wiley16350

I'm just going to say that the sack was bad but Allen doesn't really take a lot of those. He's been very good at throwing the ball away. The times he has done it has been specific situations and in this one I think it is possible that he was thinking about keeping the clock running, which would be fine except that points were more important in that specific situation than the clock was. Despite what apparently some people think, he has shown plenty of ability to learn from his mistakes. The only mistake he has really repeatedly made is playing hero ball which tends to happen when the offense has struggled for too long of a stretch during any certain game. While he has repeatedly made that mistake, he has gone long stretches without doing it and played pretty clean with the interceptions.

YAC comes from a variety of reasons. John Brown scored a TD off of a screen pass that was almost in the dirt. That YAC was earned by the play call and a defense not prepared to stop it. It is possible that Allen audibled into that or that it was the original call, nobody knows so it is hard to say who earned the YAC for that play (outside of any tackles Brown avoided) but the one thing I do know, it had nothing to do with accuracy. With that said, there are times where YAC is reduced because the QB's accuracy took the receiver to the ground as the throw to Beasley did. Lots of YAC comes from screen passes and check downs. The Bills haven't done a lot of that in the previous 2 years and when they did, they weren't good at it. Receivers also earn YAC by avoiding tackles, so plenty of YAC has nothing to do with the QB. It is also harder for Receivers to get a lot of YAC when playing in tight coverage because they're more often tackled at the catch point. There are also certain routes that are less likely to get YAC because of the positioning of zone defenders. These are the reasons that the Bills haven't been earning much YAC the last couple of years and people want to put that on Allen. In this game, the game plan and the defense they played was more conducive to getting YAC and guess what; more YAC was had. Saying that a QB's accuracy is what earns YAC is way too simplistic of a mind set.

I added Darnold's numbers to the original post

For his career, I have him with 14.75 instead of the 22 that he is officially credited with

I'll clarify the turnovers being unstable because I can see where I may have contradicted myself. Fumbles are completely unstable because they are more about what is happening around the QB rather than what the QB is necessarily doing. There are certain things that increase the likelihood of a fumble and not all defenses do those things. Pressure from behind, getting hit while throwing, having the ball punched out from behind while the QB is running are near certain fumble opportunities no matter who the QB is. That can change drastically from year to year because it depends on opponent and the players around the QB. Fumbles are more about bad luck or tough circumstances than they are about skill. Interceptions are unstable in the sense that QB's that face more pressure are more likely to throw them and some situations can influence a QB to take chances he shouldn't take. That means the better the environment for the QB, the less likely he is to throw an interception, for most QB's. For those reasons some QB's can swing some from year to year if they're on an unstable team. With that said, a QB's personality and ability to read defenses can make him consistent in making bad decisions. That is what you have to determine by watching the film. Jameis Winston and Brett Farve were consistent in making bad decisions and forcing throws and it wasn't necessarily the team around them that was influencing that. A QB like Drew Bledsoe was more about the team around him and the circumstances that he was playing in. His int's would tend to come in bunches in games where his team was over matched.

I had Allen with only 3.5 fumbles last year, fumbling 0.8% of his plays. This year I had him fumbling 11.25 of 704 plays for 1.5%. Pretty much twice as much.

I would say yes. There is no doubt he had more skill talent around him. The offensive line is debate-able in terms of pass protection. I would have to delve into my numbers more before committing to either one of those.

Well first of all I was talking about fumbles being unstable, not turnovers. Essentially, fumbles are more of a fluke thing than int's. Int's have to be improved by the QB making changes to how he plays the game or understands defenses. Fumbles can be fixed without the QB necessarily making an effort to avoid them. Baker's turnover consistency was about this year and doesn't say anything about last year. The stats you show about Bakers turnovers are just what he was officially charged with. If you look at my charts, I had him with 8.5 int's in the first 8 games and 10.5 in the last 8 games. I also had him with some blame for an int in 13 of 16 games. So I guess that is how I can say that it was a consistent problem. Allen on the other hand had 7 games out of the first 11 with some blame for an int and then finished the regular season with 5 straight (4.5 actually because he only played half of week 17) games without an interceptable pass. In total he had 7 out of 15.5 games where he deserved an interception. That seems to be better than Mayfield.

