Shaw66

That sounds right. My point was that if you already have a passing grade on your unit, and I think the Bill's do, then you're looking to upgrade talent at any position, not just what you'd consider your weakest link. What you're saying is that Morse may be the first stud on the line and likely not to be replaced. If that's correct, and it makes sense to me, the Bills still could make use of an upgrade at any of four positions on the line.

From what I've read and heard, offensive line play is more about teamwork and execution (limiting mistakes) and less about talent. So I tend to think the way to evaluate the offensive linemen is on a pass-fail basis rather than giving them a grade. That is, five guys with a passing grade who really work together are better than an A, a couple BS and a couple Cs who aren't on the same page. In 2019 the Bills got to five guys with passing grades, with right tackle being borderline. This season they should be considerably better, because they will have a true unit that works together and because Ford should be more solid at tackle. Having said that, it helps a lot if you have one or two stars on the line, and that's where the Bills still are lacking. Maybe Dawkins, maybe Morse, maybe Ford, but none of them is there yet. Ford may be the only guy on the line with the physical potential to be a star; Morse's leadership may make him a star even if he isn't the most physically dominant in the league. So I think there's more work to be done on the line, and I think the help could be at any of the positions. I know the Bills have other needs, but I wouldn't be unhappy if the Bills took an offensive lineman in the second round.

Cool summary. Excellent, in fact. Your #2 is correct and your #3 is a great description of the pick. Yes, they're still building. I don't believe 2020 was their target year; I think 2021 was the year, and still is the year, that they expect to have quality throughout the lineup. They're still fiddling with the offensive line, they're still fiddling at linebacker. Tight end needs to get settled. But I thought from the get go that the Diggs deal said that Beane and McDermott are ready to win now. If they thought 2021 was the year, something about 2019 got them to begin looking more aggressively at 2020, and the Diggs deal was the signal. The Diggs deal said to Allen and Daboll "we expect to win now." It put a lot of pressure on them. Still, they know they have a very young core, starting with Edmunds and Allen. 2021 is still their target year. I don't think ownership will be too upset with a first round exit in 2020, provided the team seems to be progressing. It's tough to win in the playoffs, and as of right now they have an unproven roster. None of that changes my mind about Allen. Allen's their guy, he will still be their guy in 2021, unless he really melts down this year. They will be patient, so long as they see the kinds of progress from him that they're looking for. Thanks for chatting. I learn a lot about football in these discussions.

I've enjoyed talking about this. I'm not sure the is a one size fits all answer. I just hope we see a couple of years of solid improvement from Josh and then we wont have to worry that the Bills are wasting all that money.

No one would be satisfied with that kind of production. When they re-sign those guys, it's not because they're satisfied with the production. It's because they think they have a better chance of getting the production they want out of the guy than the other reasonable options available.

I know. He still is, until he isn't. Someone in that organization has to make a judgment about him, and it isn't an easy call to make. He has a lot of history that says don't do it. But the most important history is the recent history, and a passer rating north of 110 has to make you stop and reconsider. Playoffs is the last piece of the puzzle, so the fact that he hasn't met your standard in the playoffs yet isn't surprising.

I hear you. Put a different way, if Allen really blossoms in the next two seasons, no one will be surprised when he gets his big deal. What I'm saying is that so long as he doesn't crash and burn, if he just treads water on the stats we like to quote, I still won't be surprised if he gets his big deal from the Bills. It will just mean that the Bills are using their superior information about the guy to make a prediction about his future that seems odd to many fans who are disappointed with his statistical performance. Put another way, I think McBeane will think more strategically about the future than Jerry Jones.

