CincyBillsFan

So you're saying someone could get Allen for the same price that Miami paid to get Rosen? Really! Allen was the 7th guy taken in the 2018 draft. He has clearly shown that he is NOT a bust and has flashed serious upside potential. Allen is a safer bet then Burrow and I think Burrow is fantastic. But Allen has already at times performed at an elite level in the NFL. There are credible rumors swirling around that Miami might part with THREE 1st round picks to land Burrow. If Bean offered Allen to Miami for TWO 1st round picks the Dolphins would do it in a heartbeat. What part don't you think would happen? Bean offering to trade Allen or someone giving up 2 first round and 2 second round picks? I think there is a zero chance Bean offers Allen up for trade. But if he did I would be shocked if he didn't get a couple of 1st round picks for Allen. Allen is a top 10 pick who is on the cusp of being a top flight QB. If Rosen was worth a 2nd Allen is worth two 1st round picks.

At minimum it would be two #1's. & two #2's.

I'm an Ohio State fan and Burrow only played in mop up time in 2016. Those stats are irrelevant. The bottom line is that he couldn't win the OSU job, was average his first year at LSU and then blossomed into one of the best QB prospects to come out of college in the last 20 years. And he did this AFTER the age of 21. And for the record Allen's path to being an NFL QB was NOT "bad". He went from unrecruited HS player to a starter at Wyoming. He then went from Wyoming to being a top 10 pick in the NFL draft. He then became a starting NFL QB in week 2 as a rookie. He then improved his game significantly since becoming a starting NFL QB. THERE'S NOTHING BAD ABOUT THIS! My point was that Allen didn't enjoy the advantages of a lot of young QB's with respect to high level coaching during his early years of football. And as long as you have the mental & physical tools - which Allen has in abundance - all you need to overcome this is a couple of years of high level coaching & experiences. He's getting that and he's improving by leaps & bounds. My point is also that he's following a more traditional path for QB development. This is a path that was the norm for the majority of young NFL QB's from the 1960's - 1990's. As for your hypothetical question, if I didn't know what I know now - that Allen has demonstrated that he can be an NFL QB - and I was asked to choose between Allen coming out of college in 2018 and Burrow today I would pick Burrow. Who wouldn't. The real question is which of these 2 QB's do you think is more likely to be a top 5 NFL QB 5 years from now? My answer would be Allen because he's already PROVEN he can play at an NFL level. Burrow still has to prove this. And for the record I think Burrow is a fantastic QB prospect and will thrive in the NFL. Bottom line is your pessimism about Allen is unwarranted. Your declaration that Allen can't get better is flat out wrong and has been disproved by Allen's performance to date.

I disagree completely with this. It used to be the norm in the NFL for QB's not to reach their full capabilities until their late 20's. In fact the vast majority of QB's had their greatest improvement AFTER they turned 23 as a consequence of their receiving proper coaching combined with increased reps & game experience. What has changed in the last decade is that the advance training available to some QB's in their youth enables them to hit the ground running in the NFL. Good for them. But this in no way precludes those QB's who for whatever reason didn't benefit from advanced training in their early years from learning how to play QB at an elite level. Allen is a THROWBACK an old school young QB who will follow a conventional path that was common in the 1970's & 1980's. Just this year you saw Joe Burrow do exactly this going from being an average QB at 22 to being a QB that had the single greatest season in the history of college football at 23. If you look at Allen's improvement vector from his start as an unrecruited HS QB who spent a year in Jr College to a stint at Wyoming then a top 10 pick of the Bills, you can see that he's more then able to get better as he's exposed to better coaching & experiences. This is a guy who as a rookie in the NFL was thrown to the wolves on a horrendous offense yet has by EVERY measure significantly improved his QB skills from those first few games to now. The trajectory in his improvement from 18 to 23 had been robustly UP. And there is no rational reason to believe that it doesn't continue for the next few years.

