transplantbillsfan

Can you identify all the drops? The broadcast put the stat up for drops in the 1st half of the game at 3. After that I remember Zay's absolutely ridiculous drop. That's 4. What were the other 3 plays? Just curious because I no longer have game pass, so I can't go back and watch. Regardless, even with the 4 drops I just identified, 22/36 would still be above 60% at 61.1%. And I remember last week against Miami the same thing happened as I counted the drops and Allen again jumped up above 60% if our WRs caught those balls.

Already posted here: but good article for discussion. And I agree with Quinn, too.

Reading what?

I'd love for the critics of Allen's running to watch these highlights and answer this simple question: Are the worst hits Allen takes when he's a passer or a runner?

While I thank you for your detailed breakdown, I disagree. Rewatching some of those throws and then looking at your descriptions, you're definitely erring way too much on the terrible. Josh is a rookie. He's a pretty typical 1st round rookie QB. His play resembles that. In fact, it's better than average in many respects and I really don't think it's worse than average for 1st round rookie QBs in pretty much any respect, including accuracy. He's fine now, we just need to see him improve in the offseason, which he's likely to do with his work ethic.

1st round OG, WR or TE talent?

No top 10 talent on offense? Good grief, screw losing out then.

Is the tackle from Alabama a top 10 talent? I guess it's that point in the NFL season where I need to start bothering paying attention to college.

How often do you see WRs from other NFL teams dropping passes like this? and we see multiple routine passes like that dropped in every single game!!! I thought a light went on for Zay, but that game and that drop in particular was just a big step back for him. He'll probably be our slot WR next year behind Foster (?) and someone we draft or get in Free Agency.

Here's what should be a damn standard NFL catch As far as our WR corps goes, If You Build It, Josh Will Excel!

Ringer article. Guess they do this for every team as they're eliminated from the playoffs, which unfortunately for us happened yesterday. (on a side note, it's kinda crazy the "race to the top of the bottom" thing happening for the Wildcard. It's very possible 8-8 is going to be the #6 seed this year) https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/12/10/18134974/buffalo-bills-exit-interview-josh-allen-sean-mcdermott A year after the Bills’ surprise playoff run, the team was sent packing in Week 14. The defense looks strong, and Josh Allen can run, but how can Buffalo get better for 2019? It’s that time of year, when some NFL teams have started looking toward next season. As each club is eliminated, The Ringer will examine what went right, what went wrong, and where the franchise could go from here. Up next is the Buffalo Bills, who will play out the string after Sunday’s 27-23 to the Jets. What Went Right ...After allowing 78 points in the first two weeks of the season, the Bills have allowed just 21.1 per game since. A Week 3 humiliation of the Minnesota Vikingsestablished Allen as America’s hurdler-in-chief and showed that the Bills are not a laughing stock. What Went Wrong It took one 47-3 loss to Baltimore in Week 1 to remind America that last year’s heartwarming playoff run was one of the great football anomalies of our lifetime... Free Agency The Bills don’t have too many difficult decisions to make for 2019. Defensive tackle (and team soul) Kyle Williams is a free agent, but if he wants to play in 2019, the team would almost surely offer him another one-year deal... Buffalo will have the third-most cap space in 2019, with more than $90 million, according to projections from Over the Cap, but the question is whom the team would bring in. Draft Targets Alabama left tackle Jonah Williams started for the Crimson Tide as a freshman and has a connection to offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who used to have the same role under Nick Saban. If they opt for a playmaker instead, Arizona State’s N’Keal Harry and Ole Miss’ A.J. Brown might be the two most talented receivers in this year’s class.

https://billswire.usatoday.com/2018/12/10/what-we-learned-from-the-buffalo-bills-loss-to-new-york-jets-week-14-josh-allen-tredavious-white-stephen-hauschka-jerry-hughes-lorenzo-alexander/3/ What we learned from the Bills loss to the Jets Allen hasn’t broken giveaways yet Allen can run no matter what Tre’Davious White is human Pass rush needs help Crossman gotta go

That mother *****!!!! Watching that play where Hauschka gets injured is infuriating!!! The fact that there was no flag is despicable!