One thing I've learned from years on these fan forums, learned from people smarter than I am, is that the number of successful, truly successful quarterbacks is so small compared to the number of guys who have played quarterback over the years that the past isn't a statistically significant sample for making predictions. If it were, there wouldn't be so many first round quarterback busts. If it were possible to predict the success of QBs based on past performance and simple metrics, teams would draft all those guys who don't make it, and they wouldn't sign the Goffs and the Wentzes to those big extensions. You're making judgments on data that isn't statistically significant. Picking quarterbacks is like picking stocks: there's a lot of historic data, but the data isn't necessarily indicative of future performance. The fact that someone hasn't done it to your statistical satisfaction doesn't mean much. And you can call it one if you like, but if you look at the data, you can see that it's more than one. Steve Young wasn't always the dominant player he turned out to be. Elway, as I've said, wasn't. The Chargers should have seen that Brees was better than Rivers, and a lot of teams, including the Bills should have been chasing him aggressively, injury or not. Every guy has a story, and not every story fits your view of the world. And by the way, as you can see just from those names, and from Montana and Brady and Bradshaw and Roethlisberger, coaching and team culture also have a lot to do with it. Football is just another modern-day black box. There's a lot more going on inside the box than we see, and although it's fun and I do it all the time, it's foolish of fans to think they actually understand what's going on inside the box. We don't.

Thanks. I know we agree, or we disagree only on some fine points that really don't matter all that much. It's not that I think more of the same will be enough. I think the indicia that will tell McBeane that Allen is making the progress are not solely, or even primarily, the stats we all love to study. In other words, more of the same is not enough for McBeane; it's just that McBeane aren't looking at the metrics you and I look at. The Bills players are graded on everything, and not just how they play. They are graded on practice. They are graded on timeliness, on weight room habits, on diet, on stuff we never see. I've heard McDermott talk about it but never understood it until Kyle Williams retired. The Bills posted a video of Kyle announcing to the team that he was retiring, and it hit me long a lightning bolt. The announcement was in a meeting room, really a small auditorium. Rows of seats, each with those armrests that serve as writing tables. The room had 60-70 seats for the "audience," just big enough for the team. The floor sloped down to the front, where the "stage" was, mostly open space with a podium in the middle. Like a small movie theater. The camera from which the video was shot was mounted high on the wall behind the speaker, so you could see the back of the speaker and the team in the seats. The place was packed - the entire roster, plus I assume the special teams guys. It was a little bit out of the Stepford Wives. Every guy was sitting straight in his seat, hand ready to take notes. No one slouching, obviously no one wearing headphones. Every guy looking straight at Kyle, listening. And then it dawned on me - these guys are getting graded at how they sit in the meeting room. You could see it. They all were sitting straight, eyes forward, hand ready to write. What was happening in that room was supposed to be the most important thing in their lives at that moment, and their body language was an indication of whether they were living that reality. I took the season ticket holder tour of the Stadium a couple years ago. The cafeteria has a scale in it. Players get on the scale at meals, punch in their uniform number, and the screen fills with data. The guy's picture, his current weight, historic weights, all kinds of other measurements. What they eat is tracked. Their diets are managed. Their weight programs are managed. Their locker room behavior is evaluated, including the neatness of their lockers. My point is that they are evaluated on things I can only imagine. In his book GM, Ernie Accorsi (Giants GM) and his ghost writer go to Penn State to scout players, including Posluzny. In the middle of the game, Accorsi said "watch the linebacker. Watch how his first step is always the correct step, left, right, in, out." When I read that I learned for all time that I don't know