VW82

Hard to argue with stealing a member of that vaunted Chiefs Oline, but the number of missed games is troubling. Hope he can stay healthy for us.

Some of that maybe true. I have no doubt AB would prefer a big market with an established QB and winning culture, but that’s all secondary to $$. Think of it this way. NFL has a hard cap. There are only a few teams with 1. Need for big time WR, 2. Lots of cap space, and 3. willingness to spend that cap space on re-doing AB’s contract AND spend the draft capital to get the trade done. Why would a good agent like Drew Rosenhaus want to eliminate one of the few teams who fit all those categories? Even if AB really didn’t want to come to Buffalo, the best way to do that is to quietly and respectfully tell Bills, so that you can still use the threat of them as leverage with another team for a better deal. You only go the public scorched earth route if Bills are trying to trade for you without meeting your contract demands, which is what happened. If AB gets traded somewhere good and there’s little new money involved then I’ll admit I’m wrong.

This is so desperate. He's doing whatever he can to gain back some semblance of control over the situation. Wherever he winds up, it'll be because that team both paid the most in draft compensation and the most in new money on re-doing his contract.

No one knows anything for sure, but by far the most likely scenario is that Drew Rosenhaus, AB's agent, leaked the finished trade deal to Rappaport in order to put public pressure on the Bills so he could negotiate an extension ahead of the trade going through. Once the trade is signed and done, AB loses a big part of his negotiating position. I suspect the Bills and Rosenhaus had talked extension ahead of time, and so we knew what it might take, but preferred to entertain those talks somewhat privately when AB was already a part of the team. That's not to AB's advantage if his goal is the get the most $$, hence why we saw all the theatrics about him not reporting, etc. When we saw that, we walked away.

i don't understand our need to distort the very simple and easy to understand truth -- that we agreed to a deal with the Steelers with the understanding of what it might take to extend Brown, only to have his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, leak the trade and force an ugly extension negotiation pre-trade which we balked at -- so that we can make up silly alternate realities for ourselves which paint everyone involved to be idiots. It's so insecure. If this was meant to be a joke, then I guess I missed it.

Man there are some sad takes in this thread. It's not that complicated. We agreed with Steelers on trade compensation with a basic understanding of what it might take to extend Brown. AB's agent, Drew Rosenhaus, leaked the trade to the media to put pressure on the Bills to up their offer and get a deal done now as this is when their leverage is the highest. When we wouldn't meet their demands, Brown took to twiiter saying he'd never report. Bills balked at the whole situation and backed away. It has nothing to do with how he feels or doesn't feel about Buffalo. Why do people insist on acting like spurned teenagers??

It's just misinformation. Rosenhaus leaked the trade to put pressure on the Bills. He's leaking false info to other networks about other teams to put pressure on the Bills. This is all about making us sweat so we up our extension offer.

Any non Rappaport news at this stage is fake news IMO. They just don't have specifics ironed out on an extension yet. Edit: I suspect AB's agent leaked the trade to Rappaport in order to put pressure on the Bills to up their offer.

We wouldn't be trading for him without reasonable assurances from his agent that he'd not only show up but also extend. Brown was quite clear about wanting a new deal and he has leverage in the form of a no trade.

I have to believe he accepts with a new deal. I suspect the trade parameters have been worked out with the Steelers, but we're still working with his agent on an extension which is why it hasn't been officially reported by Schefter et. al.

Man poor Josh is taking a beating on twitter right now. Did no one watch his games once he came back from injury?

So much for team culture. Bring on the talent!

I am very, very interested in this rumor.

For sure better pre-snap reads will help. You only have to watch Brady and Brees so many times for this to become obvious. They make the easy throws before the defense can adjust, and so they complete a tonne of them. One of my theories, and I hope someone does this analysis at some point, is that Josh really struggles with moving targets. It's a big reason why he occasionally misses the RB leaking out of the back field. It's also part of the reason, I think, why he throws so hard on intermediate crossing routes. He's subconsciously trying to narrow the gap in time lag between release of the football and when it reaches the target so he doesn't have to adjust as much for distance covered by the receiver. Further, many of his best passes on the year were either straight back comeback routes or when the receiver was able to sit down in an open zone. Simple pitch and catch.

While I agree with oldmanfan and appreciate transplant's effort in going through all that tape, I still think we have to put significant weight on the analyses performed by PFF and ESPN Stats & Info on this subject. I don't believe they're confusing accuracy and precision. Nothing that I've read would suggest that's the case. Also, they're very likely using computer programs designed to calculate distance from the target, so they're much more likely to produce a result which limits errors than someone who's guesstimating based on eye test. Both of their studies pinned Allen as the most frequently off target passer in the league. It had nothing to do with completion percentage. I will acknowledge it's entirely possible that transplant was able to remove any bias in favour of Allen, and perform a fair study. Perhaps his threshold for an off target throw was just higher than the public sites which do this type of thing for a living. In any event, there's a preponderance of evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, which would suggest Allen had difficulty hitting the target compared to his peers, especially on short routes as Gaughan suggested. I'm hopeful we'll see improvement in that area in year two.

