transplantbillsfan

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.

Yes, that's why I put Mayfield at #1 and Mayfield at #5. I said I was putting them in order of best to worst.

You could argue they're inaccurate, but I wasn't judging ball placement, just whether they were catchable. All of his completions were catchable, regardless of ball placement. I don't disagree with your assessment, but judging "catchable vs. uncatchable" is, I feel, significantly less subjective than something like ball placement.

So I think this is an important point to make, too. Allen has more of those woefully inaccurate passes than any of the other QBs. He definitely has some real head-scratchers. But those throws still don't happen all that often. And when he's woefully inaccurate, it's usually a pass that just ends up in no-man's land instead of a DB's arms. But how much does it really matter if you have, for example, 2 QBs who throw 30 passes. QB#1 throws 25 into the WR's hands, 3 just out of reach of his outstretched arms and 2 throws end up 5 yards away. QB #2 throws 23 into the WR's hands and 7 just out of reach of his outstretched arms. QB#1 might have those twitter worthy WTF throws you can point to, but was he really less accurate?

What I actually saw with Jackson was a whole lot of manufactured accuracy through an offensive system that moves him around a ton and gets WRs pretty wide open. He has one of the most awkward deliveries I've ever seen... not as bad as Tebow, but still awkward. I think it's going to be problematic for him moving forward.

As I've always done in the past, given overall conclusion and thoughts first, then more details after. Here's the breakdown. Josh Allen Total passes: 320 Catchable passes: 232 Uncatchable passes: 63 Throwaway/Spikes: 23 Tipped/batted passes: 2 Interceptable passes: 26 Sam Darnold Total passes: 414 Catchable passes: 311 Uncatchable passes: 57 Throwaway/Spikes: 23 Tipped/batted passes: 23 Interceptable passes: 44 Lamar Jackson Total passes: 170 Catchable passes: 136 Uncatchable passes: 35 Throwaway/Spikes: 12 Tipped/batted passes: 16 Interceptable passes: 16 Baker Mayfield Total passes: 486 Catchable passes: 360 Throwaway/Spikes: 16 Tipped/batted passes: 32 Interceptable passes: 36 Josh Rosen Total passes: 265 Catchable passes: 86 Throwaway/Spikes: 23 Tipped/batted passes: 19 Interceptable passes: 34 I have game by game breakdowns for every QB. Like for Allen, week 16 against the Pats: Catchable passes: 9 (Foster slips on one of these attempts that I thought was catchable) Uncatchable passes:7 (One of these is a back shoulder fade to Zay that he never turns for that I marked uncatchable) Throwaways: 3 (one of these is the near Safety Allen escaped from and flipped the ball away to the sidelines) Tipped/Batted passes: 0 Interceptable passes: 2 or week 17 for Allen: Catchable passes: 18 Uncatchable passes: 6 Throwaways: 2 (one of these was thrown into the ground) Tipped/batted passes: 0 Interceptable passes: 1 I have the numbers I came up with for every QB from every week, but rather than going to individual games, since it seems you have game pass, why don't you go through every pass from the season and see what numbers you come up with. Websites like PFF and Fahey and the ilk that you seem to trust so much typically don't post game by game statistics, just overall findings, assuming--I guess--their audience will trust what they came up with as accurate or nearly accurate. Count me as one now even more skeptical of findings like those.

I have overall numbers on the season along with game by game numbers. I don't have specific details on which throw I thought was catchable and which wasn't, but we can talk individual throws if you want. I'll post those numbers later. As you can see, the OP was time consuming. You're going to see that the math checks out as far as %s go. I'm disagreeing with folks like Fahey and PFF because I actually watched all the plays from those 5 QBs and collated data according to what my eyes saw. It's subjective for me just as it is for them, why do you think they have different numbers? And on another note, VERY aware of my subjectivity, I feel I erred on the side of uncatchable with Allen and on the side of catchable with the other QBs. One thing this exercise actually made me regret was every time I forked out money to PFF and the couple times I bought Fahey's QB catalogue. With gamepass available, it's much better to do your own analysis. I'd encourage you to do the same

