Shaw66

Very interesting. You may be right. I think you will have four or five, but they just haven't emerged yet. Allen, Darnold, Dak, Wentz, and I know people think I'm nuts but I put Tannehill there too, all are guys who might emerge. Burroughs. Mayfield. Jackson. Some of them will turn out to be dominant. But that's just what I think. I see how you could be right. Thanks.

Right, but that's the end of his rookie deal, not the end of the 2020 season. The original question here was is 2020 a "prove it" year for Allen. I think definitely not. Unless he crashes and burns in 2020, he's the starter in 2021, and that season, his fourth, is when I'd want him to be in that range - 6-12 in the league. I think it's important that in 2020 Allen is better than, rather than simply as good as, the 2019 Allen. If he shows no improvement, that would be a bad sign. rober would say, and I would agree, I guess, that you'd better start looking for the next one. A second or third round pick.

Interesting thoughts. First, although a lot of people complain about it, the passer rating is a very good tool. The passer rating gives us numbers that correlate very well with good quarterbacking. The best QBs have the best passer ratings, more or less, and not many bad QBs have good passer ratings. So, I think if you want compare over eras, it's much better to look at passer rating. And not to compare raw passer rating numbers, but to look at the QB's rank in terms of passer rating each season. When you do that, you see that the best QBs had the best passer ratings in their era. So in Elway's case, I don't care about the number of his attempts and completions, because he played in a different era. Of course they won't compare. But I looked a few weeks ago at his rank in the league in passer rating throughout his career. He was essentially 15th to 25th in passer rating rank for eight seasons, and then he was top ten four years in a row and won two Super Bowls. Now, that's a pretty dramatic jump to have made, and no one in this era is waiting eight years for his QB to develop, but the point is with some QBs you simply don't know yet when the time comes to sign the second deal. You just don't know. I don't like Winston, but I hear what your saying. Can I tell with a certainty to three years from Winston will not be a star in the league? No, I can't. He's done some really impressive looking stuff. I think that's exactly the point. Jameis Winston wins the Super Bowl in three years, and the career of the GM who let him go is over. And although I like Allen's chances better than Winston's, their stories in the pros are similar. As for Rivers, I haven't understood why he's been on the field for the last three years. He just didn't have it, stats or not.

Thanks. That's a really good explanation of what you mean. I understand, and I don't disagree. But I think there's a little more going on than that. Your explanation that the rule changes have made it easier for college QBs to transition must be true, because you're right about how long guys had to be understudies in the NFL 40 years ago. That's interesting. What I think also is going on is by the time that college guy has been in the NFL for five years, he sure better have learned how to play complex offense, because whatever edge he got from athleticism and scheme in college and for a year or two in the NFL, whatever that edge was is going to be gone. The defenses will adjust and will take that edge away from you. Everyone will do it to you, and you'd better be able to do what the traditional franchise QBs do - read, diagnose, make decisions in real time, because if you can't, you're done starting. If you're correct, teams will figure out that it's more efficient, in terms of building a winner, to get a good kid, run his special stuff for a few years, see if you can surround him with good pieces, and go for the Lombardi. Then when the kid fails, you go get another one and do it again. That's not crazy. I just think coaches and GMs would rather have a team with true franchise QB and spend ten or 15 years building and rebuilding supporting cast around him. That's what the Patriots and Steelers and Colts have been doing. I think McBeane clearly are of the view that they want to run a system that always has the next guy in line, waiting to play, at every position except QB. They aren't going to fall in love with a player at any position and overpay him. They won't do it; they'll go with the next man up. At QB, I think they want the franchise QB. Beane has said at least a few times that he hopes Allen makes him start writing some big checks. What does that mean? It means above all else, he wants a franchise QB. He wants the long-term guy. f you're right, Beane is behind the times. I mean that seriously. It's certainly possible that McBeane are really wired into 2010 thinking about football, they're evangelists for that style, but the league is moving on. The style still works, once every fifty years or so, but it's not the most effective style. That would be really cruel to Bills fans - to have been wishing and hoping to get on the modern football train instead of mired where we were for all those years. Then a couple of guys finally come along and show us how to get on the train, only to discover that although that train used to go to Canton, now it just goes to a landfill in central Pennsylvania.