Sounds like McDermott always expects Allen to be a serious running threat. Good, that's part of what makes him special. Just continue working on his pocket passing, which I think is light years better than the national narrative presents it.

Why? What's the point of this? I'm not going to be crazy upset if we lose our next 3 games and lose them the same way we lost the last couple weeks. But if we lose our last 3 games the way we lost to Baltimore, Indy and the Bears, I'm going to be seriously concerned. This Sunday's game the game I'd choose of our remaining 3 that I'm most okay with losing. I really, really wanna see the Bills play a little bit of spoiler to the Pats and Dolphins. These last 3 weeks are still about the growth of Allen primarily, along with some of our younger guys like Edmunds and Foster. If we win our next 3 and those young guys look good, who cares about the 5 or 6 draft spots it'll cost us? We aren't drafting a QB in the 1st round this year, so draft positioning just doesn't matter all that much. Plus, isn't this a really top-heavy draft for Defense? Yeah, I don't think we're focusing on the defense much this offseason.

EDIT: I'm responding to that Rodak tweet about Allen's adjusted completion %... don't know why it's not showing up as I quote you. All sorts of other funny things come into play with this stat, though. Each website offers its own subjective view of these passes. Was last week's final pass to Clay a drop or an inaccurate pass counting against Allen's adjusted completion % for ESPN? I'd be curious. Also, there are other passes that I think are accurate passes, but aren't drops, either. I'm thinking of a pass (I think it was to Zay in the End Zone) that was thrown by Allen on a designed play where Jones was clearly supposed to go to the sideline. Allen threw it up to a spot where only Jones could catch it with the opportunity to keep his feet in bounds. Zay couldn't keep his feet in bounds, despite catching the football. I can't remember when that pass happened, but the broadcast replayed it multiple times. How do these types of stats account for passes like that? I mean, it's obviously not a catch, so it's an incomplete pass, but is a WR who catches the ball, but can't keep his feet in bounds even though he probably should have somehow less of an indictment than a drop? Shouldn't it be counted in the same way as a drop is? Regardless, so this "adjusted completion %" moves Allen up 12% as a passer? That's a pretty signifcant bump.

Are you people watching these games? Yesterday, I saw drop after drop after drop. 1st half the stat of "3 dropped passes" was put up on the screen and in the 2nd half Jones had that blatant and unacceptable drop on a nicely thrown ball from Allen. That's AT LEAST 4 blatant drops. If those WRs catch those passes he's over 60% as a passer in the Jets game. The exact same thing happened in Miami last week, where he ALSO would have been over 60% as a passer if our WRs/TEs could catch the damn ball. These aren't even crazy, acrobatic catches. Most of these are routine passes our guys just drop. But yeah, let's look at his statistics and see that his completion % is below 50% and he is therefore inaccurate, but ignore all those drops along with the FACT that Allen has the highest depth of target in the NFL at 11.02 yards and he's been climbing the rungs of the "average length of completions" ladder in the NFL since he started the season, where he's now 7th in the NFL where he was 16th early this season, which means early this season he was missing a lot of those deep passes, but over the season he's been hitting a lot more of them. He's getting better. You just have to actually WATCH him play!

Are you people watching these games? Most of Allen's bad hits are behind the LOS because the OL sucks. Now, some of them are because he's escaped initial pressure and then is chased down and hit a 2nd time, but still behind the LOS. When Allen gets beyond the LOS and runs, he's been generally protecting himself pretty damn well, sliding and giving himself up diving to the ground. And Pat friggin White? Seriously? Look, there's always a risk in Football, and if/when Allen gets seriously injured, I bet people will say "see!!!! I told you a running QB would never last!!!" But QBs get hurt in the pocket or behind the LOS significantly more than running QBs beyond the LOS. Jimmy G early this season is a good example of a QB running stupid. But the other thing is Allen's pure physical stature, which is really going to protect him significantly when it comes to injury. You can't compare Allen to QBs like Tyrod or Vick or Pat friggin White purely because his God-Given physical stature is going to end up protecting him significantly more than those other guys. Allen is always going to be a "running QB" in the sense that he'll scramble a helluva lot more than pocket QBs like Brady, Rivers, Goff, Rosen, etc. But we just want to see him continue to develop as a passer, too, which he's doing if you actually watch him.