Well, with the Corona virus giving me more time on the weekends, I decided that I would work on some adjusted stats. I had already finished Allen but never shared them because people have cited that they would like to have some kind of comparison or they think the stats are useless. Since there are people out there that have bashed Josh Allen by claiming that Baker Mayfield was better last year, i.e. PFF, I decided I would do all of Mayfield's games to verify that belief. I also included a chart of how the opposing QB's performed against the Bills this year to give a 3rd reference of comparison. As I have stated before, the PFF grading system is really a big time throw vs turnover metric and they don't put enough stock into the short and intermediate throws. Mayfield was much better at the deep ball, giving him a big advantage in the PFF system. My turnover totals had them very similar so it is easy to see why the PFF system has Mayfield higher. The problem though is that big time throws and turnovers aren't stable from year to year, so it's not really a good gauge of how good a QB can be in the long term. I don't think it's a good gauge of how well a QB played overall in any individual year either because it excludes a lot of other information. Even though Mayfield was much better than Allen with the deep ball and had a 1% higher adjusted completion percentage, I had Allen with a better average. That is because Allen was more productive in the short to intermediate range. Mayfield got a lot of his production from screens and passes to the flats and within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. Despite being more proficient with the deep ball, Mayfield wasn't nearly as necessary for the production of points. The Bills needed Allen to perform most of the time or they weren't very good on offense. There was a lot of drives were Mayfield just didn't have to do much to get points whether it was YAC production or a great running game. So the overarching point is that deep ball passing doesn't necessarily lead to point production. There are 2 main reasons for this. 1. Mayfield had too many turnovers in the red zone. 2. Some of his best throws were dropped or interfered with and while that was good in the moment, those passes didn't always put the Browns in scoring range and they found a way to punt instead. Point production is what matters most and being consistent in the short to intermediate range is the best way to accomplish that. It is the main reason Tom Brady has been so good for so many years. His deep ball consistency wanes year to year but he is always good in the short to intermediate range. That is what is so promising about Allen last year. The other main PFF metric is turnovers and while Allen and Mayfield are less than 2 turnovers apart, Allen was 0.6% better. There is also a big difference between their turnovers. Allen was charged with 7 more fumbles than Mayfield was. He just had a major issue with them last year but that is just another very unstable stat from year to year so it is reasonable to expect him to improve on that. That same differential of 7 is reversed when it comes to interceptions, with Mayfield having 7 more of those. As we know, Allen had an issue with those early in the year but once he stopped trying to play hero ball, he was able to drastically reduce his int's. Mayfield on the other hand, had a consistent issue with them and while he wasn't as bad as his official numbers, he still wasn't in a good enough range. Mayfield couldn't curb his int's because they were more varied than Allen was. He had poor throws, aggressive gunslinger throws and bad decisions. It is the biggest problem he had last year and he needs to improve on that. The last part of the turnover discussion is the hidden ones that don't show up anywhere in the stats. These are bad 3rd down throws, bad 3rd down reads, sacks and other bad plays that led to the team punting. Allen was better than Mayfield in that category too. It isn't separated out but if you subtract the charged fumbles and charged int's from the total turnovers in the total effectiveness rating, you can find the difference. Ultimately, I have a Total QB effectiveness rating (which is at the bottom of the attached sheets) that combines, passing, rushing, sacks and turnovers into a traditional QB rating stat line, adjusted based on what actually happened on the field and the circumstances they faced. Here is the final judgment on the two. MAYFIELD 529.50 - attempts (total plays he had a true opportunity to make a play) 403.30 - Positive (number of plays he had a positive influence on) 76.2% - Positive % 3698.75 - yards (number of yards the QB was worth, including air yards, rushing yards and avoiding sack yards) 6.99 - avg 29.27 - TD's 5.5 - TD% 32.75 - Turnovers (number of times the QB was the reason a drive ended) 5.0% - TO^% 92.3 - Total QB Effectiveness Rating ALLEN 565 ATT 439.7 POS 77.8 POS% 4024.5 YDS 7.12 AVG 39.21 TD's 6.9 TD% 31.10 TO 4.4 TO% 101.1 TER DARNOLD 446.75 ATT 322.6 POS 72.2 POS% 2708 YDS 6.06 AVG 28.24 TD'S 6.3 TD% 28.75 TO 5.3 TO% 86.4 TER Darnold played behind the worst line of these 3 QB's but I felt like there were too many times where he contributed to pressure. I also think that even though he was under pressure more, some of that was just blockers getting pushed near him and he refused to move in the pocket to make more room to throw. The 2 main issues with Darnold then to me is pocket presence and decision making. His decision making issues go back to college, so I'm not sure if how much he'll improve but less pressure should make him better in that area. I won't say that pocket presence was a constant issue but there were some games where it was an issue that came up often. The biggest reason Darnold was the lowest of these 3 is because he had 5 games with less than a 70 rating and 3 of those under 60. Allen had 1 game under 80 (the Patriots game in week 4) so he was much more consistent in at least being productive even if he was turning the ball over. Mayfield had 2 games under 70 with 1 game in the 70's. To make it look even worse for Darnold is that he played in 3 less games than Mayfield and Allen did. There was a period from week 9 to week 12 where I really liked how Darnold was playing and even for weeks 13-15 he played well enough so the end of the season had more good than bad. He did finish poorly the last 2 weeks of the season because of turnovers but the Jets won those games in spite of that. Honestly, I like all 3 of these QB's to some extent. I won't make any declarations of which one is the best because they all have things to improve on and the team around them will have a lot to say about their success. Allen needs to improve his deep ball and be more willing to check down. Mayfield will most likely be better if his protection improves. Interceptions were his main problem but I think it was more about pressure than his skills as he has shown in the past to be a better decision maker. Darnold needs to be a better decision maker and maybe better in the pocket. J.ALLEN-2019-SC.pdf 2019 - Bills Opponents.pdf B.MAYFIELD-2019-SC.pdf S.DARNOLD-2019-SC.pdf