I've been away from this thread for a while and there are some interesting things being said here. I hope I can come back later and read through all of it. In the meantime, I wanted to comment about this statement. I think it's at the core of the discussion, and I completely disagree with the notion that the franchise QB era is ending. I think all that's happening is that you and I and all the rest of us can't see yet who the next franchise quarterbacks are. I think that NFL football has been on a one-way street for 70 years, and it's going to continue. The game keeps evolving, and the evolution is making the game continuously more complex. It's not going back. Coaches keep inventing new techniques, and the techniques never go away. So when the standard QB option sweep was invented 70 years ago, it was a devastating weapon until people figured out how to stop it. And at the highest level, the pros, they learned to stop simply because the defender who was the option read was so athletic that with training he could cover both options. But the option sweep didn't go away; it just became part of the repertoire. Offenses have to be able to run it and defenses have to be able stop it. The same was true with the "rub" pass patterns. They worked until defenses figured out a scheme for beating the pick. The same will be true with run-pass options. They work now, but defenses are in the process of figuring out how to stop them. Teams will still run those plays, but they can't be the mainstay of your offense, because if you're running it all the time, defenses will stop you. The point is, offenses keep getting more complicated, and defenses add complexity to stop the offenses. It's a one-way street. Yes, colleges have these wide-open offenses and guys like Mayfield and Murray and others are truly explosive running them, but colleges play those offenses because if you have the right QB, none of your opponents have enough talent on defense to stop them. The QB's athletic ability is enough to win, and the offenses are simple enough that most good athletes can learn them. When those QBs get to the NFL, it's different. There are 11 elite athletes on defense, and the coaches can figure out an infinite number of combinations of athletes and strategies that will stop the QB. Once that happens, the QB has to understand the defense and adjust. In short, once that happens, the QB has to learn to play the same game that all the other QBs are playing. Part of it is simply the complexity of having 11 defenders. In the NBA, if you double team Hardin, he doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to find the open man. He's trained to do it, and it's relatively easy for him. But in the NFL, if the defense spies the running QB with a combination of players, so the QB doesn't know where the spy is coming from and where to attack as a result, it isn't so easy. It's not going to get simpler. And if it isn't going to get simpler, having a QB who understands the whole offense and the whole defense, who can read and attack defenses pre- and post-snap, is still the pre-eminent weapon. You might win a Super Bowl with Matt Stafford, but it you might win four with Drew Brees. The traditional franchise qbs are weapons that are in a completely different league than players in any other position. Nobody talks about JJ Watt as a "franchise" defensive tackle. Best in the league for a few years, but having him on the roster doesn't make your team competitive for ten years. It doesn't even necessarily make your team competitive from game to game. Franchise QBs make your team relevant the day training camp opens, they make your team a threat to win it all. The consequence of that, despite what you say, is that GMs are not going to look for a string of Bridgewaters and Foleses and other guys, pay them $15 million a year, and hope that the GM and coach can put together a collection of other players and somehow win a Super Bowl. It happens, of course, as it did with Flacco, but the GMs are going to continue to look for the Breeses, because if you can get a Drew Brees with a coach to go with him, you have ten years where you have a shot, multiple shots, even consecutive shots. The consequence of that is that they GMs are going to continue to write $30 million contracts to the Goffs of the world, not because they're that much better than the Foleses, but because they still have the potential to be better than the Foleses, the potential to become franchise QBs. The QBs who can process information quickly and accurately, who can make accurate decisions quickly and who can execute once the decision has been made are invaluable, and GMs will continue to make fools of themselves going after guys who might be one of those.

Ha ha ha! That's hysterical. Bye.

You seem to be having trouble understanding this. The best QBs in the league have good passer ratings. They often are in the top 10. Most of their seasons. Newton was in the top 10 once. That is not most. That is not close to most. That is once. Tyrod Taylor was in the top 10 once. Spend a little time looking at the stats.

All franchise QBs have passer ratings in the top 10 most years. Look em up..

His passer rating was in the top 10 once. Same as Tyrod Taylor. Nobody whose passer rating is consistently in the top 20 or 30, which is where he consistently was, is a top10 QB.

Andrew Luck was an unsuccessful pick. He wasn't a bad pick. You cant account for career ending injury. You cant be a franchise QB if you're employed after nine years. You're supposed to be a top 10 QB, and Neqton isnt.