It's possible that several things can be true at the same time such as: * Mahomes is a great QB and looks to be a generational talent. * Mahomes came into the NFL in the BEST situation a rookie QB could hope for. From coaching to surrounding offensive talent to first class mentor at QB show me a QB who started their career in a better situation? * Mahomes is unlikely to have matched his KC performance had he been drafted by the Bills in 2017. * Allen is likely to have progressed faster & put up better numbers had he been put into the same situation with the Chiefs that Mahomes was. Watching the SB and imagining Allen starting in place of Mahomes and I frankly think the result would have been similar. * IMO when we look back on all this in 5 years everyone will agree that it was a HUGE WIN/WIN for both teams. Both the Bills & Chiefs will have their SB winning Franchise QB's and the Bills will have an all pro CB & LB to go along with it.

This is great news. I think this guy still has gas in the tank and he would be a fantastic mentor to Sweeney & Knox and security blanket for Allen. Here's to hoping!

This. The abundance of talent on KC's offense is breathtaking. The fact that Watkins is their 3rd or even 4th best skill player is insane. One thing the playoffs showed us and it was reinforced big time in the Super Bowl is that size, speed & "hands" matter in your receivers. That this is an area the Bills MUST upgrade is beyond doubt. The continuous nitpicking of Allen in the face of this reality is wrongheaded IMO.

Happy I agree with you 100%. I was just being sarcastic to all those folks who continuously remind us that the Bills screwed up by not drafting Mahomes!

Well another SB has come and gone. Some comments: * Happy for Reid and Mahomes. Both guys seem like good dudes. * Watching the SB reminded me that the Bills are not far off. It's possible, hell even likely, that this off season will put them over the top. * Best player on the field yesterday was Bosa and IMO the MVP should have been the RB for KC. * Even though they are both surrounded with an enormous amount of talented skill players and excellent O-lines, BOTH QB's yesterday were average. Mahomes came up clutch at the end but he was lucky he wasn't responsible for 4 TO's. Jimmy G really faded in the 4th quarter. Allen is not that far behind these guys. * Reading a Bill's message board and seeing all the posts obsessing over the Bills not drafting Mahomes is pathetic. Get the hell over it. Toddlers don't throw temper tantrums that last this long. Frankly it comes across like a mental illness. Most Bills fans didn't obsess over "wide right" in the SB as much as thee folks go on and on about not drafting Mahomes. * In fact, the "we didn't draft Mahomes" whiners should switch their complaints to "why did we let Watkins go"! He had a great game yesterday and the TRUTH is that the Bills need an upgrade at WR NOT at QB.

I don't disagree with you here and my post wasn't meant as a criticism of you since you actually analyze Allen's performance with an open mind. I enjoy reading your stuff as it helps me to more accurately assess Allen's performance. For sure I want Allen to succeed because the cost to the Bills would be terrible if he doesn't. This does run the risk of my looking at Allen through rose colored glasses. You provide good perspective to help me keep it real with respect to Allen. But I would note that unless we know how that play was supposed to work and what the true progression read was we can't really tell if Allen missed Singleterry. If the RB was the 4th option then I'm fine with Allen missing it. If Singleterry was the 2nd option then Allen needs to work on this part of his game and take what's given. I do agree 100% with you about DiMarco split out wide. Often he was out there with Gore which seemed like a total waste of space.

Why? Allen was better then a lot of other young QB's at ball protection. He only threw 9 inceptions which is decent and he lost what 5 fumbles? Given how much he ran with the ball he should be more vulnerable then most QB's to fumbling. That's the price you pay for all those 3rd down conversions he makes running the ball. And Allen wasn't as bad as the Giants Jones or the Panthers Allen when it came to losing fumbles in the pocket. Those 2 fumbled if they felt the breath of a DE on their neck. Bottom line is that Allen was responsible for 30 TD's and 14 TO's over the course of the season. That hardly gives me reason to be concerned. Sure I would like to see his TO's cut in half to 7 but 14 is in no way extreme for a 2nd yer QB.