anything about football. I mean, who bothers to look at the feet of 22 players, let alone know what those feet are supposed to be doing? So, yes, Allen has to be improving to get a fat new contract. What I'm saying is that I, and I'd guess no one else here, has any idea what kind of improvement is necessary to convince McBeane. My measure is passer rating, but on passer rating the Broncos would have cut John Elway years before he began playing like a Hall of Famer. Tannehill's passer rating has been consistently better than Allen's, the Dolphins let him go, and now they're probably wondering why. What McBeane are going to do is evaluate Allen and make a judgment. The judgment will not be about how his stats have improved or not. The stats are just history. They are going to make the same kind of judgment they must make on draft night. They're going to try to project Allen into the future. They're going to ask themselves how much better can he get?, and how likely is it that he will get better? What he might become and the likelihood of getting there is all that matters. They want to make an accurate prediction of what the next ten years of his football life will look like. His stats, his history, may be useful in making that judgment, but not in the sense that people are talking about here. They won't be saying yes or no based on the trend in his completion percentage or his TD-INT ratio or whatever your favorite stat is. Those trends will be a small part of all of the data they consider in making the judgment. Here's one example. They will be looking at whether Allen's understanding of Daboll's offense is getting broader and deeper, whether he's making better reads, more quickly and more accurately. He could be doing all of that but still not setting up correctly, so he's still inconsistent in his throws. In that case, even though he's improving in important skills, it hasn't translated into a substantial improvement in completion percentage, because even though he's making the reads better, he isn't executing better. McBeane have to make a judgment about whether Allen can take that next step in his development. Some people here will say "if he hasn't done it yet, he won't do it, because you can't improve accuracy," or "he's had four years, and if he hasn't done it yet, he won't - look at Mahomes - he didn't need four years." McBeane will simply ask "now that he understands the offense, can we get him to make the throws?" Not "did he make the throws," not "Did he improve at making the throws." That's history. Their question is "can we teach him to make the throws?" Now, I agree with something I believe you said earlier, which is that the chances are that if Allen is showing the right kind of improvement in all of the metrics that are important to the Bills, that improvement also will show up in the metrics that you and I look at. It's probably the case that if Allen is improving regularly in McBeane's Stepford Wives world, it will show up in his passer rating, but it isn't necessarily the case. It just isn't. How do I know? Just look at draft night two years ago. McBeane obviously were using a different kind of metrics than the rest of us when they traded up to get Allen. Easily 80% of the people here were flabbergasted. How could they trade up to take the wrong Josh? Two years later it's pretty obvious that McBeane were looking at better metrics than the 80% were. So I know only two things: (1) The QB position is so important to team success in the NFL that GMs write bigger checks than would be seem to be warranted by the on-field performance of the QB to date, that is, they bet on the guy's future, and (2) the information they use to make that judgment goes way beyond the data the fans study. If I'm making predictions, I say the Bills exercise the option on Allen, and the following year they give him a big, big extension, one of those nine-figure, six-year deals. Why do I think that? (1) He has the potential. (2) He's done a lot of good things on the field. (3) He's smart. (4) He's a leader. (5) By all reports, he is intensely committed to improving. Those are the characteristics McDermott looks for in making predictions about the future. Those are the characteristics he wants to bet on. The only way I think that doesn't happen is if (1) Allen crashes over the next year or two or (2) the Pegulas get cold feet with the process and tell Beane he can't write a big deal for Josh. If (2) happens, McBeane are on a short leash, there'll be a new coach and GM within a year or two, and I'll probably die before the Bills win a Super Bowl.