He's not Cooks because he has Contested Catch ability.

They include all aspects of QB play in the overall grade and have separate grades for passing and running.

Actually Mayfield only had 4 more turnovers than Allen when you combine fumbles and Interceptions. I do believe they're biased against Josh because I see it in their writings and the things they say. I don't know how much that effects the grade but I do know that it distorts the narrative they have about him. My post wasn't to defend PFF, it was to explain why their rating of Allen is what it is. I think the rating is flawed because they put too much weight on big plays and not enough on the short to intermediate game that is necessary to win in the NFL. Big plays matter but just the threat alone can be enough to make a team successful if their really good at the short and intermediate. When it comes to grading QB's, I don't like their system mostly because of that.

The reason Allen doesn't rank high in the PFF system is because he wasn't good throwing over 30 yards and he had too many turnovers. It is as simple as that. They have admitted that Allen was top 10 in the short to intermediate game according to their system. The problem with their system is that it weighs too heavily on big plays vs turnovers, the 2 areas Allen struggled the most. What they fail to recognize is that Allen's turnover problem isn't necessarily something that is not fixable. Jameis Winston throws a lot of interceptions every year because he makes bad decisions of every type and has never shown the ability to be something different. Allen on the other hand had most of his interceptions in the first half of the season and most of them were because he tried to play hero ball when the offense was struggling. Allen wasn't throwing interceptions because he didn't understand what the defense was doing, he threw them in spite of knowing exactly what was happening. That is why he was able to fix it and why the Allen of the second half of the season is more likely to be the player he will be. The second half of the season saw Allen fumbling too much but how much of that really defines what kind of QB Allen will be? Fumbles have a lot to do with luck and protection and even if it isn't, it can still be easily fixed. The point is, it is reasonable to expect that this will be the worst year for Allen in the number of turnovers, especially if the team around him continues to improve. The other area where Allen wasn't that good was in deep ball accuracy and there was a multitude of reasons for that but ultimately, for most QB's, deep ball accuracy isn't stable from year to year. Tom Brady would be the most notable great QB that has never been consistently good at throwing the deep ball. So the 2 things Allen was bad at this year are the 2 things that aren't stable from year to year (deep passing and turnovers). For those reasons, there is no reason to believe Allen won't be better next year and that's what frustrates me most about PFF; they have an expectation of Allen not getting any better than he was this year.