I agree but at the same time it's a petty argument to make. Do any of these people who dwell on Allen not seeing an open receiver on EVERY play watch any other NFL games? You can nitpick any NFL QB to death if you have motivation to do so. And man there seems to be plenty of motivation by a few select posters at 2BD to do it! On any scale applied to plays that Allen may or may not have missed in that game this one was minor. And didn't Allen convert the 3rd & 12 on the next play? It's like the obsession with the lateral. If we didn't know better you would think a Texan intercepted the lateral and ran it in for a TD sealing the win for Houston.

Can you actually call out a couple of those "egregious awful decisions"? Should be easy to pick a few really bad ones given how you're claiming he had so many. As for the two "almost" INT's that Allen threw - so what? In almost every game I watch QB's, even the great ones, throw passes that "should" have been intercepted. Oh and by my count he only had one which "should" have been intercepted and that was the potential pick 6 in the 1st quarter. The pass that went between Watt's hand at the LOS happens a lot in the NFL and is almost never intercepted as the defender is to close and the ball is moving to fast. And for the record Watson had a potential pick 6 dropped that should have been an easy INT for the Bills. IMO Allen played well in his first playoff game. He's a big part of the reason we got out to a 16 - 0 lead; got into OT with a late game FG drive and had us poised to win in OT if only Knox or Morse had made a block. Let's not forget that the first 3 Bills drive starts were at their own 10, 8 & 4 yard line and that Allen led them to two FG's in spite of such awful field position. And if Allen's receivers had made NFL quality plays on a couple of passes in the 2nd quarter the game would have been over with the Bills up 21 - 0 at half. So spare me the talk that so and so was "open" by "7 yards" from a video image.

I guess this proves that you can argue about anything! The Allen fumble did not change the outcome of the game as it only led to 3 points. If you want to point fingers at what really changed the outcome of this game here's two that were far more important then Allen's fumble: * the inability of Brown & Duke to make plays on well thrown Allen passes in the 1st half that would have given us two TD's instead of FG's. * after the Bills went up 16 - 0 the defense allowed the Texans to go on an 80 yard drive to score a TD and then allowed Houston to make the 2 point conversion. This is what got the crowd back into the game and gave the Texans hope. Suddenly it was only a one score game. Allowing the 2 point conversion was HUGE because had they not made it the Bills would have still led by 2 scores.

I may be misreading this but doesn't it prove that PFF's metrics are a total crock of bat feces? While I'm not a big fan of the conventional passer rating it's better then nothing. So you have Allen improving significantly by double digit numbers in almost every passer rating category with some huge improvements like his red zone rating going up by 44 points! That Allen dropped in some of the subjective PFF ratings tells me their ratings suck.

I think the biggest reason for Allen's lack of a 300 yard passing game this season were the circumstances of the games being played. In only 1 game did the Bills lose by more then one score and even in that game (Eagles) they were only down 17 - 13 late in the 3rd period. And given the wind conditions that day NO QB was going to throw for 300 yards even against a prevent defense. From what I can see a lot of 300 yard passing games are the direct result of a team down big desperately trying to get back into the game. These big yardage games often require the assistance of a prevent defense to make it happen. By throwing "check down" passes under the coverage QB's can easily roll up 100 - 200 yards passing in the 3rd & 4th quarters. There's a reason that the correlation between passing for 300 yards and WINNING the game is so poor.

Lamar Jackson was not considered raw he just wasn't able to make certain types of throws. There's a BIG difference. Jackson ran a spread offense where he was the guy. I'm sure that Jackson was attending multiple elite QB camps throughout high school. He was exposed at a young age to top notch QB coaching. The nature of the offense that Mahomes ran meant he was anything but raw coming out of college. Allen was raw because he didn't attend those elite QB camps and he didn't benefit from top notch QB coaching until he was preparing to be drafted. I bet that between the age of 12 - 22 Allen threw a lot fewer passes, in any capacity (games, drills, practice, 7 on 7's, camps) then Jackson or Mahomes did. Allen is a true rarity among young QB's today - he's still learning how to play the position. Collin Cowherd on his show made a great point with Trent Dilfer about the current crop of young QB's receiving all sorts of elite training and throwing the ball tens of thousands of times by the time they get out of college. But Allen is an exception to this. Under the circumstances hes actually making great progress.