Hard to understand why that kind of throwing ability didn't get recruited. My goodness, he threw then like he throws now. Ah!! That explains it. I though he looked awfully big, as big as he is now. The story was that he was smaller coming out of high school, and that might have had some bearing on whey he wasn't recruited.

Well, Straight, I try to be clear that I don't have any inside information, so I don't know anything as a matter of absolute fact. However, I think a lot about what the Bills are doing, and I listen to what McBeane say. I also tend to believe that people are honest and don't knowingly lie when they answer questions. And McBeane seem to be particularly honorable men. They aren't liars. You can tell when they don't want to answer a question - they either tell you they won't answer it or they gently talk around it. Some things they have been completely clear about from day one. One is that they are building for sustained long-term success. They've said repeatedly that they won't make short-term decisions that aren't consistent with their long-term goals. They've also said that they want to build the right way, which they've said is different from the quick way. Diggs, for example, is great for the short-term, but they wouldn't have done it if Diggs weren't relatively young and under contract. Beane also has said on multiple occasions that he hopes Allen makes the Bills write big checks. That, too, is consistent with the long-term message. They obviously want a true franchise quarterback. When Cousins and all those other guys were free agents, they didn't chase after any of them, because they weren't fits with the long-term plan. McDermott has explained quite clearly his process. It's about competition, commitment to team and continuous improvement. He said at the end of this year that he would be happy if he just could have everyone back for next season, so changes. He said that, I think, because he genuinely believes in the process, that he has guys, including Allen, who are committed to getting better and have the potential to get better. It wasn't the comment of a guy who had any doubts about his quarterback. Most of the rest of what I've said is just logic. It's obvious that quarterbacks are much more valuable than any other position. It's obvious that the only way to have sustained long-term success is to have an excellent quarterback you can build on. You can't have sustained long-term success by just running through a new guy every three years, because there will be plenty of times in that process where you won't have success. It's also obvious that the big time successful quarterbacks hit their true prime six, seven years out. Sometime around then they seem to master what's going on on the field - they understand it all and they know how to adjust to what they see. After they reach that level, they still have ten years left, more or less. So you put that reality together with what McBeane say about sustained long-term success, and what Beane has said about wanting to write big checks to Allen, and it's clear that they very much want Allen to succeed. He, or someone like him who has the ability to play AB at a high level, is the key to long-term success. From there it's obvious. If you have a guy who's coming off his rookie deal, who hasn't demonstrated yet that he's a true franchise guy but who hasn't failed, and if you want long-term success, you have to invest in him. You have to write the checks even though he isn't Drew Brees yet, because your whole system is premised on getting the right QB. That's why I agree with Gunner or whoever who has been saying he'd sign Dak. It's a no-brainer. Dak has all the tools, and he hasn't failed. That is, he hasn't shown that he has flaws that will keep him from succeeding. Maybe Garrett was the problem, but whatever the problem, you're better off trying to figure it out with Dak than starting over. The reward is still great if you succeed. Frankly, I might have bit the bullet on Winston too, simply because it's hard to give up on all the talent the guy has. My hesitance with Winston is that unlike Dak, he hasn't shown any continued success. Dak (and Allen) have had games or quarters where you think you're looking at a superstar. Their problem is that they can't do it consistently enough yet. Winston looks spectacular sometimes, but his bad streaks are simply too much to take. So, no, I don't know for sure what Beane thinks about all this, but I think what I'm saying is a pretty good guess. I think it's fan-talk when people say this is a make-or-break year for Allen, because fans like to think that way. They want success, and whenever they see something that isn't success, they want to get rid of it. In particular, they don't recognize that players at most positions learn and improve for multiple years. They see a Mahomes and they say "see, Allen hasn't done that, time to move on." That feels good, it's a way to get the frustration of losing out of the system. But it's inconsistent with what I've heard McBeane say. It it ignores the supreme importance of QBs - of course it's foolish to pay an average quarterback $25 million or $30 million a year, but when they agreed to the contract it was a bet. The GM was betting that the guy would continue to get better. If he does get better, like Brees did, people say "well, of course, they paid him, look how good he is." But at the time it was a bet. When the GM makes the bet and the guy doesn't get better, some fans criticize it as a dumb move. It's no different than the bet you make on draft day. The Jets spent a ton of draft capital to bet on Darnold. The Bills spent a ton to bet on Allen. Maybe both bets were stupid, maybe one was, maybe neither was. We'll find out over the next few years. The point is, if you want a franchise QB, you have to put your money on the table. The Chiefs will pay Mahomes (or did they already?). No one will think that's a bet, but it is the same bet. The only difference is that the gap between where he is when he gets his new contract and where he needs to be to be a true franchise quarterback is not as big as Allen's gap currently is. It's an easier bet to make, just like it was an easier bet for the Ravens to make on Flacco when they paid him. How'd that turn out? The fact is, the second contract comes up sooner than GMs would like, so they have to put their money on the table if they want to play.

I would suggest that you may be seeing your theory blown out of the water by Ryan Tannehill.

Hooray!!! Nice summary of what this us all about. And the ultimate question is how long do you wait to see if he can do it? The problem of course is that if you want to wait for him, you have pay him.

I agree with this. I want the guys who want the whole challenge. The fans are part of the challenge. I'm glad he's not in Buffalo.