20 years after the Music City Miracle, the Bills get revenge this is the one I like

The truth is that his early interceptions happened because he was knowingly forcing throws that weren't there or he threw them late across the field. It had nothing to do with trying to make tight window throws and everything to do with playing recklessly. There is a difference. Throwing recklessly is when the DB has position on the receiver and there really isn't a place to put the ball but the QB throws it anyway. Throwing into tight windows is when the receiver has position but the QB has to put it into a perfect spot to keep the defender making a play on the ball. The difference is that Allen stopped playing recklessly, not cautiously.

Except that they are because he was constantly throwing in 3rd & long and under pressure. They weren't giving him any easy throws or letting him pass on early downs when pressure isn't as likely. The constant run on first down shtick is the worst strategy a coach can do for a QB. It is too predictable and consistently puts the QB in bad 3rd down situations. It forces the QB to play perfect and that is why his incomplete passes are much more of an impact.

That slowest time to release doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. The Bills don't throw a lot of screen passes, nor do they focus much on the short game. Much of their passing games is focused on the intermediate level, which takes the longest to develop. Then you have the plays where Allen breaks away from pressure and it takes a longer period of time for him to get into position to throw the ball. All of that adds up to him taking a longer amount of time to get rid of the ball on average. The biggest complaint you could have is that Allen doesn't always check down quick enough but for the most part I don't see a guy that is holding onto the ball because he just isn't seeing the field well, as that stat suggests. It is mostly about the play calling and trying to get chunk plays in the 10-20 yard range.

His 2019 stats show that he has improved but you meld them with his 2018 stats so that no improvement is shown. That is the problem with stats as you can construct them and contort them to fit an argument. I didn't watch a lot of Allen at Wyoming and what I did see was a team that wasn't really that talented and not necessarily a QB that wasn't good enough. I can back that argument up with the fact that Wyoming has only made it to a bowl game twice since 2012. Do you want to guess who the QB was both years that they did get to a bowl game? It was Josh Allen, in case you didn't want to guess. Craig Bohl had 2 losing seasons before Allen and 1 .500 season after Allen. How good is he without Allen? The stats say not very good but it is possible that the team was building the first 2 years and then were ready to compete when Allen arrived and then they lost too much talent when Allen left and they had a down year but are doing well this year. Allen started for a bad team in his rookie season and now that the talent is improved around him, he is playing better. Despite what you say, he has improved and he will continue to improve if the team around him continues to improve too. I initially called the Bills dumb for trading up to get Allen, I thought they could get him or Rosen at their original spot. I preferred Rosen but that was all based on what the media was saying and not on what I had seen because I didn't watch much of either QB in college. unlike other people though, I was o.k. with the Allen pick pretty soon after because he definitely seemed more suited to the Bills than Rosen was from the things that I was hearing about their personalities and how they responded to be drafted where they were drafted. The more I watch Allen, especially the all-22 video, the more I like his potential and his ability to improve. He is a better QB on the all-22 than he is on TV. I have said it here before, he is the opposite to Tyrod Taylor in that respect. Taylor looks better on TV than on the all-22. So I don't care how much better his stats are, Taylor wasn't really better. Taylor's best season was 2015 and people just don't realize how good that team was because he made them worse than they actually were. Here are the skill players he had that season: LeSean McCoy, Percy Harvin, Sammy Watkins, Robert Woods, Chris hogan, Marquise Goodwin and Charles Clay. People loved to complain about the receivers back then but go and look to see what kind of success each of those players have had without Tyrod throwing them the ball. That was a great running team too. They also had 3 pro-bowl offensive lineman. It should have been a playoff team but the passing game wasn't good enough to overcome a defense that ranked 15th in points.

There is so much context lost on just showing stats but we both can play this stupid little game. 2018 Bills 2019 Bills 11 Games 8 Games 169/320 52.8% 148/243 60.9% 2,074 Yards 6.5 avg 1,653 Yards 6.8 avg 10 TD 3.1% 10 TD 4.1% 12 INT 3.8% 7 INT 2.9% 67.9 Rating 82.9 Rating Every number has improved from 2018

What are you basing the Daboll Scheming throws on? Seems like this weeks game because the Bills haven't really thrown that many screen passes or slants. They did this week but they haven't been staples of the offense all year. Shovel passes have been 1-2 each week but the other ones haven't been that prevalent. The one pass that was seemingly behind McKenzie was actually perfect because of where the linebacker was. He would have led him into a hit if it wasn't behind him. Go watch some Cover-1 episodes on youtube and you'll see that Allen is being asked to make big boy reads and they aren't scheming plays to make things easier. Hell, if calling screen passes and slants is what coordinators do to help a QB that can't read defenses then the Patriots are very afraid to let Tom Brady make full field reads.

