SoTier

Well, Allen hasn't thought well in games this season. He has had 6 INTs in 4 games, at least 3 of them blatantly stupid throws that even a raw rookie shouldn't throw more than once. I was glad that Daboll got on Allen on national TV ... and I hope he got roasted properly again when going over the film. If Allen can't make good decisions, then he'll never even be a competent NFL QB much less a franchise one.

Not much. Maybe a 6th or 7th pick.

I think this is the problem with Dawkins -- and maybe Ford as well. They would make much better NFL guards than tackles but the Bills keep at them at tackle because they don't have anybody better.

The early thought on Wilson by many commentators and fans outside of Seattle was that he was a good passer on a team with a great running game and a great defense. It wasn't until after the Seahawks Super Bowl teams were dismantled and Wilson was essentially their entire offense that a lot of so-called "experts" conceded he was a great passer. I have been a Wilson fan since I saw him play his first game at Wisconsin, and I have followed his career ever since. Needless to say, I was pretty PO that the Bills passed on him to trade up to take the useless WR TJ Graham.

McCoy has 214 yards on 40 carries (5.4 avg), 12 carries for first downs, and 2 TDs. He's also caught 9 passes out of 11 targets for 71 yards (7.9 avg) for 3 first downs and 1 TD. He has 0 fumbles. That projects to be about 850 yards on the ground plus another 280 yards via passing, and he's not even the feature back on a passing team. I'm not a fan of playing money ball, especially on the offensive side. You can't have too much talent on offense in the modern NFL in order to be successful as the Pats, Chiefs, Saints, Rams, and Eagles have repeatedly demonstrated. Surrounding a top QB prospect/veteran with second stringers and JAGs hasn't proven to be a particularly successful formula for building consistent playoff contenders in this century.

I don't think that many fans are "throwing in the towel" on Allen. Contrary to the wild homerism rampant on TSW before Sunday, many fans were at least somewhat skeptical of Allen's long term success but didn't try to argue with the idjits predicting Allen would be an MVP candidate, etc. What Sunday showed was that Allen still has a long way to go yet to become a competent NFL QB, and that's raised doubts in the minds of most fans who aren't blinded by hero-worship and homerism. I totally agree that the Bills need to run the ball more. A strong running game is ANY QB's best friend, but especially a young QB. I was dismayed that the Bills released McCoy to keep Yeldon just to save what amounts to a few dollars. Gore-McCoy-Singletary would have been infinitely better than Gore-Singletary-Yeldon. I don't think that the Bills RB corps is good enough for the Bills to be a run first team that would make Allen's on-field life much easier, and that goes double with Singletary injured.

Trent Edwards before he got "crushed in Arizona" was exactly the same risk-adverse QB that he was afterwards. He was a check down artist his entire career who never learned to read defenses, seldom threw downfield, and collapsed against strong defenses. Edwards' inability to move the ball and especially in the red zone was evident in 2007 when Jauron named him the starter over JP Losman whom Jauron disliked because he took too many risks. The Bills 2008 4-0 start was largely a function of a schedule that included mediocre/poor teams in the first four games. Arizona was the first quality defense they faced and popped the Bills balloon. After their 4-0 start, the Bills went 3-9 the rest of the way.

Russell Wilson as a rookie also relied on heavy run support in the person of Marshawn Lynch. In fact, Wilson wasn't considered a grerat passer until his third or fourth year in the league. That doesn't mean that he "didn't get it from the start". My whole point with my list is that rookie QBs who have success "out of the gate" and sustain that success going forward haven't been all that rare in the last 15 or 16 years -- about 1 every 3 or 4 seasons. If you include QBs who sit all or most of their first year and find immediate success as sophomore, you have to include Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, the GOAT and the apparent successor to the GOAT as the best QB in the NFL. All last season and this off season, my biggest beef with the Bills has been that the Bills did not provide Allen with the support that he needed, and I still stand by that. The Bills had a good defense but they didn't have an OL, they didn't have a running game, they didn't have an NFL caliber receiving corps, and they didn't even bother to hire a bonafide QB coach. David Culley hadn't actually coached QBs for 30 years, and that was 1 year as a QB coach at a small college program. They set up Allen for failure last season, and most of his success came from playing "hero ball" like he did in college while playing against some pretty poor teams. I think that the common denominator among rookie/young QBs who find immediate success in the NFL is that they are "coachable", ie they accept coaching and adapt/alter their playing style to fit their coaches' styles. They also learn from their mistakes. I think that the lack of competent QB coaching as a rookie has made Allen less amenable to really listening to his coaches. I think that the Bills were able to overcome Allen's lapses in the first three games, so that just made him over confident in his ability and less likely to listen the coaches. On the one drive against the Pats that he did what the coaches wanted him to do, the Bills found success. Then he reverted to "hero ball" again and got his bell rung. Hopefully, Allen learns more from his failure and injury than he has from his three successes.