You guys have gone off on a tangent with the Lieutenant, and I'm not interested, but this post struck me for a couple of reasons. First, I'm convinced that Allen is the guy, but I'm not in love with his story. I like the Duke Williams story and root for him, but I really don't care about Allen's story. He's always struck me as a bit of a goody two-shoes, and I like the guys with a little bit of an edge to them. I find Mayfield's swagger interesting, although it may also be one of his problems. I like Mahomes attitude. I like what I see so far from Jackson. Allen is more like Luck, or Peyton without the sense of humor. Second, and more interesting, is your statement that Allen was the main reason the Bills weren't better last year. I don't know about main reason overall (because maybe Daboll gets that award), but without question if we're talking about guys on the field, Allen was the main reason. Without question. There are four or five QBs in the league who, if you put them on the Bills in training camp, maybe win a Super Bowl last season. That's a really good measure of how far Allen has to go. But it also makes clear how much different the position is from all the other positions. It's almost impossible to say of a guy who plays any other position "________ is the main reason we weren't much better last year." It's that gap in performance that frustrates everyone and seems to make a lot of posters here impatient. It's a big gap, and it isn't easy. Now, I'm still not a believer, but it certainly seems like Mahomes has closed the gap pretty well, and Watson seems to be well on his way. Jackson I'm not so sure. But for me, the fact that the gap is big isn't nearly as important as what's being done to close it. Some people, like Gunner, agree, but even Gunner wants to see tangible year-over-year progress that the gap is closing. I don't think that's necessary from a fan point of view. I don't think there's necessarily a one-to-one correlation between closing the gap and improving performance. You can make changes under the hood that make a car run more efficiently without making it go faster. Then when you add the turbo-charger, big change in performance. If QBs burned out in ten years, I'd say, sure, you've got to fish or cut bait. In fact, Cam Newton played a style that actually did cause him to burn out in ten years, and the Panthers have moved on. But classic franchise QBs are hitting their prime at ten years and have at least five years left after that, maybe seven or even ten. So investing a few extra years in them can be worth the investment. I think there's no way the Bills want Newton in the locker room. The Bills don't want Allen to run the ball like Newton did, so why bring him in as a mentor? Barkley is better, because Barkley is an actual student of how the Bills want Allen to play. Plus, Newton wants to start, and the Bills aren't going to want to have a player on the downslope of his career challenging Allen. A youngster, sure, because Allen isn't exempt from competition. But not Newton. If the Bills bring in a veteran, it would be someone who held out the promise of winning now while everyone waits for Allen to improve. Brady would have made sense - he would have loved running that offense. Rivers is done, I think, but at least he knows about leading a winning team. Newton has to be Superman, he has to be the star of the show. Newton never got over being about Newton first, and McBeane know that and don't want that.

You know what's always bothered me about the Cowboys game? They seem to run a simple, passive defense. That game looked like a preseason game to me. Not like the Pats or the Ravens.

That's a great list, and it's all true. However, I don't think it matters. History doesn't matter in McBeane's world. What matters in their world is this and only this: 1. Does he have potential? 2. Can we expect him to improve? You may answer #2 with history, but McDermott doesn't. McDermott believes above all else in continuous improvement, and if he sees the reasonable opportunity for improvement, he wants the guy. Now, granted, if they've tried for three seasons to teach Allen how to do some critical things, at some point they decide they can't expect him to improve. But it's not going to be whether he succeeded in 2020, and it's not going to be whether he had 300-yard games. It's going to be things that I don't understand or rarely think about. It's going to be about details known pretty much only to the coaches and Allen. As for nothing behind Allen, that's for sure, and I'm sure Beane is thinking about that. But right now, and next year, he's more likely to be thinking about the string of Brissetts, and Cassels and all those other guys the Pats had. He's not thinking too hard about a Garoppolo.

