Shaw66

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.

I agree with bellcow point. He's not the guy who's just going to put burden of the team's rushing needs on his back and just carry that aspect of the team's performance. I don't see him that dominant. The style of his game is a Marshall Faulk, Thurman Thomas style - that is, the combination of running and receiving skills is what makes him valuable. Before people go nuts, no, I'm not saying he's going to be Faulk or Thomas. What I'm saying is that his style of play is the same as theirs, but I can't see him ever being productive like those guys. What I can envision is Singletary as the lead dog on a two-dog team. That is, I think Singletary is too good to be just a complement to the starter. I think it's the other way around. Singletary has already shown that he can be a factor in the lineup at pretty much any down and distance. If you're third and eighteen, Singletary helps if he's on the field, because he's an open field pass catching threat. If you're third and eight, he helps because he already understands blitz responsibilities and likely will get better. If it's third and one, he's a threat passing or running. I think what the Bills need is another guy who can play that style, maybe a rookie who's learning and by mid-season could be expected to spell Singletary without forcing offensive play selection to be limited. You want him to play the same style, instead a complementary style, because the Bills want to make being multi-faceted a problem for other teams, so the second running back has to be able to run the whole offense without hurting the team. Think Kenneth Davis. Now, his running style didn't look much like Thurman's, but that isn't the point. Davis was valuable because when he came into the game, Kelly could still run the entire offense. If the Bills win Super Bowl in the coming years, the story about Singletary will be not that he's a star in the league, but it could be that he is a superb competitor with a broad skill set, an important contributor to a winning team. I think that's his upper limit. Bellcow? No. Lead dog on a two-dog team? I think absolutely. Needs to improve parts of his game a little bit, but absolutely he can be that guy.

It's interesting to get an inside look at the fraternity. It never occurred to me that players around the league reach out to one another when a big change like this happens to one of the brothers. It's great that Cousins and Thielen and others got to him quickly, but other guys around the league? It's a good thing. The turkey thing is nice. I wonder if he'll continue in Minneapolis or move that gig to Buffalo. Either way, it's a good thing. Love how he describes the leap. Obviously it made an impression on more than just the Bills and Bills fans. Can't wait.

What I like about this video is that it reminds me what good friends you make playing sports, and how much fun you have with those friends. Look at the two of them, seven years apart in age, from different parts of the country, played together for only two years, and you can see the bond between them. Sports isn't the only place where you can make friends like that, but it's one of the best.

I don't think this is accurate. I think that the link is not only constantly evolving, it's constantly evolving into something more complex. And the good coaches have books filled with how all the various complexities work and how to stop them. McDermott has those books, and Belichick, and plenty of others. So if the Dolphins start running the single wing, it may surprise teams for a week or two, but then everyone stops it. The wildcat. The K-gun. The Packers power run game. The defensive solution to all of these problems, and the modern nuances like the rub plays, are known, and coaches keep developing defensive schemes for their teams to master in order to stop each nuance. The offensive coordinators respond by adding wrinkles on top of last season's wrinkles. The result is that receivers now are much more sophisticated than they used to be. There was a time when they it never occurred to them to practice the back shoulder throw and catch, but not it's a skill that's been added to everything else they already know. The necessary knowledge and skills keep increasing. The problem with all of this that you have one guy on the field who has to understand all of it and react to all of it. He has to understand all of the things the defense does, including the things it CAN do but hasn't for the past few weeks. He has to understand everything each of his offensive teammates is supposed to do, and he has to put them in a position to do it. If he's playing against the Bills, this means he's looking at a defense that is prepared for everything and that shows nothing about what they intend to do until after the snap. QB is an extraordinarily difficult job, and each year it gets a little more difficult. You can't hide the shortcomings of your quarter back with talent at other positions, because the other positions are only able to do the difficult things they have to do to beat the defense if the QB gets them into the right play and the right position on the field. So I don't see that top players at other positions can save you. What can save you is going the Lamar Jackson, Tyler Murray route, bring in a guy and give him a gimmicky offense that takes the league a couple of years to figure out, like the K-Gun. If you do that, you can hope you can hope to win a Super Bowl in a couple of years, but if it doesn't work, the league will catch up with the gimmicks and you'll either have to teach you QB to be a real QB like Brees or Rodgers, or you'll have to get a new QB, look for a new gimmick, and see if you can steal a Super Bowl in the couple of years the new gimmick will last. I don't see any time in the future when GMs won't be chasing after a top-10 QB. As I've said earlier, that's exactly why the decisions on Prescott and Goff are so tough. I think Goff signed up early, but the Cowboys had to tag Prescott because they just weren't sure. If they believed in your theory, they would have let him go and gone and started down the lightning in a bottle route. Yes, I suppose the league may ultimately move on to a Kyler Murray/Lamar Jackson model, but that only makes sense if guys with marginally less talent than Murray can succeed doing it. Baker Mayfield is one of those guys, and I'm sure the Browns were less than thrilled with what they saw last season. Put another way, the quarterbacks who develop into the really talent QBs in the mental aspects of the game are gold, because they can make your team competitive for ten years, assuming it takes them five years to get up the learning curve. The QBs who can't develop into top guys at the mental game have to bring some other extraordinary skills to the field AND has to have a team designed to play around him. There is a small window of time when that system will work, and then defenses will close the window.