Ben Roethlisberger took the Steelers to 15 wins, the AFC North title, and an appearance in the AFC Conference championship as a rookie in 2004. Joe Flacco took the Ravens to 11 wins, a wild card berth, and an appearance in the AFC Conference championship as a rookie in 2008. Andy Dalton took the Bengals to a wild card berth as a rookie in 2011. Andrew Luck took the Colts to 11 wins and a wild card berth as a rookie in 2013. Deshaun Watson looked good for a rookie QB in 2017 before he was sidelined with a season ending injury. He came back in 2018 and led the Texans to an 11-5 record and the AFC South title, so he pretty much "got it" from the get-go. Baker Mayfield set the rookie TD record in 2018. I would say that all of these rookie QBs "got it right off the bat", so rookie QBs playing competently isn't as rare as it may have been 30 years ago.

The Bills would likely be 4-0 with any of those three, so yeah, I would. At this point, and especially yesterday, Allen isn't a competent NFL QB. The NFL isn't a pickup game in street in front of your house, but that seems to be what Allen keeps trying to play.

You could make the claim that it was the Pats D that Allen couldn't deal with if he hadn't made the same mistakes at various times against the Bills three previous opponents. The Bills were good enough to win those three contests despite Allen's intermittent gaffes in all of them, but they came up to bite the Bills in the arse against the Pats.

"Raw but super talented" = "project". It's a kid who has lots of athletic talent -- with QBs that's especially a big arm -- but lacks the kind of skillset that makes him likely to succeed in the NFL. How does that not describe Josh Allen? Allen has a great arm, but poor mechanics and worse decision making partly because he never had good coaching until this season and partly because he's had success relying on his talent alone. In the NFL, talent alone just doesn't cut it. It's what between the ears that counts as much as talent. IMO, Allen shouldn't have been taken in the first round much less the top ten because there's too much to "fix" in his game to bring it up to the level of a competent NFL QB (ie, Joe Flacco, Andy Dalton, Kirk Cousins, etc).

You look at what Allen did in the 2nd half after the TD drive before he was injured: 5 attempts, 2 completions, 1 INT in 3 possessions, 2 of which were 3 and outs. A lesson are only successful if the student learns from it, and Allen doesn't seem to do that. He didn't play any "smarter" yesterday than he did last season before he got hurt. After the second or third INT in the first half, there was a shot on TV of Daboll yelling at Allen and pointing to his head with a gesture that surely said "THINK!!!!". So, name all the "project QBs" -- "raw but super talented" -- drafted in the first round since 2001 who have gone on to become great NFL QBs. I can't think of even one. All the "project QBs" who have developed into good/great NFL QBs were either drafted outside the first round (Jacoby Brissett, Dak Prescott) or were UDFAs (Tony Romo). Here are the first round QBs since 2001 so you don't miss some first round "project QB" who actually developed into a good/great QB. 2001 - Michael Vick 2002 - David Carr, Joey Harrington, Patrick Ramsey 2003 - Carson Palmer, Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman 2004 - Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, JP Lossman 2005 - Alex Smith, Aaron Rodgers 2006 - Vince Young, Matt Leinart, Jay Cutler 2007 - JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn 2008 - Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco 2009 - Matthew Stafford, Mark Sanchez, Josh Freeman 2010 - Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow 2011 - Cam Newton, Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder 2012 - Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, Ryan Tannehill, Brandon Weeden 2013 - EJ Manuel 2014 - Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel, Teddy Bridgewater 2015 - Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota 2016 - Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Paxton Lynch 2017 - Mitch Trubisky, Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson 2018 - Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson

Yes, Super Duper became Jubilee which also disappeared.

