DCOrange

Throwing the ball far is only one part of arm strength. He's incapable of making deep throws on a rope; he can only make them putting a ton of air under it. He was a proficient deep ball thrower in college, but how much of this was having 2 or 3 WRs that are extremely talented at outjumping their man/the scheme allowing his WRs to slip in behind the defense? In the NFL, a lot of the deep balls he throws will give the safety enough time to come over and make a play on the ball. If you watch his throws to the sidelines, they hang in the air the same way Peterman's did this year in the NFL. It's going to be very difficult for him to throw a deep out in the NFL. If he succeeds, it'll likely be from attacking the middle of the field in the short-intermediate range IMO; I don't think the rest of his game will translate very well.

I've probably watched around 15 of Rudolph's games and think he has a weak arm. I mean, it isn't Kellen Moore level bad or anything, but it's similar to Peterman in terms of arm strength, which is to say, it'll almost definitely hurt his chances of succeeding in the NFL. He could theoretically become a good player in spite of that, but his arm strength will definitely limit the types of passes he can make.

Eh, his arm strength is definitely questionable. If you watch his game film, you'll see a lot of Peterman-esq passes that just float out to the sideline and are ripe for INTs if not for his WRs being amazing. Even his highlights you'll see his deep ball hang in the air a ton and force his WRs to basically box the corner/safety out to catch the ball.

If you're waiting for Washington to do something logical, you'll probably be waiting awhile. They're just a dumb organization. Not saying Cousins is the savior, but Washington constantly makes absurd decisions with their money and trading what they did for Alex Smith and then locking him in long-term is just another example IMO.

Certainly a fair criticism. I personally preferred Lamar over those two before I looked into these stats, so obviously we disagree there, but these numbers are just one more thing to look at really. Obviously there's additional context to everything that these numbers simply can't capture.

I had a little time this morning so I went through and added Josh Allen's numbers to the OP.

Woodside seems to be a late Day 3 guy right now. Like Lauletta, his accuracy is pretty impressive. I think he's a bit smaller than Lauletta though and probably has even more questionable arm strength. His accuracy makes him intriguing, but I'm not really sure he's any more likely to become a decent QB than Peterman is.

Edit: I added Josh Allen to the list since I had a little time this morning. His numbers aren't quite as bad as I expected though his passing yards in particular is incredibly low. The Lamar Jackson thread included some posts about how he performs versus tough opponents compared to how he performed against cupcakes so it got me thinking that it might be cool to do a breakout for each of the QBs. I just stuck with Darnold, Rosen, Mayfield, and Lamar for the sake of this exercise because we all know how brutal Josh Allen has been against good teams. The "Yards" and "Rush Yards" categories are average passing yards per game and average rushing yards per game. A couple things that jumped out at me: Lamar played the toughest schedule on average Rosen played by far the easiest schedule and was terrible against the only top 30 defense he faced Rosen and Darnold oddly struggled (relatively) against the worst teams they faced Mayfield in particular was just incredible this season, which I think we all already knew Lamar's stats don't look bad relative to his peers when you break it out by defensive rank Against Top 30 defenses: Against 31-75th ranked defenses: Against 76+ ranked defenses:

He did line up out wide often, but not in a way that would generally indicate being successful at it in the NFL. https://www.thefantasyfootballers.com/articles/reception-perception-zay-jones-years-confusing-wr-prospect/

Zay wasn't good when lining up outside in college; he was basically only effective as a slot WR. He does have the physical tools to potentially be an outside WR; he just hasn't been any good at it either in college or in the NFL to this point.

