Billy Claude

I don't understand the hate here. It's just Beasley's opinion and not an outrageous one. Other people have commented on Prescott's leadership qualities. Just because people think it is a slight swipe at Allen doesn't mean he doesn't believe it.

I don't think this came up all of sudden due to the Bengals game (or just before) nor do I think it is all Diggs. Things have been clearly less kumbaya with the Bills since the 13 seconds. There were assistant coaches making lateral moves, stories that Daboll and McDermott didn't see eye to eye, rumors about what was said on the flight back from KC etc. Things were hidden during the hot start last season but probably flared up after the team started struggling in November such as mentioned in Wawrow's article.

This doesn't make sense. How can every passing play be designed to go deep to shallow? If that was the case, the only short passes would be flares to the running back. I have to assume some plays are designed to be read deep to shallow and some shallow to deep, or more likely, Allen has a choice based on the defensive alignment. There is something seriously wrong with the game plan if all passing plays are designed to be read deep to shallow.

Clearly its not really Diggs and just some actor they hired to play the part.

This is much ado about nothing. A quick internet search shows that the rule change won't affect anybody: From footballZebras.com discussing the rule change: "A forward handoff is only allowed to be made to an eligible receiver behind the line of scrimmage. When the handoff occurs downfield, it is 5 yards from the spot of the foul and a loss of down. The rule change would be to have forward handoffs to linemen behind the line of scrimmage also carry a loss of down and also be a spot foul (currently from the line of scrimmage)." So forward handoffs to running backs or receivers behind the line of scrimmage are still allowed. You can't do a forward handoff in front of the line of scrimmage nor hand it off to a lineman at any place on the field. How many times do these things happen in a season? One could wonder why they bother adding this clause but this whole discussion is making a mountain out of a molehill (as is many things on the internet). Oops -- I saw that someone upthread already mentioned this but everyone seems to ignore it.

One big change will be that I am pretty sure Hailee Steinfeld won't be moving to Buffalo during the season.

Agree that the rule change will add further judgment calls but a shoestring tackle has been and will continue to be legal even if the player leaves both feet: It is an illegal launch if a player (i) leaves one or both feet prior to contact to spring forward and upward into his opponent, and (ii) uses any part of his helmet .

There seems to be an assumption in this thread that a 34 year old Von Miller will return to somewhere close to his pre-injury form this year. To me this is fairly unlikely, and undoubtedly one of the reasons they brought in Leonard Floyd.

Bills have had a lot of first rounders on the d line for a quite while. 2021 had five: Jerry Hughes Star Lotulelei Greg Rousseau Vernon Butler Ed Oliver 2020 had three: Jerry Hughes Vernon Butler Ed Oliver 2019 also had five: Jerry Hughes Ed Oliver Star Lotulelei Corey Liuget Shaq Lawson

Given the investment made in the draft investment made in the D line you would expect at least a couple of top draftees to be really good and maybe a late rounder to surprise. Outside of Groot, who one still has reasonable hopes for, who has done that?

Maybe Eric Washington should look in the mirror. The Bills haven't had a lot of pay back for all the draft investment they have put into the DL. At least part of that responsibility has to go to the guy who is suppose to be developing the those high draft choices.

Perhaps a more accurate statement would be "He is making sure that the OL is not one of the worse in the league with these signings."

I don't understand the point. No one is saying Allen is responsible for all turnovers. However, upthread, almost everybody is saying Allen has no responsibility at all, or that the data is missing context because Allen was in a position where he needed to bring the team back and so had to force the play. There's is plenty of blame to go around. It is not all on the o-line, as many here seem to think. It is on the o-line, the coaching staff, AND Allen.

I think someone upthread said Allen won 60% of one score games over the time range given. This is actually not that good. Someone (perhaps Einstein?) did a deep data dive last offseason and if I remembered right, most top teams win about 70% of their one score games (so the Bills at 6-3 were in that ballpark last year) and in fact, Mahomes/Reid won about 75% of their one score games over the previous 3 or 4 years. That study, of course, was meant to be an attack on McDermott.