Peters would have been #1 on my list, too, except that he was traded outside the window of the last five years. He was traded in 2009 when he was just in his prime -- and a decade later, he's still better than anybody the Bills have had at that position before or since, including Cordy Glenn.

Stephon Gilmore,Robert Woods, Cordy Glenn.

Pretty much this. I think for the first time since the arrival of Brady and Belichick in NE, the Bills actually have comparable talent to the Pats throughout the roster. Unfortunately, they aren't in the same league with NE at QB and HC. Probably no other team is, either. A few teams over the years have had good enough coaching and/or QB play and/or over all talent to go toe-to-toe with the Pats for a game or two but nobody has done it consistently. If the Bills can play NE tough and keep the game close, that probably is the best they'll be able to do. If they can actually win the game, that will border on miraculous, although far more realistic than it appeared to be a month ago.

Shur Fine supermarkets are primarily located in small towns. I'm not sure if they are owned by the company or are independently owned and just use the Shur Fine name. Many of the small town markets carry Shur Fine products.

I think that if the Bills play NE tough, even if they lose a close game, they'll gain more respect. I don't think that they would move up in that scenario but they probably wouldn't drop very far if at all. With power rankings, who a team plays and how it plays count for more than simply whether they win or lose.

Sometimes, though, the prestige of a program can propel draft prospects to higher positions in the draft than they perhaps merit by their actual play on the field. USC QBs, Penn State LBs, and Iowa OLers seem to be examples of this.

The Lions went into Philly and beat an Eagles team that's considered a bonafide Super Bowl contender. The Texans went to LA and beat the Chargers, another team considered a Super Bowl contender. The Saints went to Seattle -- one of the acknowledged toughest places to play -- and pretty much stuck it to the playoff contender Seahawks without future HOFer Drew Brees and despite the heroics of future HOFer Russell Wilson. The Ravens went into KC and went toe to toe with the offensive juggernaut that is the Mahomes' led Chiefs. The 49ers at home made 5 turn overs and just managed to survive the Roethlisberger-less Steelers. The Bills almost lost their home opener to a winless Bengals team because they sleep walked through the third quarter. All the teams in the NFC North are either undefeated or 1 loss teams. The Packers are 3-0, the Lions 2-0-1, and the Vikings and Bears are 2-1. Maybe you should actually watch other teams rather than just whining.

Right on, man!!! How dare anybody criticize the Bills! They're 3-0, and their play has been as perfect as their record. The Pats are DOOMED! //sarcasm off

What a load of bull manure! Mariota reminds me of Trent Edwards with more talent around him.

Maybe you should have read on. Putting Jackson #8 is not nearly as egregious as putting Matt Ryan and his 5 INTs at #10.

I usually just laugh at these threads bemoaning that the Bills don't get enough "respect" in rankings, but i think that complaints are justified with this QB ranking piece. Obviously, these "ratings" are mostly based on reputation and hype not actual performance. The first four are dead-on, but I don't think Phillip Rivers deserves to be #5 ahead of Wentz, Prescott, and Jackson who have all played better than Rivers. That's no big deal, however, when Matt Ryan with 5 INTS is rated #10 and Baker Mayfield with 4 INTs is #12 while Jared Goff comes in at #11, Stafford at #13, and Dalton at #17. Seriously????? How can Kyler Murray be #15 when he can't produce TDs? The best that can be said of Cam Newton, Marcus Mariota, and Kirk Cousins this season is that they've been ineffective yet they're all in the top 21 ahead of Josh Allen, who has played well and been very effective after the first half of the opener? Allen should be in the top 20 at least, and probably in the top 15. In both his starts, he's shown that he can play clutch when needed, something that several QBs rated ahead of him -- Ryan, Mayfield, Murray, Newton, Mariota, and Cousins -- have failed to do.