No doubt about it. It was incredible. How about 20/5, rushing for 800 and 7 TDs. Would you take that? That's RG III. Where is he now?

I'm not saying Allen is better now than Newton ever was. So even if it were true, which it isn't, that Newton's worst year outclassed his best year, it doesn't respond to what I said. Check out 2014 and 2016. The question is whether Newton was a successful pick. He was drafted to be an all-round NFL QB, not a running QB. It was said over and over again that he had to stop running so much and learn to play QB at an elite level. That was his challenge from year two. He couldn't do it, and he didn't do it. Allen was drafted for the same reason. If Allen succeeds because of his legs, he will have failed. It's very simple. When you take a QB #1 overall, or when you invest the draft capital in a guy like the Bills invested in Allen, barring injury or some other things, the day you draft him you expect him to be your presumptive starter in year 10. You expect him to be a master QB who actually has just come into his prime. He's 34, 35, he has 8-10 years experience, and he has a threat to beat anybody, any time. That's what a franchise quarterback is. If you're releasing the guy going into year his tenth year, he did not achieve what you drafted him for. Matt Ryan, taken third overall, is a successful draft pick. I'm not a Ryan fan. He makes a lot of plays, but he hasn't ever been the kind of guy who makes you worried when he has the ball with two minutes left in the game. But whether I like him or not, he's been a success. Why? Because year after year, he's the presumptive starter. No one ever says that the Falcons should be looking for another guy. Maybe they should be, but year after year, when they look at the QB spot, the coaches aren't saying to themselves, "we need another guy." Newton hasn't been that guy for a few years, and that means the draft pick was a failure. Nice player and all, but he didn't do what you drafted him for. Sure, Newton put some nice numbers here and there, and he went to a Super Bowl, but no one wants him today because he hasn't learned how to play QB at a high level.

Well, he's possibly worse, and also possibly better. You'll know a lot more about Jackson three years from now.

Everyone is entitled to his opinion. My opinion is that 1. Newton never came close to mastering NFL QB skills. He had an outstanding season. He was not a leader, not at all. He was all smiles when things were going well, he pouted when they weren't. Very, very talented, but he never learned to be a winning QB. He won, but he wasn't a winning QB. He didn't make his team better around him. I think saying that if Allen comes close Newton, it'll be a successful pick is way wrong. That's essentially saying Newton as a #1 overall pick was a success. I don't see that at all. In nine seasons he took his team to 7 playoff games. He was in the top 10 in passer rating once - once! Tyrod Taylor was lot cheaper and was in the top 10 in passer rating once. Newton got injured last season, and by the time it looked like he could play again his team decided his backup was the better choice. Then they cut Newton loose. Going into his 10th season, your QB taken at #1 is a failure if he is not the presumptive starter. If Allen has a career that looks like that, the pick will have been a failure. 2. Jackson is no question better than Brooks. My point, and I thought it was clear, is that I think with Jackson, as was the case with Brooks, he has a style of play that you have to build around, both in terms of your offense and your personnel. He doesn't look to me like a guy who is going to have ten years of big-time success in the league - I can't envision him and his team winning 10+ games year after year playing his game. The big time successes in the league play a different style. They can and do succeed with a wider range of players in the roster. I think the league will catch up with Jackson, and as the league does, he will have to learn to read defenses better, to make a broader range of throws, etc. So I think Jackson has potential like Allen, because he's an amazing athlete and he's shown himself so far to be a good thinker on the field. But I actually like Allen's potential better, because Allen already is playing a more complete offense, in terms of style and how it attacks the whole field, and because Allen depends less on his pure running ability, so he's less likely to be affected when injuries and age set in. It's obvious that Allen isn't playing better than Jackson - what I said is that I think his potential is less limited than Jackson's.

I think this is correct. The difference between Bridgewater and Allen is that Allen hasn't failed yet - he hasn't shown fundamental flaws in his game, or in another sense hasn't plateaued yet. He still has potential. So not only are Dak and Goff worth wins, what's more important is the door seems to still be open for them to move up to the next level. They still have some meaningful potential. So you stay invested in the Dak's and Goffs of the world, because they might become a Ben or a Rodgers. Why? Because there's so much more upside for your team when you have a shot at a Ben or a Rodgers, a lot more than if you're playing with the Foleses and Bridgewaters. It's simple four-card draw poker. If you're dealt four good cards, you don't throw in four and start over. You keep the four and look for one good card to come your way. If you have a pair of aces and nothing else, you throw three. What you do in every case is keep the cards that have potential. When who have a QB who has potential, you keep him until you win big or bust.

