Shaw66

Obviously a long way to go, but when was the last time (probably never) the Bills got into training camp with guys who have the potential to be offensive rookie of the year AND defensive rookie of the year? Legitimate shots at each.

There's just no way anyone can know this to be true. Do you actually believe if he starts for the next five years he won't be more accurate than he is today? The Tom Brady we see now is NOT the Tom Brady who came into the league 18 years ago. It makes no sense to pretend we can tell today what a pro football player will be like in five or seven years.

Thanks for all the posts from TC. Great stuff.

Because an organization is run from the top down. Otherwise it's the inmates running the asylum. The leadership sets the standards, and the employees follow the standards. McBeane want guys who understand that. Okay. It's about bonus language. If the bonus language the Jets are offering is more or less standard for the league, then I have the same problem with Darnold not signing. If the Jets are trying to get him to take language that other guys didn't have to take, then it's on the Jets.

True. It's certainly a good sign that he did well enough in OTAs that he had moved up to first-team reps by the time training camp began. Getting first-team is the first step toward getting first-team reps in preseason games. So he's begun the climb to the starting job. Still, there's no way of knowing IF he can climb to the top or HOW QUICKLY he can climb to the top. That depends in part on him and in part on what the other guys do.

I AM enjoying that it's happening to the Jets. Maybe they got a self-centered, spoiled (pray tell, not from USC!) kid who's play will forever be limited because he doesn't want to get his hair mussed.

This is great. Allen is that kid. He's just trying to figure it all out. He doesn't know all the cliches yet, but he's learning them. He had his episode with the racist tweets from high school, and he knows he doesn't want to go THERE again, so he's falling back on the cliches.

There are plenty of guys who love the game. Does Kyle Williams care about the money? Tyrod Taylor? Plenty of them. They understand they're piling up more dough than any human being should ever expect, so what difference does a guarantee make, or an extra year, or whatever? They want to play football. The fact that Darnold is hung up on this says that there's a part of him that is about the money, when in fact the money, at his level, is irrelevant. McBeane don't like guys who can't see that.

They ARE two different things, but how a player handles each is very important to McBeane. I am absolutely sure that McBeane look at a guy like Kahlil Mack and think less of him because he's holding out. McBeane have been very clear that they don't want distractions. Beane said it talking about Kaepernick. If a guy is a distraction, his value to the team is less. So if, before the draft, you asked Beane to rank the four QBs in order of likelihood of being a signing problem, Beane probably would have said Rosen, Darnold, Mayfield and Allen, in that order. And if you asked McBeane whether they cared about that, they would have said "absolutely." Not because they were worried that the guy never would sign, but simply because it says something about their priorities. Family first, football second, everything else way down the list. If those aren't your priorities, McBeane value you less.

Correct. He obviously isn't thinking about football. And that's a bad thing. Look at Shady. He has his press conference, and over and over the press asks him about his personal issue. He said, over and over, "I'm only talking about football." Why? Because he knows he has to be 100% about football right now, and he has to manage his personal distractions the best he can without letting it interfere with football. Talking about his problem with the press distracts him from football and doesn't solve his problem, so he consciously decided not to talk to the press. McBeane want their players to be all about football. They support, I'm sure, exactly what Shady is doing with the press. They would be VERY disappointed if Allen were doing what Darnold is doing. Thanks. So they might actually be getting different advice. So maybe it isn't Darnold; maybe he's just getting bad advice from his agent and following it.

It's telling that they both have same agent. That means the agent gave his advice, then the player made his decision. Maybe what Mayfield got affected Allen's choice. I prefer to think that Allen just sees it differently. NOTHING is more important to him than (1) his family and (2) his team, or at least that's the way McBeane want him to see it. Offsets or no offsets, his family will be well cared for with the contract he's signing. So the only thing he should care about is his team. The fact that Darnold cares about the offsets is a red flag. A minor red flag, to be sure, for most teams. A bigger red flag for McBeane.

Culture. The Jets are saying "this is the way we do things." Darnold is saying "I don't want to do it your way. I want to do it my way." That's what I was saying about McBeane. They're immediately turned off when the player's behavior says "I don't want to do it your way." Just like Belichick is turned off. McBeane's view, and Belichick's, and apparently the Jets', is that the players must do it their way on things that are of fundamental importance. The difference between the cultures is, I'm guessing, that the Bills knew what they were getting with Allen and the Jets, apparently, didn't know what they were getting with Darnold. McBeane don't want a guy who puts himself ahead of the team.

Wow. I didn't know anything about this issue. The fact that Darnold actually cares about this says something about the guy. That fact alone reflects a character issue that would put off McBeane. They want guys who have complete confidence in themselves and who are willing to bet their futures on themselves. That' one thing that I like about Tyrod. He's all about "just give me a chance to play. If you don't want to play me, I'll move on." Tyrod left Baltimore to get to the place where he had the best opportunity to play, he renegotiated his contract twice to be sure he continued to have the best opportunity to play, and he embraced being traded because it gave him the best opportunity to play. He makes good money compared to you and me, and he simply doesn't let the fact that he might get a better deal get in the way of playing football. Holding up his signing over this issue says that Darnold doesn't have complete confidence in himself, that he wants some protection on the downside if things don't go well. And it says he cares about how much money he's going to get. From a strictly personal, economic point of view, that makes perfectly a good sense. From the team's perspective, it says Darnold has his eye on the wrong ball. Football isn't number 1. It's why the Bills probably aren't interested in Dez Bryant, and probably aren't interested in Mack. If you're not 100% about team football, they aren't interested. And if you're holding out, or if you're a distraction in some other way, you aren't 100% about team football. McBeane have been very clear - they want guys whose fundamental personality traits indicate that they're committed to the process. That's one of the things they liked about Allen. He's that kind of guy. And that's why he's signed and Darnold isn't. To the extent they think about it at all, Darnold not signing is something that reinforces their belief that they got the right guy.