I think you, most posters here, and most fans generally are mired in this way of thinking. What's wrong with it is that it is not how Beane is thinking about it, it's not how McDermott is thinking about it, it's not how Belichick is thinking about it. Their goal is to build a program that wins a lot of football games, year after year. From week to week, their goal is to play good football in the upcoming game. Their goals don't change depending on whether they have a good QB or a bad one, or whether they have a good defense or bad one. So their goal is NOT to build a winning offense in a hurry, just because they happen to have a good defense this season. They EXPECT to have a good defense every season, so they aren't in a hurry. They EXPECT to have a good offense every season, so this season isn't going to make them make short-term decision. Each decision is based on what's going to have the best long-term impact on the quality of the football the team plays. In terms of player personnel decisions, there is only one player at one position who can have a major long-term impact on the quality of the football - football. You get the right guy at quarterback, you can have a quality football team for ten or fifteen years. You can't say that about any other position. Get JJ Watt or Polamalu or Jason Peters or Adrian Peterson, none of them assure you the long-term impact that Brady and Favre and Brees do. If the conclusion of the analysis the Bills do in their process is that Allen has the potential to be great, if the Bills see what they think is a path to making him great, they are NOT going to conclude they need a new guy. They aren't. Will they start thinking about investing a second or third round pick in a QB? Maybe, probably certainly if he isn't producing better in 2021 than he did in 2019. But they won't give up him, because they're in it for the long-term, and Allen still has a lot of football to play. And don't demean yourself by referencing Edwards, Fitzpatrick and Taylor. They're just three of thousands of quarterbacks who didn't have all the tools necessary to play the game at a really high level, and you know it. Allen has all the tools; he just hasn't played at a high level. Just because Allen hasn't done it doesn't mean he won't do it. There is no football law to that point. Young didn't do it out of the box, Elway didn't do it out of the box. Each player is unique. Put another way, your team can recover from all kinds of personnel mistakes, but there's only one kind of mistake that affects your team for a decade - letting a franchise QB get away. That has long-term consequences. McBeane have told us over and over that they're in this for the long-term, and they are not going to make a long-term mistake by getting rid of a QB who doesn't meet short-term goals, especially goals established by the fans.

That's possible, but not necessarily the case. McDermott and his coaches will evaluate Josh after 2020 just like after 2019. They will decide what it is that he needs to learn, and they will decide whether they think he can learn it. If they think he can learn it, they keep going. The process is not about his numbers. It's about what he knows, what he still needs to learn and whether he can learn it. It isn't about his passer rating in 2020 or about his 300 yard games.

I'm not committed. I believe, and I will believe until he shows me it's a mistake to believe in him. A flat 2020 won't show me. I didn't realize the option has to be exercised after the third year. I think there's no question they exercise the option. He'd have to be horrible in 2020, or run off with Kim Pegula, or Terry, or or Mrs. Beane and Mrs. McDermott, together, before they wouldn't exercise the option.

I don't. I actually believe that if he plays two seasons like 2019 and the Bills don't exercise the fifth year option, he will be a star someplace else. I think Allen is a star in the making. I understand that's just an opinion, but I think he's too talented and too committed to succeeding to fail. I think he found the perfect head coach to nurture and grow him, year after year. I think Allen understands that. Five years from now Allen will have mastered a complex offensive system for the Buffalo Bills, the Bills will be winning a lot of games, and Allen will be recognized as on his way to the Hall of Fame. Allen and McDermott are Brady and Belichick. I've been enjoying the ride since Allen wowed me with a couple of passes in his rookie preseason, and I see no reason why it is going to stop. I just hope I live long enough to see Allen in full bloom.

I agree, I expect he will improve. I agree with most everything you say all the time, including this post. However, and simply for the sake of intellectual curiosity, I would challenge you to explain how anything you said leads to the conclusion that he "has to continue to show signs of forward progress." There is no reason he "has" to do anything. His 2020 season does not determine his future, any more than his 2019 season determined his future. I agree, that if he isn't progressing, his leash probably gets short - GMs actually have to make decisions. But even the short leash isn't automatic, by any means. Allen's in a process. The process evaluates him every week and every season. His coaches make a judgment about how much potential for improvement he has and how likely it is that they, the coaches, will be able to help him achieve that improvement. When the determination is made that he's more or less reached his potential, then they decide what to do with him. It is quite possible that even off a no-improvement year in 2020 the coaches will have the exact same view of Allen's potential and how likely it is that will achieve it. The guy is only 24 this season, and there's nothing wrong if he doesn't reach is prime until he's 27 or 28. Look at Elway's numbers. He played 10 seasons without being in the top 10 in passer rating. In his 10th season he was 20th in the league; the next season he was 3rd, the beginning of a five-year Hall of Fame run. There simply is no reason to conclude that Allen "has" to do anything in 2020 except be committed to the process.