I don't necessarily think Allen has improved as a passer in that I don't think his accuracy is really that different than before. I have said before that I didn't think accuracy was an issue last year. His improved completion % is mostly because of the improvement in talent around him and his decision making. I do think he is improving at reading defenses and showing awareness of what the defense is doing. Most of his interceptions were because he was forcing passes that he knew wasn't there, which is why he has been able to improve drastically the last few weeks in not throwing interceptions. QB's that have a problem reading defenses don't improve that much, that quickly. See Sam Darnold and Jameis Winston.

The Patriots do base their game plan on the opponent. The difference is that the Patriots don't just see it as attacking with the run or pass. The Patriots see it as attacking different areas of the field with the run or the pass based on opponent. The Bills tend to attack the same way in each aspect and the only thing that changes is the ratio based on the opponent. The Patriots are mostly a pass first offense because that is what works and is the easiest thing to do on early downs. What changes is that the Patriots passing game will attack the weak part of the defense until the opponent stops it. That means they'll run screen passes all day long if you can't stop it. They'll attack downfield or the intermediate part of the field if a team doesn't have a pass rush or is weak at linebacker or in the secondary. So for the most part they pass but they have had no problem pounding teams with the run if it works and the opponent is determined to take the pass away. The problem with the Bills is that they try to be run first and force it and then get predictable at times. The Patriots never force the run but will certainly fall to it when necessary or to catch teams off guard. I would agree that the Patriots identity now is Brady and the passing game but it hasn't always been that way. In 2001 they were balanced with a tough yards running game, mostly short passing game and produced chunk plays with trick plays. In 2002 and 2003 they were a pass first team that was mostly about the short passing game and couldn't produce much outside of the short passes. 2002 was the worst year they have had with Brady. They did better in 2003 because of defensive improvements but still relied too much on Brady because of a weak running game. In 2004 -2006 they got Corey Dillion and were a well balanced team. 2007 is when they became the pass happy team that was all about Brady (8 years into his career). The running game has had various levels of success and usage ever since.

The problem is people like you that get ridiculous and use qualifiers like horrible to describe Allen. He hasn't been horrible (except the Patriots game). He has been good in many areas of Quarterbacking. His intermediate game has been really good and his short accuracy has been good too. In the 3 games I have done, his adjusted completion % is at 83, which is much better than a number of QB's. That won't change in the last 2 games. Only the NE game will have a negative effect on that. That completion % includes accuracy and decision making, so outside of the bad turnovers, he is making good decisions. Those turnovers were mostly about forcing plays and trying to be the hero when the offense is struggling and not really much about his ability to read defenses. The thing with the turnovers is that people like you could at least recognize is that Allen has had 3 games with 0 turnovers so it hasn't been an issue for half of the Bills games. He has also actually been good at reducing sacks. I have credited him with avoiding 28 sacks in a multitude of ways in the 3 games that I have looked at closely. He was only sacked 5 times in those 3 games and I charged him with some fault on 2 of them. That is the biggest area he isn't getting enough credit for. Ultimately, he hasn't been good throwing the deep ball and he has too many turnovers and any supporter of Josh's will admit that but that doesn't mean he has been horrible.