I haven't read this thread, because it's pretty clear that if he said what the title says he said, he meant just what you're saying. His mental approach is simply to keep learning, keep getting better, execute what he's given to execute. Who "wins" the QB comptetion will be the one who has learned the most, executes the best. You don't win the competition by focusing on your competitor; you win it by focusing on yourself and getting better at what you do. That's what's fundamentally wrong about the notion that there is a QB "competition." In true competition, you focus BOTH on what you do AND what your opponent does, because your opponent will be doing some things you have to respond to and your opponent may have some weaknesses you can exploit. In a QB "competition," you don't change your behavior to respond to whatever it is your "opponent" may be doing. You focus only on yourself. You don't say, for example, "AJ isn't very good at the deep sideline pass, so if I get better at that, I'll have an edge." You "win" by being the best package, regardless of what AJ is doing. So what Josh said is a comment about the difference between true competition and a QB competition. And it's completely consistent with McD's approach, which is simply that your job is get better at your job as fast as you can and to keep getting better. Your job doesn't have anything to do with whether you're better than someone else.

I agree with the point that Allen should be the clear leader if he's going to start. If it's close, I'd go with AJ. Rationale? If it's close, that means it's hard to tell who's better. If it's hard to tell who's better, it means that Allen won't be giving you more on the field than AJ. AJ has experience, which means he's less likely to make big mistakes. He's also less likely to melt down if something goes wrong. I'd let Allen watch from the bench and continue to get a feel for the league. Then, later in the season I'd consider going to Allen (unless AJ is really lighting it up and the Bills are winning). Time will come for Allen. Of course, that's assuming AJ is the other option. If Allen is clearly better than AJ and a push with Nate, I'm starting Allen.

Watch the video. He's a good example of dime-a-dozen running backs. Nothing special at all. Just hits the hole quickly, powers through arm tackles that he should. He looks like 100 other running backs. The Bills probably like Ivory better. The Bills' interest in him will depend on character and price. He isn't a must-have.

thanks for the observations.

Thanks for the write up. Great stuff. Kyle is one of those guys who just do it right. Always has been.

I like this. It's clear, makes sense. You've watched the guy and you don't think he's a football player. That's about as good an argument against his chances as there can be. I hope you're wrong, of course. And I have a theory about how you can be wrong. I think up until now, Allen's played something that's close to sandlot ball. Go out there kid, use your athleticism and see if you can win the game for us. I don't think that's how QB is played in the NFL any more. I think NFL QBs are coaches on the field. They're programmed to execute the plays, not create plays. I think that's why Kirk Cousins got $30 million a year, or whatever. He is NOT a guy who takes the game in his hands and wins it. He's a guy who studies the plan, studies the opponent, and executes. I think the Bills see Allen as a Kirk Cousins type, but with better athleticism. I think they see a guy who will learn the system, do what he's told to do, execute the system. I don't think the Bills were looking for John Elway. They want a guy who by his very nature will buy into the process and execute. I never look at it this way. All I care about is that Allen makes it and is a solid, long-term starting QB. If he is, I don't care if any of those other guys are better. The GM's job is to get good value for his pick, not to get the best value.

I long for a season of that kind of excitement in the stands.

Hapless I gotta thank you for this. Its one of the best things I've read in a while. Very enlightening. I like the basic stuff Outsiders does. I think their problem is that in order to monetiz their product they needed more content. To generate content they needed "data" to talk about. But once they get into the realm of college footvall, there are too many variables and they have to start using surrogates for real data. Anyway, thanks for the analysis of QBASE. Very helpful.

Thanks. This a really good nutshell summary. I tend to think the Bills CAN do it, can teachAllen what he needs to learn. Why do I think so? Because the way this front office and coach operate, they've evaluated the guy's work ethic, his understanding of the game, his intelligence. They've done that with testing and through interviews with the player and his coaches. They analyzed kind of a learner he is. Remember, McBeane saw Cam Newton come into the league and learn the things he had to learn. He played in a pretty simple college offense, and he had a lot to learn. He's been learning for years. So McBeane knows what it takes, they know what kind of learner Cam was and they know what kind of learner Allen is. I think when they took Allen, they had a high level of confidence that they can teach him what he needs to know. And that confidence was based on actual investigation into the guy.

Amen.

But in this case, the guy is neither dumb nor annoying. In fact, if he's annoying at all, it's because he relentlessly is looking to get better. So he's annoying like Kirk Cousins.

It's clear that purely physically he has all the tour. Whether his mechanics, his judgment etc are good enough is an open question, like with every other rookie. What gives me confidence is that the Bills have evaluating those things and come to the conclusion that whatever it is about his game they DON'T like is susceptible to being fixed. Frankly, I put a lot of stock in Allen's work ethic, his attitude, and his brains.