First off, about accuracy: why do we talk about it like it's an Olympic medal? As though if you aren't in the top 3 or top 10 or whatever, you're no good. That doesn't seem the way to think about accuracy at all. There's a threshold of success. If you're accurate above that threshold, you're good. If below, you're not. Regardless, I figured examining Allen's accuracy in comparison to his peers would help determine whether he truly somehow has the severe accuracy problems portrayed by the national media. I only did the 4 other rookies with Allen, not the 31 other starters. Would anyone expect Josh Allen or Sam Darnold or any of the 5 rookies to be as accurate as Drew Brees or Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers?They're rookies. That's why the 5 rookies are my ultimate points of comparison. And part of the point was also anecdotal. Just looking at Darnold and Allen, you see Darnold just throw some real head-scratchers that wind up being tipped or batted. These types of throws I so very rarely saw with Allen that I just didn't consider them negative throws. Darnold showed that those throws should largely be weighed negatively, so I adjusted. Methodology for all QBs were the same. Rookies in the NFL are peers who have the same short offseason to work and, in the case of all 5 rookies, spent the entire offseason as presumed backups, taking 2nd and 3rd string snaps. Allen was talked about and is still talked about consistently as the rookie QB who has a serious accuracy problem, not the other guys. I wanted to test that narrative with my own eyes, so before this post reaches the TLDR category for the impatient, here were the final %s I came up with after watching every single pass of all 5 rookie QBs, arranged from best to worst. UPDATE: I'm starting to go through some previous rookies, too. Primarily I'm focusing on the "good rookies," meaning rookies who were considered as having pretty good rookie seasons. So I started with Watson, as you can now see. Catchable balls excluding Throwaways 1) Darnold - 79.5% (2019) 2) Allen -78.1% (2019) 3) Wentz - 77% (2016) 4) Mayfield -76.6% (2019) 5) Watson- 75.1% (2018) 6) Jackson -72.7% (2019) 7) Rosen - 71.6% (2019) Throwaway/Spike % 1) Allen - 7.1% (2018) 2) Jackson -6% (2018) 3) Rosen - 5.8% (2018) 4) Darnold - 5.5% (2018) 5) Watson- 3.4% (2017) 6)) Mayfield -3.2% (2018) 7) Wentz - 2.6% (2016) Interceptable pass % excluding Throwaways and Spikes 1) Wentz - 6.9% (2016) 2) Mayfield - 7.6% (2018) 3) Jackson - 8.5% (2018) 4) Allen - 8.7% (2018) 5) Rosen - 9.1% (2018) 6) Watson- 10.7% (2017) 7) Darnold - 11.2% (2018) Catchable pass % Excluding BOTH Throwaways AND batted-tipped passes 1) Darnold - 84.5% (2018) 2) Mayfield - 82.2% (2018) 3) Wentz - 81.4% (2016) 4) Jackson - 79.5% (2018) 5) Allen - 78.6% (2018) 6) Watson- 77.9% (2017) 7) Rosen - 75.5% (2018) Here's the breakdown. Josh Allen Total passes: 320 Catchable passes: 232 Uncatchable passes: 63 Throwaway/Spikes: 23 Tipped/batted passes: 2 Interceptable passes: 26 Sam Darnold Total passes: 414 Catchable passes: 311 Uncatchable passes: 57 Throwaway/Spikes: 23 Tipped/batted passes: 23 Interceptable passes: 44 Lamar Jackson Total passes: 199 Catchable passes: 136 Uncatchable passes: 35 Throwaway/Spikes: 12 Tipped/batted passes: 16 Interceptable passes: 16 Baker Mayfield Total passes: 486 Catchable passes: 360 Uncatchable passes: 78 Throwaway/Spikes: 16 Tipped/batted passes: 32 Interceptable passes: 36 Josh Rosen Total passes: 393 Catchable passes: 265 Uncatchable passes: 86 Throwaway/Spikes: 23 Tipped/batted passes: 19 Interceptable passes: 34 Deshaun Watson Total passes: 204 Catchable passes: 148 Uncatchable passes: 42 Throwaway/Spikes: 7 Tipped/batted passes: 7 Interceptable passes: 21 Carson Wentz Total passes: 607 Catchable passes: 455 Uncatchable passes: 104 Throwaway/Spikes: 16 Tipped/Batted passes: 32 Interceptable passes: 41 I have game by game breakdowns for every QB. Like for Allen, week 16 against the Pats: Catchable passes: 9 (Foster slips on one of these attempts that I thought was catchable) Uncatchable passes:7 (One of these is a back shoulder fade to Zay that he never turns for that I marked uncatchable) Throwaways: 3 (one of these is the near Safety Allen escaped from and flipped the ball away to the sidelines) Tipped/Batted passes: 0 Interceptable passes: 2 or week 17 for Allen: Catchable passes: 18 Uncatchable passes: 6 Throwaways: 2 (one of these was thrown into the ground) Tipped/batted passes: 0 Interceptable passes: 1 Part of the reason I decided to go through this endeavor was because I saw this tweet And then seeing this: https://buffalonews.com/2018/12/27/buffalo-bills-pro-football-focus-josh-allen-accuracy/ Kinda makes me think this is the reality First off, let me explain my "methodology," so to speak... I rewatched each "condensed" version of all of every rookie's games and made a judgment call on whether their incompletions were catchable or uncatchable. That's it. No, I didn't do Coach's film, but I realize that would have been better, but also much more time consuming. When there was a real question on a throw, gamepass has a slow motion option. This process took a few weeks to get through all 5 rookies. I'm not judging ball placement, just whether the WR/TE/RB could reasonably have made a catch or not... even a great catch. If he had a chance, I labelled it as "catchable." If not, I labelled it as "uncatchable." Ball hits palm (or would with reasonable adjustment) = Catchable Ball hits fingertips of