In terms of how to build a long-term successful franchise, I think what you're saying will get you there a lot less often than what I'm saying. If I'm 30 years old and own an NFL team, and I'm going to live 50 more years, what am I going to do? Am I going to spend 50 years having a string up of Foles and Brissett, 50 years of those guys? Who has won Super Bowls doing that? Or am I going to spend 50 years trying to get a Favre and then a Rodgers? Or a Bradshaw and a Roethlisberger? Or a Simms and a Manning? Or a Staubach and an Aikman? I think it's obvious that having a stud QB trumps everything. Paul Brown figured that out in the 1940s with Otto Graham, and football has been dominated by quarterbacks ever since. You can say it's changing, but I don't think it is. Nobody is being successful by dumbing down the QB position so more guys can play it successfully. It just keeps getting more complicated to succeed, and the QBs keep seeing and learning more. The name of the game still is finding a HOF QB. So when you have a highly talented QB coming to the end of his rookie contract, and if he's shown you some good stuff and he isn't failing - he's holding his own or more in the league, playing well enough to be an NFL starter, if you have a guy like that, you can't let him go. He's a guy who, compared to most QBs in the league, has real potential. Most of the guys in the league have already demonstrated they aren't HOF QBs. Foles and Brissett among them. But Newton, as I said, still had potential. The Panthers paid him. The Rams paid Goff, early, I'll admit, but they paid him. If Allen has a flat year in 2020, say gets his passer rating even up to 90, or even under 90, I think that there would be at least a half dozen coaches in the league who would jump if they could trade their #1 pick in the draft for Allen. If the guy has potential and hasn't failed, he's very valuable.