It's for all WRs at the time of release, which makes it kinda tough to really put much stock in it IMO, and I'm higher on Tyrod than most. Having said that, NFL's Next Gen Stats also track separation on an individual WR basis to show how much separation that WR has when the ball gets to them and the Bills WRs don't look good based on that metric either. Out of the 124 that qualified (requires 43 targets for Next Gen to track them): Charles Clay: 23rd Zay Jones: 66th Deonte Thompson: 87th Kelvin Benjamin: 123rd If you break it down by separation specifically for the targeted player and weight it by the number of targets, Buffalo ranks 24th out of 32. 1 KC 2 NYJ 3 LAC 4 GB 5 WAS 6 MIA 7 LAR 8 MIN 9 PIT 10 NO 11 CAR 12 CHI 13 ATL 14 JAX 15 BAL 16 DET 17 IND 18 SEA 19 SF 20 NE 21 CLE 22 PHI 23 CIN 24 BUF 25 TB 26 TEN 27 DAL 28 OAK 29 ARI 30 NYG 31 HOU 32 DEN

I'd rather keep Tyrod and his 1 year deal than signing Keenum long-term.

If we can get one of the top 5 QBs in this year's draft (some order of Darnold, Rosen, Allen, Mayfield, and Lamar), they should. After those 5, there's no real interesting options; some guys with big arms that make Josh Allen's accuracy look like Drew Brees, some guys that can throw it accurately but make Chad Pennington's arm strength look like John Elway. I wouldn't blame Buffalo for skipping the QB position if they miss on the first 5 guys and just wait until next year. I personally think they should at least try to take a developmental guy and kick Peterman to the curb, but we'll see. In the 2019 draft, Drew Lock is the guy IMO. I wish he had come out this year to give Buffalo another option.

It'll probably be close, but based on historical trends, there has been one draft in NFL history in which five QBs were taken in the top 20, so history would suggest there's a decent chance that the #5 QB is still available at 21, which, in the case of this year's draft, is a good prospect IMO. I don't think it's completely necessary to trade up, and I fear that a massive trade up may be too costly, but if the front office thinks that one or two of the QBs are on a different tier than the rest, I wouldn't blame them for doing so. Trading up a few picks to secure one of them makes as much sense for Buffalo as it does for Pittsburgh or New Orleans; probably even more-so.

Anything involving Rudolph in the 1st round is a pretty disastrous draft IMO.

Yep. One of my favorite times of the year.

It's hard to say without knowing where they'll land, but my rankings in the order in which I'd take them are: 1. Lamar 2. Darnold 3. Allen 4. Mayfield 5. Rosen 6. Lauletta 7. Luke Falk 8. Mason Rudolph 9. Mike White 10. Chase Litton If I rated them in terms of how confident I am that they pan out, I'd go with: 1. Darnold 2. Lamar 3. Rosen 4. Mayfield 5. Lauletta 6. Allen 7. Falk 8. Rudolph 9. White 10. Litton The main difference being that I think Allen is a risky, but worthwhile pick.

These predictions were all posted before the Alex Smith trade happened.

I'm off to a good start!

I'm guessing that considering the question was "What do you want to improve upon in the offseason?" and he responded by talking about his accuracy, he meant that he wants to continue working on his accuracy and it just didn't come out right.

This is a really great breakdown.

I'm relatively low on Rosen, but he's a more accurate passer right now than Lamar. I personally think Lamar is a better QB prospect than Rosen though. Allen is considered a QB because he can't play anything else. Lamar is considered by some to be a WR because he's a freakish athlete. I have a very difficult time taking anyone seriously that believes he's a better WR prospect than he is a QB prospect though.

Shows how out of touch you are. Clearly you didn't watch Floribama Shore these past couple months!

I think Jackson is "ready" to start week 1 in the sense that I think his running ability will allow him to be successful earlier than most of the other QBs in this class. However, I'd like to see him clean up his footwork in the long-term, and I think throwing him to the wolves would probably make it more difficult for him to create good habits.

Louisville plays in the ACC with Clemson, Florida State, etc. They're playing major conference teams every year. The ACC is generally pretty top-heavy though, so there's definitely some cupcakes within the conference, but it's not like he's playing at Wyoming where they basically don't play anyone. Edit: I don't mean that as a shot at Allen btw; I love Allen as a prospect. My point is simply that having exposure to strong opponents isn't an issue for Lamar; his play against better teams has been inconsistent though (which to a degree is to be expected, Louisville is a pretty crappy team outside of Lamar so the powerhouse schools should beat up on them pretty good).