Brady shouldn’t be considered shoulder to shoulder with Jordan. Yes he won six rings but how many were with him as one of the best players in the league or even on his own team? By my count it’s three though if you want to say four I wouldn’t argue. Everyone forgets that Brady wasn’t really Tom F’ing Brady until 2007. By that time he already had three rings. He’s more like Tim Duncan.

His SB performance resembled Josh’s Green Bay performance this year. I can’t remember the last time a QB tanked his team’s chances this badly in a SB. So many missed opportunities.

I'd like to see him come back with improved mechanics on all throws. It seemed like the work he put in to keep his hips from opening up on throws to the left kind of messed him up on throws to the right (perhaps because Josh was comfortable enough and strong enough to make throws to the right with open hips?). In any event, let's put this accuracy issue to bed. Come back making all the throws, including the touch throws, and hopefully with better weapons and a better understanding of what's happening out there he can take a big step forward in year two.

I think OP took any pass that was even remotely catchable (even if the receiver had to lay out to get his finger tips on it, or stop/alter his route and pull it off the ground) and called it a drop/catchable whereas the PFF and ESPN guys held QBs to a little higher standard in terms of what was considered on target. That would seem to be a simpler explanation than assuming everyone is so completely confused with accuracy vs. precision that they messed up their whole analysis.

You're just flat wrong on this which is funny because you're accusing everyone else of mistaking them. Accuracy is measured as the distance from the accepted value (i.e. the bulls eye) and the experimental value (i.e. where the throw landed on the dart board). Precision is the measure of deviation from the average throw. Let's say the dot in the red bulls eye (which you claim is more precise but not more accurate than dots outside the red bulls eye) was all by itself, and the rest of the dots were like the dart board on the upper right. The bulls eye dot would be accurate, but not precise in comparison to the rest of the throws. You have it completely backwards. Just because a throw is within the catch radius does not make it equally accurate to all other throws within the catch radius.

Ok so taking the lower left chart as example, would you agree that one of the dots in the red bulls eye is more accurate than one of the dots in the white space? My interpretation is fine. You're making the same mistake as OP in assuming that there are no degrees of accuracy. It's harder to catch a pass at the knees or shoelaces (where you have to bend down to get it) than one that hits you right in the chest. One pass is more accurate than the other.

An accurate throw is one that hits the receiver in the numbers (i.e. a bulls eye). A throw that hits him in the knees is less accurate. A throw that hits him in his shoe is even less accurate than the one at the knees. Precision refers to the deviations of his throws from one another. If all of Josh's throws were at knee level, he'd be very precise (though perhaps not as accurate as we'd like). The fact Josh had issues throwing in front, behind, high, low, and otherwise is evidence of his lack of precision, and the degree to which he was in front, behind, high, low, and otherwise is evidence of his issues with accuracy (though OP didn't get into that besides tracking uncatchables). I've posted this before, but here's the visual representation. Having read both the PFF and ESPN articles, I can't tell whether they're confusing accuracy and precision. It's possible they are though I doubt it. If I missed the smoking gun please feel free to point it out. So far all I've read are accusations. Specifically, I believe they were talking about percentage of off target throws - that's a(n imperfect) measure of accuracy. It would be better if someone could give average distance from the bulls eye for all these guys, or put them all on a dart board like above. Edit: also, OP didn't conclude that Allen and the other rookies were accurate. He concluded that Allen was as accurate as the other rookies. He didn't do an analysis comparing rookie accuracy to the rest of the NFL QBs.

I made this point earlier in the thread but it appears to have been lost in all the replies...I don't think your analysis debunks the accuracy claims. It debunks the claim that he throws a greater percentage of uncatchable balls than other rookies. Your analysis assumes that a ball thrown late and 100 MPH at a receiver's shoe lace is essentially the same as one thrown on time and hits the receiver in stride. Both are technically catchable. Please correct me if I'm wrong. PFF and ESPN Stats & Info did this exact same analysis and concluded that Josh threw a greater percentage of "off target throws" than anyone else in the NFL, including the rookies. It's unclear how much their version of an off target throw differs from your uncatchable throw. Anyways, as someone who did a truncated version of this (and got killed for it), you have my appreciation and sympathy. I don't agree with your methodology as I understand it, but your conclusion is interesting nonetheless, and I'm prepared to take it at face value. Nice work.

I'd feel a lot better about Allen if the team did a better job putting him in positions to succeed. There's a reason he looked better throwing to Foster and Mckenzie. Those guys could get open. Also, we need a new line.

When PFF and ESPN Stats & Info did this exact same analysis, they concluded that Josh was responsible for the greatest percentage of off target throws in the whole league. I suspect their methodology for what constitutes an accurate pass was a little different. Specifically, I don't think you can say that just because the rookie QBs hit the dart board (i.e. catchable) that means they were accurate. Some guys, like Baker, are hitting the bulls eye with regularity whereas others, like Allen, are all over the dart board. Perhaps that explains the vastly different result you got as you seemed to ignore that part on purpose. It is interesting that his rate of uncatchable balls was about the same as the other rookies though.