Let me say a couple of things. First, and I really mean it, thanks for responding. I really enjoy these discussions because they help me see things about football more clearly. And even though I write as though what I say is absolutely true, I actually do understand that I could be dead wrong about what I think. Here's what I think about what you just said: I agree completely. I think what you're saying about combinations of players is generally true. Obviously, there's no formula, and there are so many variables it's impossible to call everything equal, but as a general rule, I agree. To restate what you said, I think one way to approach being a big winner in the NFL is to have an overpaid mediocre starter on his second contract surrounded by a supporting cast that is limited because you've spent so much on a QB that you can't afford stars at any other position. I know that overstates it, but that's essentially your point. Another way to approach being a big winner is to have a QB on his rookie contract who is an impact player for a few years because he's surrounded by quality talent and a coach who can make the combination work (even though the league may figure out eventually how to stop the QB). It's similar to the Florida Marlins'/Milwaukee Brewers' approach - collect a whole bunch of super talented guys in the minors and try to win a World Series before they hit free agency and leave for bigger contracts. So you get a Tyler Murray, who may or may not be a long-term star, but you know you can do something with him at least for a few years, and then you go get yourself an Andre Hopkins and pay him a lot. I think it's fair to equate those two scenarios as more or less equally ways to attack winning. And you'll say, and I'll agree, that there's a built-in problem with the overpaid guy on his second contract, and that is that you can't go about actually getting better for several years, because your stuck with the guy. No one will trade for him, and you're gonna take a big cap hit if you cut him. At least with the guy on his rookie contract, you can decide it's time to move on and try something else, like going and getting a Tyrod Taylor after you've seen EJ Manuel for a couple of years. I'd never really thought of it that way, so if you're saying the rookie-contract approach is better, I won't argue. I'm saying something a little different. I'm saying that although either of those approaches may work to make your team a winner, and maybe overpaying a guy is less desirable than the rookie-contract approach, having a true franchise QB is better than either. Now, I'm not suggesting you didn't already know that. We all know it. If you can have a Brees or a Rodgers or a Brady or the right Manning, or maybe even the other Manning, your team can be a threat to be competitive every year. The other two approaches are short-term, catch-lightning-in-a-bottle approaches; having a franchise QB means your team can be good for ten years, and that's simply a much better position to be in. Drew Brees running an offense with Zay Jones receiving is a much better approach to winning than Tyrod Taylor throwing to Julio Jones, or even Jared Goff throwing to Julio Jones. Matt Stafford couldn't win with Megatron, but Tom Brady could win with Chris Hogan (I know, Brady had some other, better guys, but really? Chris Hogan was an important receiver on a Super Bowl winner? That's what a Tom Brady is worth.) So what I'm saying is this: When a GM has a talented QB whose rookie contract is coming to an end, a QB who has done a lot of good things, maybe had a season in the top 10 and couple of seasons in the second 10 among quarterbacks, a guy who is not yet and maybe never will be a Brees or a Brady, that guy still has the potential to become a franchise quarterback. Yes, the risk of signing that second contract is that you might end up exactly where you say, with a guy who is mediocre and who is eating too much cap room. What I'm saying is that having a franchise quarterback is so much better than the other options, that GMs almost always will err on the side of holding onto the guy who could become a franchise QB. It's very difficult to let that guy go, so they take the risk. They'd rather take the risk of giving Flacco a big contact and having it not work than letting a Drew Brees go. Which is why I absolutely do not think 2020 is a prove it season for Allen. Allen has enormous talent, and until he plateaus for a couple of years, no one is going to take the chance of letting him go. So to plateau for two seasons, he has to have a 2020 AND a 2021 at more or less the same level as 2019, two seasons where he doesn't improve over 2019. (Some might say that's THREE seasons, but that's wrong. You can't say Allen plateaued in 2019, because he was better than 2018. 2020 is the first season he can plateau, and 2021 is the second season). I don't think Allen is the same guy as Cam Newton, and I don't think Allen is on the same trajectory as Newton, but Newton's career is a good example. He was coming into his option year on his rookie contract. For four seasons, his passer rating had bounced around the 80s, and his completion percentage, a component of the passer rating, had averaged just below 60. He was a serious running threat. He had a big body. His team knew that he still had to learn to be a more effective passer, because it wasn't reasonable to expect to rely on his running into the future. (You can say pretty much all of that about Josh Allen today.) Carolina wrote the big contract. I don't think they had much of a choice. He had all the basic abilities and skills to be a franchise QB, he'd played well but not consistently enough to be a top-five or even a top-ten quarterback. In other words, he still had potential. He still looked like a guy who could grow over the next few years into someone who would be talked about in the same breath with Brees and Rodgers and the others. Or maybe a Roethlisberger. It doesn't mean he would play the same style, with the same skills as those guys, but none of those guys looked exactly like Favre or like Montana - the great ones all are unique. It's not that the guy is the same as any of those - the question is whether the guy can be a consistent winner. Newton still looked like he could be one of those guys, a consistent winner, with more growth, development, maturation. So the Panthers bit the bullet. I think Allen is the same. Unless he stumbles badly in 2020 or 2021, the Bills can't afford to let him go. If he hasn't stumbled badly, and if he hasn't blossomed enormously, if he's just playing and getting better but not dominating, you have to sign him at whatever the market demands. There's maybe one chance in five he's going to grow into a dominant QB like Ben or Elway, and there's maybe four chances in five that he's going to have a career like Newton or a Matt Ryan or a Flacco or a Stafford (or worse). I think most GM's take that bet. The odds of winning are one in five, but the payout if you win is 20 (or 50 to one if you get a Brady). Look at the bet the Saints made on Brees. It was a no-brainer. He had shown, in a different way, as much promise as Newton. I say in a different way because he'd already had a season as a passer better than any season Newton ever had. He was a guy with the potential to be great and who had not yet failed or plateaued. Because of his injury, they gave him a six-year deal for $60 million, but with limited guaranteed money. Still, it was a big contract. Without the injury, there would have been much more guaranteed money. Did the Saints know Brees was going to become Drew Brees? No. But the possibility that he might become Drew Brees made him a better bet than Aaron Brooks, who was a Lamar Jackson type before Lamar Jackson. He was Tyrod Taylor. They could have had Brooks on a reasonable contract. Why take Brees over Brooks? Because Aaron Brooks looked like he HAD plateaued - even if Sean Payton might still figure out how to win with Brooks, Brooks had shown he never was going to be in the elite class. Brees still had the potential, and GMs will pay for the potential.