And one other point that is lost in this conversation. For a month or so, plenty of people were talking here about Daboll being a problem. That talk has died down, and I've never been a serious subscriber to that theory, but it's relevant here. How does any of us know that the extra 147 and extra 92 yards weren't on Daboll, not Allen? These men have a goal, a variety of goals. They are operating in a complicated game where everyone needs to perform to achieve the goals. Their roles are interconnected enough that it often is not easy to ascribe responsibility for particular outcomes. As I reminded us all a minute ago, there is a process. McDermott is driving a process to achieve some goals. Allen is a participant in the process. He hasn't achieved his personal goals yet. The process does not establish deadlines. It seeks improvement. 2020 is not some magical year by which certain things must happen.

Why does he have to show progress? He should show progress, but he doesn't have to. If Josh Allen becomes a true franchise quarterback, he's going to give us ten or more seasons of top 10 quarterbacking. I don't care if those ten seasons start in 2020 or 2023. I'd like them to start in 2020. But if I told you today Josh Allen was going to be exactly the same in 2020 as he was in 2019, and then he was going to be exactly the same again in 2021, and then he has going to have ten seasons in a row where his stats by any reasonable measure are in the top 10 every year, would you cut him after 2020? That's absurd. Young men have been trying there hands at playing quarterback for 75 years, millions of them. Over all that time and all those guys slinging it, only 30 or so have gotten to be outstanding. The 30 or so that made it didn't all get there the same way. Curt Warner didn't do it like Steve Young, who didn't do it like Peyton, who didn't do it like Brady, who didn't do it like Bart Starr, who didn't do it like Brees. There is no well-defined path to greatness at quarterback. In a word that we talked about a lot a year or two ago, we should all remember that it's a process. Allen is going through a process. The process isn't written in a textbook somewhere. The process doesn't involve straight line improvement; there are ups and downs. The only judgment to be made in evaluating the process is the extent to which the person is reaching his limit. Has he reached his potential? If he hasn't reached his potential, then you keep looking for ways to move him along. Sure, at some point, you give up and move on, but with Allen's potential and give his age, we aren't anywhere close to the time when it makes sense to give up. I discovered a month ago and keep talking about Elway, who I've always thought was more like Allen in terms of skill set than any other quarterback. Size, running ability, arm strength at the very top of the charts. Here's Elway's rank in the league, year after year, in passer rating: 27, 17, 17, 11, 11, 18, 17, 14, 19, 20. That's ten years of quarterbacking where Elway did not perform in the top 10 in the league. Imagine what the fans in Denver were saying. Those numbers mean that his play was completely mediocre in terms of things like TD-INT ratio, completion percentage, yards per attempt. Mediocre. Bronco management didn't give up on him. Why not? Potential. Big body, big arm, good runner, good leader. They were content to wait for him. What happened for the last five years of his career? 3, 4, 14, 4, 7, two Super Bowls. People will say it doesn't take that long to succeed in the NFL any more, but that's incorrect. It may not take some people that long to succeed, but successful QBs don't follow the same paths. It makes no sense to me to say that Allen MUST do anything at all next season. He will have the season he has. Then the coaches will evaluate it, decide how he needs to improve, and work on it. Then Allen will play another season, the coaches will evaluate that season, decide how he has to improve, and work on it. When the coaches decide that he no longer has reasonable room for improvement, they'll move on. There's no reason apparent today why he won't be able to improve in 2021 if he doesn't improve in 2020. There are position players in the Pro Bowl every year who played their first three or four years in the NFL without being a full-time starter. Why does that happen? Because they learn and improve. If it takes position players four years or more to get good at their position, why should we think that at the most difficult position in all of sports, Josh Allen is supposed to get good in three? There's a big difference between what we want from him and what he must do in 2020. I want him to be a top 10 quarterback. I'm not cutting or trading him if he isn't.

Why is this the year? What if 2020 and 2021 are just like 2019 and 2022-2029 are as you request. Why does it have to happen in 2020?