Don't agree with this. Special Teams is the reason we lost this game, plain and simple. If our Special Teams were even adequate, we win. That, to me, makes this an acceptable loss because Special Teams is, I think, easier to fix and less important than Offense and Defense, which both looked pretty good. Allen and Foster are still bright spots on this offense. 4 or 5 blatant drops in this game. Allen was getting hit behind the LOS because of just pi$$ poor protection. Allen's 1st interception was a throw he shouldn't have made, but you could say the same thing about Darnold in the game, who also made the same throw/int. Allen's last interception might have been a bad throw, but 70 seconds, no timeouts and a long field to go NEEDING a TD really is not a decent amount of time. He was trying to make a play. This is going to be an offense-heavy offseason and I'm pretty excited about next season already because with Allen in his 2nd year in Dabol's system, things should really progress. And I'm really starting to dig Dabol's creativity.

This article is from last week and analysis of the Miami game, but I think it's pertinent to the ongoing discussion about "Allen needs to stop running!" continuing after the Jets game: https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2018/12/6/18126838/is-josh-allen-too-quick-to-abandon-pocket-zay-jones-buffalo-bills-dolphins-kiko-alonso-charles-clay Is Josh Allen too quick to abandon the pocket? In assessing the pulse of the blog following last Sunday’s game, it seems Buffalo Rumblings readers were generally pleased with Josh Allen’s performance against the Miami Dolphins, even though the Buffalo Bills wound up losing the game. Many pointed to the catchable ball to Clay on the goal line that would have put the Bills ahead by three with under a minute left to play. Fans weren’t universally positive about Allen’s performance. One point that appeared a couple of times was that it appeared Allen was too quick to bail out of pockets. I believe that line of thought is worth an in-depth look. ... The notion that Allen was taking off early, either to scramble or just to buy time, would seem to be quashed. He wasn’t bailing out of clean pockets and didn’t do so until the very last play. He made good decisions on when to scramble and when to run, and generally did an exceptional job of seeing and sensing pressure. He took two sacks, one of which is bound to happen when the offensive tackle guarding his blind side isn’t very good at his job. Even then, Allen has to trust Dawkins to do a better job than he did in Miami. The other sack, yes, is on Allen. He has to get the ball out when he sees the defensive back coming on a blitz and has a man open to avoid the negative play.

The fact that these are our standards of "great catch" is kinda sad considering they're pretty routine catches by NFL standards. The answer is no. I'm already exhausted by the inevitable ignorance of the national media when it comes to the incredible lack of talent on our WR corps and the "well, that's who Josh Allen is!!!" narrative that's going to come when talking about his completion % and turnovers. Here's an article, of course a local-based publication, that gets it: https://billswire.usatoday.com/2018/12/10/josh-allen-dazzles-for-buffalo-bills-but-needs-more-around-him-to-shine-new-york-jets-sam-darnold/ Josh Allen dazzles for Bills but needs more around him to shine Something that stands out though to nearly every fan who’s watched Allen try and work his magic on nearly every play is just how much Allen is able to do with the “weapons” he has. The team’s tight end position has been a non-factor and their receiving core is made up of guys who all haven’t been in Buffalo for more than two seasons. Not to mention, Allen is currently the team’s leading rusher. A lot of that falls on the team’s offensive line. Heading into the contest, Pro Football Focus ranked the Bills’ starting five as the second-worst run-blocking group in the NFL. Their pass-blocking also failed to show on Sunday. In total, Allen was hit 10 times which including three sacks. Standing at a podium following the game, Allen looked defeated and beat up. From what Allen has had to work with this season, he isn’t exactly working miracles but he’s not far off. On the other side of the field on Sunday, No. 3 overall pick Sam Darnold doesn’t have a fantastic supporting cast, but they sure as heck looked like one compared to Allen’s. In fact, he took zero QB hits in the game and his receiving core is miles ahead of Buffalo’s. Robby Anderson made Tre’Davious White look bad, which is rare.