I don't know that he will be, but he can be. He's one of the most physically gifted qbs I've seen.

And I never that Manning was incredibly accurate, especially in his later years. What Manning was good at was always knowing or figuring out where the play was and then getting the ball there well, but not with the precision Brees has. I agree, too. Allen will never be like Brees, and I think he can be better than Roethlisberger. I really think it's just learning. He seems to have all the on-field physical skills. He has the arm, he has the moxie, he has the size. He simply has it all. More mobile than Brady or Manning, strongest arm of any of them, ability to move in the pocket and take contact. Best ball carrier of all of them. Physical skills isn't the problem. The challenge for Allen is to master the game off the field and learn to process information on field accurately and quickly. Ben and Peyton and Brady and Brees all have that. Allen has shown over two years that he's learning it. The question is will he continue to learn, year after year, like those guys did? And if he doesn't, how much better is he going to get before he plateaus?

There's not much going on around here these days. Maybe Beane could work a trade to bring Zay back. Get Alpha's juices flowing and liven things up here.

I hope I didn't say anything stupid in this thread.

Fahey is trying to build a career as an expert in the way Mel Kiper did. Just some guy who didn't know anything about football, just a fan, who studied stats and reached conclusions, started writing about his conclusions and observations. Then he got a job at a recognized outlet. The guy doesn't know the first thing about being a quarterback. Not to say he couldn't learn, but that will take decades, not years. Kiper is completely self-taught. He doesn't understand what a team's needs are, and he doesn't understand that teams are looking for the best player without regard to need, but his mock drafts repeatedly are based on his perceptions of a team's need. It's ridiculous. Yes, you can put together reels like this on any QB, but it's a lot tougher to do it for Brees or Rodgers than it is for Allen. For Brees, he rarely seems to be in a hurry; for Rodgers it seems he performs well when he's in a hurry. For Allen, it translates into a sub-60 completion percentage.

In the processing area, I find myself comparing Allen and Tyrod Taylor. Tyrod clearly had plateaued in Buffalo. He never got substantially better at managing the game, making decisions and executing. He was just adequate, and there wasn't any evidence that he getting better. I'd be happy for Taylor if the light went on for him with the Chargers, but I'm not betting on it. I think Fitzpatrick is the opposite extreme. Fitzpatrick is physically limited, by NFL standards, but he's been getting better and better as the seasons pile up. In every season except one since he left Buffalo, his passer rating has been better than his best season in Buffalo. You can see it in how he plays - he's unfazed. Nothing is new to him, he's comfortable.

Thanks. I think processing what's seeing depends on a variety of things. One is experience. I heard one of the former QB TV commentators say it took him four or five years of playing before he really understood what he was seeing in the defensive backfield. Until you've seen something in real time, live, under fire, you can't learn to recognize it quickly and accurately. Another is book learning, study, week after week, year after year. Every week you're learning what to do in this play against that formation, and every week you're learning about wrinkles that one team might run out of the formation. That info isn't game specific; it piles up over time, and it's information that his brain relies in all his future games. Sometime during last season, Brady said the game's gotten easy for him, because he's seen everything and he remembers it. Still another aspect, that I noticed watching these plays, is just how crazy it is in the pocket in the NFL. It's intense, four or five guys who are literally trying to hurt you, and your guys are doing everything possible to keep them out, but they're losing ground. Pockets don't last long in the NFL. You have to learn to operate, to make decisions and execute in that environment. That's different from courage. You can see pretty quickly if a guy has the courage to stay in the pocket. It isn't so easy to see if he can make decisions accurately and quickly with those guys closing in. All of that takes time to learn. Some of it can be learned only by playing. Many, I'd say most, QBs who really succeed at it take 4-5 years to get there. It took Elway nine! There are some young guys who seem to be getting it faster, but for every Mahomes there's a Goff.

This is what I've been saying for months, and watching these plays made we thing the same thing again. It's almost as though you can hear Josh's brains saying "uh, oh time's running out, gotta do something, THERE IT IS, THROW!!!!" Sometimes time is running out because the rush is closing in, sometimes time is running out because the throwing window is closing. Whatever the cause, he's feeling pressure, the time between decision and release gets short and he doesn't throw accurately. He needs to make better reads so that he can make decisions earlier in the play, and he has to learn to throw consistently even if he doesn't have enough time.