or brilliant ball placement? This judgement of ball placement is just so damn subjective, that's why I stuck with catchable vs uncatchable. Still subjective, but significantly less so.

I equated a catchable football with accuracy, plain and simple. Defining precision as far as exactly where the ball should have been in relation to the WRs is virtually impossible nowadays, that's why I didn't even try.

I'm not saying there aren't degrees of accuracy. Of course there are. But judging and valuing those degrees is impossible, especially on the NFL's new favorite pass: the back shoulder throw. On 78.1% of Allen's passes, he gave his professional WR/TE/RB a chance to catch the football. That was 2nd to only one of the other rookie QBs in a highly touted rookie QB class. And that's while he's pushing the ball down the field more than any other QB in the NFL, not just the rookies. Yeah, I think he's 'aight.

Agreed. Hopefully our WRs and TEs significantly better and Allen keeps improving.

You literally sound exactly like me in the preseason draft process. I guess we can chalk you up in the same category broadly as the national media and pundits: stubbornly dependent on analytics and hating to admit you're wrong. Well, my feelings about Allen last Spring were dead wrong. He might not become out Franchise QB, but he's already looked much more the part than I thought he would. Remember, this was a scouting pick, not an analytics pick.

Huh? Jordan Matthews hasn't been on the team for a few years. Who's ESB? They did trade for Benjamin. How'd that work out? Zay over JuJu and Kupp... okay... are either of those guys #1 WRs? Draft picks are hit and miss... naturally. Veteran Free Agents are known commodities. Beane and McDermott haven't done much yet to provide some proven offensive talent for their young QB.

Thank you for the thoughtful post. Yes, I give every ball that a WR has the ability to catch equal value and every ball he can't as equal value. I understand PFF's and ESPN stats findings and don't agree with them because I scrutinized and watched and tracked every single one of those over 1,000 passes and evidently they're getting into things like ball placement, which is just preposterously hard to define and measure and give value to--because surely a pass to a WR streaking on an in-route across the middle of the field with a ball placed precisely 1 foot in front of his chest when it reaches that WR running at full speed is given more value than a ball that is 1 foot behind him while running full speed than a ball that he has to stop for to catch because it would have been 5 feet behind him if he were running full speed than a ball that is... And do you see how ridiculous this gets? I'm sorry, but consider me extremely skeptical that PFF and ESPN stats had the exact same scaled value system across the NFL for the thousands of passes they had to chart. I understand that some catchable passes are better than others, but I really think people here delude themselves into believing Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees always throw the football to the perfect location and don't have wild misses. Allen was throwing as many or more catchable footballs as all the other QBs save Darnold once you discard Throwaways and spikes AND significantly more of Darnold's passes were Interceptable. And just from watching--obviously subjective--his ball placement and speed are fine and even improved throughout the season.

Maybe we try surrounding Allen with some talent that can actually catch the football and protect him a bit. Positional spending by position of the Bills vs. the remaining 4 playoff teams on average:

Sums up the reason I went about this and my conclusion very well. Thank you!

Any word on contract details?

The myth is that Allen is one of the most inaccurate high 1st round draft picks to come out in years. That in order to become a legit NFL Franchise QB, he needs to take a lot more steps forward improving his accuracy than the typical rookie QB would. That's the narrative--almost the joke--pushed by national pundits and "experts." That was the myth I was "debunking," not that Allen can't or shouldn't improve his accuracy. Of course he would. But his accuracy as a rookie as compared with the other NFL rookies this year was just fine.

Can you identify the passes in that clip that you don't think were catchable?

In games started AND finished, Josh Allen is .500. So is Mayfield.

I wonder if TE is more pressing. I actually have some optimism about Zay, Foster and McKenzie. I have very little about our TEs. I'm not saying to not pursue a legit #1 or #2 WR. I'm saying we definitely don't have a #1 TE, which is a position that has become one of the most important in the NFL for young QBs in particular.

But you aren't telling it like it is. You just aren't. I really do think there's a natural "grass is always greener on the other side" thing going here. That along with this extreme media push that Allen is inaccurate. Allen has head scratching throws, but so does literally every other QB in the NFL. I watched every single Allen pass along with 4 other apparently more accurate rookie QBs. Allen does have accuracy. Yet, the grass is always greener...

It just doesn't make sense to call a completed pass inaccurate. As other posters have said, it's precision vs accuracy.

Really good points!

He does. That's the point. Ball placement isn't always ideal, but the majority of his Incompletions were catchable by NFL standards. Can you agree the YouTube clip of all those passes were catchable? Now imagine we had a decent WR corps that could make half of those catches.

If Allen continues to have a 52% completion % for the next 2 years he's guaranteed to be our starting QB--I don't think we'll move on from him for at least a couple more years, no matter what--then we can start to blame him. But that will likely be when we've upgraded his weapons. But again, just watch the plays. His completion percentage belies his accuracy.