outstretched arms or beyond = Uncatchable That Clay non-catch in the EZ at the end of the Miami game is absolutely catchable because it's a catch you see NFL WRs and TEs across the league make frequently. It may not be Charles Clay catchable, but it's catchable. I'm not making judgement calls on miscommunication or anything because I think that type of thing will largely even out in the end. So when I looked at the wide open Zay Jones miss in the back of the end zone in the Miami game--which we now know from post game interviews was a miscommunication where Allen assumed Jones was going to "sit" when he threw it--I labelled it as uncatchable. I saw one of those plays in Darnold's 2nd game that appears to also be a miscommunication.So, my process is something you're obviously free to criticize, but I'm using the same process for all the rookies. I tried to be as absolutely unbiased as I could be, but there's inherent subjectivity to this exercise. But do you agree that all (roughly) 35 of these passes are catchable? And that's missing a good number, believe me. Remember Allen's interception in the Titans game that went right between Andre Holmes hands? Yeah... catchable... not Interceptable. Now, on top of that, I also counted "throwaways" and "tipped/batted balls." I also kept track of interceptable passes. Each interceptable pass was also either a catchable pass, uncatchable pass, or tipped/batted ball for obvious reasons. I think it's important to discard throwaways when considering a QB's accuracy... and yes yes yes, I know that "ball placement is part of this equation, but that's highly highly highly subjective... much moreso than just whether a pass is catchable or not. This is anecdotal, but I can tell you this, a huge number of Allen's catchable incompletions were targeting the liabilities of Kelvin Benjamin, Andre Holmes, and Charles Clay. Oddly, Allen's catchable vs. uncatchable passes were virtually identical between his pre-injury-absence and when he came back against the Jags. I went back and double checked. I think his decision making just got much better after his injury. I also actually triple checked about his very low tipped/batted pass numbers compared to the other guys. Also, I didn't track uncatchable vs catchable in terms of yards, (though maybe I should have for skeptics), from rewatching every single Allen pass on the year, the vast majority of his uncatchable passes were 10+ yards down the field. He missed some short passes that a lot of folks will cherry pick, but on the whole, his short passes were catchable. I think Allen's about as inaccurate as the typical rookie, but a lot more willing to push the ball down the field, for better or worse. I think it's worth pointing out that passes where QB throws it to a WR and a DB steps in front to intercept it, but can't hang on, I'm counting in the category of "tipped/batted balls" along with obviously "Interceptable." Holy CRAP does Darnold throw a lot of those! These are the types of bad throws where maybe a QB just doesn't see a guy closing in that don't get intercepted, they just end up being passes defensed. This very rarely happened with Allen, but happened really frequently with Darnold. The narrative seems to be that Allen succumbs to "Hero Ball" too much and takes too many risks with the football. I think there might be an argument to be made there up until he throws the football, but once Allen throws it, he appears to be the most conscientious of defenders in the realm of his intended target.To me this idea that Allen is like Brett Favre--in terms of being a gunslinger--just doesn't hold water. Yes, he's consistently throwing farther than the other rookie QBs... actually farther than any other QB in the NFL. But he's not making a lot of risky throws. That's Darnold and Mayfield.And while a lot of people look at those risky throws as indicative of better QB play, I'll give you these Next Gen stats of Aggressiveness %. Here's how it's defined: Aggressiveness (AGG%) Aggressiveness tracks the amount of passing attempts a quarterback makes that are into tight coverage, where there is a defender within 1 yard or less of the receiver at the time of completion or incompletion. AGG is shown as a % of attempts into tight windows over all passing attempts. https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/stats/passing#aggressiveness Looks to me like being aggressive with the football is something Josh Allen is not, and that may not be a bad thing based on the QBs accompanying him on the list. The work so many stress Allen needs to do in the offseason regarding mechanics and just improving as a pocket passer is Jackson ×100. Baltimore does some brilliant stuff on offense in order to get WRs consistently pretty wide open and/or providing Jackson with just a single read passing wise. If anyone reminds me of Tebow this year, it's Jackson, and it's not even close. Mayfield, like you might expect--I did--was the best passer of the bunch. His 2nd half of the year was much stronger than the 1st. Damn does he get a lot of balls batted at the line, though. Rosen was pretty bad. He honestly might get the David Carr effect long term and never reach his potential largely because of the talent around him, honestly. I'll be happy to answer any questions about my numbers, but I would encourage you to try this exercise yourself if you have those serious doubts. But if I were to ask you if you'd be happy with a QB who threw catchable footballs 78.1% of the time, would you be happy?