I may be naive but deep ball success is as much on the receiver as it is the QB. There are a few deep throw routes that I see frequently in the college & pro game: * The classic over the shoulder catch of a straight line shot. You actually don't see this that much in the pro game. These are the ones that Allen struggled with this year. * The deep throw where the receiver tracks down and snags the ball. I put this on our receivers more then Allen. On a couple of deep shots to Foster it seemed like if he had just broke off his straight line route to track the ball it would have been a great throw. This is the most common deep ball you see thrown in the NFL. See KC for the best examples. * The "50/50" deep shot where the receiver goes up and gets the ball. Bill's receivers were awful with this kind of deep shot. I'm thinking of the pass that Brown missed against Denver and the one Foster missed against Baltimore. Upgrade the receivers and you will make Allen a better long ball thrower.

I would settle for ONE elite WR, a solid TE and a second solid RB. At present we have one good WR, a 2nd competent WR, a below average TE group & one good RB. Now don't get me wrong I think Knox will develop into a solid TE. But during the last season he was below average and had to many drops and ran some poor routes. As for Kroft & Smith................. Just look at the Super Bowl. The Chiefs field an elite WR, an elite TE, very good 2nd & 3rd WR's and a solid RB. The 49's feature an elite TE, an elite RB and a very good WR. It's not being a fan boy to hope the Bills can have at least ONE elite skills player on the offense. Or put another way I am 100% convinced that if the Bills had an elite TE Allen would have been well above 60% in completion % this season.

And when 3 rushers can generate that much pressure that quickly it's a disaster considering that the Texans had EIGHT men in coverage as a result of only rushing 3. As an aside, I listen to Cowherd a lot and over the last month he frequently calls out Allen as an example of the next wave of super QB's. This is a distinct change from when he was calling Allen a bust. My guess is that Cowherd has watched some tape and talked to some QB experts who studied Allen and he's changed his mind about him as a result. From what I've seen Allen does more with less then almost any other QB in the NFL. It's that simple. I predict that when the Bills surround Allen with players that lift the Bills into the top half of NFL offenses, Allen will perform as a top 10 QB. If we ever get the talent on offense to reach the top quarter, Allen will be a top 3 QB.

Never in the history of pro football have so few argued so strenuously and for so long that a particular QB sucked. The "pro" Allen folks throw out the reasonable and obvious observation that Allen got better from his rookie to his 2nd season. And then the naysayers express their horror at such homerism and throw out all sorts of stats to show that Allen sucks and will always suck! He is hopeless so we better draft a QB in the 4th round to give him competition. And to prove their point they employ more mathematics then was employed by NASA in the moon landings. That this thread has gone 100 pages without showing any signs of dying out is amazing and a bit sad at the same time.

The excuse for Buffalo was that the organization wasn't ready to take their franchise QB in 2017. Brand new coach, a GM hanging on by his finger nails and a relatively new owner. And I suspect that Tyrod's very low turnover rate appealed to a defensive minded coach like McD. I bet that the thinking was along the lines of "lets see how we do with Tyrod if we go into 2017 with a much better defense". And do you think Jacksonville is kicking themselves for taking Fournette over McCaffrey? What was their excuse? They were in the market for a RB and still took the wrong one. The NFL draft is one big crap shoot.

This is a great point. And for the record, Cincinnati's pick John Ross at #9 has been a world class BUST! Had they taken Mahomes instead they wouldn't need to be drafting Burrow at #1 this year. And we all know that Mahomes would have been a superstar with the Bengals just like he would have been with the Bills and is with the Chiefs. As an aside, do you think Jacksonville wishes they had taken McCaffrey over Fournette?

I guess this depends on how you look at things. Since the available evidence has convinced me that Allen will be a better QB then Darnold it was awesome that we didn't waste draft picks to move up to #3 and take Darnold.

Am I the only one who thinks that Palamalu & Mahomes Head and Shoulders commercial is hilarious? The way it ends cracks me up every time.