Do you understand that "any" does not mean "every"?

Well, it was easy to be a critic of him as a pass receiver. He wasn't a great ball catcher, although he was sure handed returning punts, and he wasn't a great route runner. He couldn't make it those days as a number 2 receiver, despite multiple opportunities. As were saying above the game has changed, and today Roscoe would play more and get less criticism. Want an example, let me ask you this: Who would you rather have running the jet sweep? Roscoe or McKenzie. That question is a joke. McDermott and Daboll would have had Roscoe on the field a lot more than McKenzie. Finally, your big brass comment is right on. Roscoe was fearless, truly fearless. He ran like a scared rabbit, but he was not afraid to get hit. The single Roscoe play I remember most is one that he's criticized for: his muffed punt with two minutes left in the worst game in history, Browns over Bills, 6-3. Cleveland recovered and kicked the winning field goal. I don't remember it as a low point for Roscoe. I remember it as pure football smarts and courage. The wind was blowing like crazy from the open end of the stadium, in the Bills's face. The Bills offense had been beyond horrible even with the win, but against the wind it was hopeless. So the punt is falling to Roscoe, and its wind blown or he misjudged it or whatever, but he decided to go after it and make a play on it. His hands weren't his biggest asset, and he muffed it. Browns recover, field goal, game over. Why don't I blame Roscoe? Because he knew he was the only guy on the field who could deliver an explosive play. On any given punt he could get 10, 30 or a TD, and pretty much no one else on the team or the team together was going to get 30 yards, even if you gave them 20 plays to do it. He knew. So the best chance to win the game was to go get the punt and do something with it. It took courage, because he knew he was making a difficult and risky play, but it was the right decision. Didn't work, but it was the right decision.

Oh, and if you watch the video of Roscoe's great punt return, wait for the end zone view and look at the blocking. There were some great individual blocks, and Roscoe read them perfectly.

I thought the same thing. He would be playing, in a bigger role, on some team today. That speed, change of direction and acceleration is more valuable today than it was then. Tasker is an interesting name, but having watched the video, I'd take Roscoe as a punt returner. Tasker, of course, was more valuable, because Roscoe was only a punt returner and sort of a gadget receiver. Tasker was returner, gunner, all-purpose special teams, backup receiver. The other guys who need to be in the discussion are George Saimes and George Byrd. Saimes didn't have speed Roscoe had, but he had truly outstanding elusiveness. He just darted everywhere, start, stop, change direction, whatever. He was the master of the 15-20 yard return, over and over. Didn't break many because the pursuit eventually got him, and he didn't have speed. Byrd didn't return punts for very long - three years, and he declined some after his first season, but he was a solid punt returner. And he had the return for a touchdown in the AFL championship game, 23-0 over the Chargers. Still, hard to argue with Roscoe as the best.

Good. It's good to know you agree about that. I don't know what you mean by the OBJ Evans comment. I, for one, do consider them a push. I'd take Diggs over OBJ because of their relative attitudes, and I'd call Evans a push because Diggs is more gifted physically (he benefits from being smaller), but Evans makes up for it with sheer will, so far as I can tell.