First Drive - Bills got a FG. The series of plays that led to the FG were Allen running for no gain and throwing 2 passes away. The 3rd down throw away was clearly a good decision in the face of immediate pressure. The run for no gain is hard to be definitive about. It may have been a designed screen or a designed run. Allen faked the screen and ran. The announcers said Allen didn't throw the screen because it looked like it was going to lose yards and it was a good decision to run it. There was a free defender but that doesn't necessarily mean that it wouldn't work. I can't really have a strong opinion on that play. The second down play may have been a throw away and it can be debate-able to whether Allen should have done a better job of getting the ball to McKenzie. When the ball arrived it looked like if Allen would have thrown the ball lower, he could have gotten a TD but the defender was in front of the receiver so if Allen threw it lower, there was better potential for the defender to make a play on the ball. It is very subjective and there were no clear open receivers and Allen was throwing in the face of pressure. I think it is hard to put any complete blame on Allen for that drive ending in only a FG. The Dolphins defense was just better on those set of downs. Second Drive - Bills got a FG. The Bills had a 3rd and 1 and threw the ball. Allen was under immediate pressure because Dawkins wasn't quick enough to get to the rusher and the receiver clearly wasn't ready for the ball and may have been held up by the defender. To make matters worse, the line was called for holding so they were in 3rd & 11 rather than possibly attempting to convert a 4th & 1. The Bills threw a screen pass and settled for a FG. Again, hard to blame Allen for that failure. Third Drive - Bills got a FG. Second down pass was dropped, would have been a 1st down. Third down pass was dropped but wouldn't have converted to a 1st down. That was the play where Allen should have went to Brown to get the 1st down. So there is some blame there but the drive should have been extended on the previous play. It is possible that Allen decided pre-snap to go to Knox to give him a chance to redeem himself from the previous play. It wasn't as open as you would like but sometimes it is hard to go away from a pre-snap decision and the play was still there. I don't think it was that bad of play but obviously not the ideal decision. Fourth Drive - Allen missed Brown on a deep throw and the commentator said that Brown looked for the ball too soon and essentially slowed down some and that is why the pass wasn't on target. I kind of felt the same way when I saw it live. It is a hard one to really say for sure but the play was there to be made, just hard to say who deserves the blame. Allen then took a sack on 3rd down. All of the receivers were downfield and without the all-22 I can't say whether it was a bad play or not. There were no check downs, so it is very likely that there were no good options in that amount of time but I can't say that with any certainty. Fifth Drive - First down looked like a drop by Beasley to me but I need a better view to be sure. Beasley had to dive but with pressure in Allen's face and the throwing motion he had to use to avoid the defenders arms forced the less than ideal location to Beasley. Any other release would have most likely been an incomplete pass. Then it was the sack which lost 4 yards after Allen Broke/Missed 4 tacklers. You could put that on Allen but he did have unblocked pressure right away, so it's not like he had time to go through his progressions. With that said, he did have McKenzie open in the flat right away so you would like to see him just throw the ball to McKenzie right away rather than try to escape. He had a second chance to get the ball to McKenzie before he got sacked so much of the blame for the sack is probably on Allen but he still showed some impressive tackle breaking on the play. A false start on 3rd down made the sack even worse and then the Bills ran the ball and gave up on the drive. So on the last 2 drives of the half Allen had 1 play on each of them where he wasn't good enough and it aided the Bills in not getting points. I have said this before but it isn't one thing that holds the Bills back from being as good as they can be. They all take their turns. If Beasley makes a tough catch to help over come the RT getting pushed back into Allen, then maybe the sack doesn't happen. If Allen gets the ball to McKenzie rather than getting sacked then the false start doesn't keep the Bills from trying on 3rd down. Maybe if the false start didn't happen, the Bills actually try to convert the down. The point is, they all add up. You can't put it all on the QB because he took a 4 yard sack and messed up 1 of 3 plays. Sixth Drive - The Bills scored a TD Seventh Drive - Allen missed the throw to Roberts which was his only bad pass in the second half. That was on him but only 1 bad throw on a deep pass. Eighth Drive - Bills scored a TD Ninth Drive - The Bills ran the ball 3 times to wear down the clock Tenth Drive - Bills returned onside kick for a TD The Bills scored on 5 of 8 drives where the offenses was trying to score. On the 3 FG drives it is hard to blame Allen for failure to get TD's in my opinion. Sure, you could blame him for not going to Brown on the one play but should you also completely dismiss that the drive should have been extended on the previous play? On the 3 drives where the Bills didn't score, You could put blame on Allen for 1 play on each drive and if that is enough for you to think he played poorly, so be it. At best you could say that Allen had 3 plays where he negatively affected the Bills chances of scoring. Those are spread out over 3 drives and 2 of them were deep balls so it's not like he was missing gimmie or easy throws. He had other poor throws but the Bills were able to overcome them, so I didn't look at them. If Allen would have hit the 2 deep balls, would you really have room to criticize him? The Bills would have blown the Dolphins out if he did. So essentially if you think he played poorly, it's because of 2 deep passes. That seems a little too drastic to me.

That happened once and the guy he threw it to dropped the ball