Here is the context for 2022 -- Josh Allen led the league with 19 turnovers. The turnovers break down as follows: 12 occurred when the Bills were leading -- 5 of those when the Bills were leading by more than 8 points. but one was on a 4th and goal up 27-17 against the Vikings. 4 occurred when the game was tied, three when the score was 0-0 in the first quarter, the other was 14-14 in the 2nd quarter in game 18 against New England. 3 occurred when the Bills were trailing, One was the last play in overtime against the Vikings, one was down 21-26 early in the 4th quarter in the 2nd game against Miami and the last was down 6-7 in the 2nd quarter against Chicago. It is not unexpected that very few of Allen's turnovers occurred when trailing since the Bills rarely trailed last year. It is simply not true that the turnovers were because he was leading comebacks which seemingly a lot of people are implying in this thread. Out of the 19 turnovers only three (Vikings twice and Dolphins) were in situations where he needed to play hero ball. Again, no one expects or wants Allen to have zero turnovers but leading the league in turnovers is not a good thing and I don't see any reason why he can't cut this number by 25%, Nor can all the blame be placed on Dorsey, the o-lines or the receivers. The guy making the final decision on when and where to throw the ball has to be somewhat responsible. This is not really an Allen thing, I just dislike it in general when people dismiss data simply because it doesn't agree with their opinion. I guarantee if Burrow or Jackson led the league in turnovers, no one on this board would be saying the data was being taken out of context.

I don't get this analogy at all. Why can't Allen reduce his turnovers by 15 or 20%? In fact, I would be very disappointed if he only reduces his turnovers by 20% this coming season. ----------------------------------------------------------- There's a lot of straw man arguments in this thread. No one is arguing that the high number of turnovers is all Allen's fault, however, many people seem to imply that none of it is Allen's fault (or maybe begrudgingly, a very insignificant amount). Almost no one is saying that Allen is not a top quarterback. However, when you are worst in the league at something there is plenty of fault to spread around and a significant amount of that has to go to the guy making the final decision on whether and where to throw the ball.

At least the premier league is competitive even when Man City wins as usual. I have a very hard time understanding how people can follow the Bundesliga where the season is just a prep for Bayern for the Champions league. Is the once in a decade win by Dortmund (such as maybe this season) enough to keep people interested? Its even worse in Ligue 1 where a bad season for PSG means clinch with three games left instead of six games left.

Have we reached some alternative reality here? Having a lot of turnovers is not a "good" stat. No one accused Aaron Rogers of playing it safe when he had 7 and 4 turnovers in 2020 and 2021. This is not a single data point, Allen also led the league in turnovers last year. Nor was it only when the Bills were losing, it is not a good idea to throw it up for grabs when your team is up 17 - 0 in a playoff game. Allen is a great QB but there's a lot of evidence that he was very sloppy with the ball last year. There was plenty of bad decision making. Hopefully much of it was due to the UCL injury, rookie OC, and bad o-line but a lot of it is on him and he has to clean this up.

It's more on Dorsey than on McKenzie, if he refused to use McKenzie on those routes due to one play at the beginning of the year.

Kind of curious. While it felt like Allen killed the D anytime they blitzed in 2020 and 2021, my impression was that the blitz gave Allen a lot of trouble in 2022. For what its worth, PFF also says the blitz rate against Allen was low but teams were effective when they blitzed: https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-slowing-down-josh-allen-buffalo-bills-blitzing

Josh identified ball placement and YAC as something he needed to work on so it would appear that Allen, himself was not satisfied with it, at least for the 2021 season. Was there any evidence of improved ball placement last season? Even before the UCL injury?

Getting away from Allen's fashion sense for a minute, I always felt that being locked down with Jordan Palmer for a month with nothing to do but eat, drink, and sleep football played a larger role in Allen's unprecedented third year jump than usually credited. It was also a somewhat concerning that Allen said he was going to focus on YAC last summer but didn't really improve on it last season. All previous years, he identified an issue with his game post season and showed immediate improvement in that aspect the following season. Obviously there is nothing wrong with going to the Kentucky Derby or otherwise having fun but is he doing too much other stuff? It is a fair question, other QBs, for example, Baker Mayfield, has been criticized for it.

People make way too many excuses for Allen's sometimes stupid decisions.

Any details? Was it just about targets or something more?

Thanks. Still, Pro Day numbers are sometimes significantly better than combine numbers since the player has the advantage of working in a familiar environment. I seem to remember a lot of incredible RAS numbers for that draft.