I just saw this tweet and I think it's fascinating: I wouldn't personally touch that trade with a 19 1/2 foot pole. Newton is already damaged goods, but even at his best, I just don't think Newton is the natural passer Allen looks to be... not to mention the way each handles themselves as leaders, etc. So, it naturally got me thinking... who would you make a player for player trade with, QB wise? During the offseason, there was a massive push for Keenum and Cousins... still want them? Dalton, Ryan, Smith, Flacco, Ryan, Eli, Tannehill, Stafford??? How about those relatively (to varying degrees) established guys? What about the younger kinda still TBD but relatively exciting guys like Wentz, Goff, Winston, Carr, Garrappolo, Watson, Dak, Mariota? Or the younger studs like Wilson or Luck? Or the guys who look like young studs (to varying degrees) like Watson, Trubisky, or Mahomes? Or any of the other 4 1st round rookie QBs? Or the older HOFers like Brees, Rivers, Brady, Big Ben, or Brees? Personally, I think Allen's floor is actually just a solid NFL starter for the next 10-15 years, barring injury. I think his attainable ceiling is 1st ballot HOFer. I'm not doing the older HOF trade because I think it's too short term a gain. Actually, rather than saying who I wouldn't trade for, I'll say who I'd consider a straight up trade for: Mahomes and Mayfield. Mahomes looks too damn good to not consider it and Baker was the guy I desperately wanted in the draft. So I guess I consider both. That's it. From "too old so short term gain" to "overrated" to "damaged goods" to "product of the coaching and team around him," I wouldn't do a player for player trade for 29 of the 31 other QBs in the NFL... and I'm not even solid on Baker or Mahomes in that straight up trade, either. I don't think we just got the right Josh, I think we've got the right QB.

Who are the 11 weirdos who didn't vote Patriots??? These people must be new to being Bills fans.