Dr. Who

I defer to your insight here. Anderson seems to have been a helpful presence as well. Nothing will help more than an improved oline, a #1 wr, a te, and a rb under thirty who is good.

Or maybe like Steve Young or John Elway, he'll be a dual threat for a long, successful career.

I suspect he may be gone before nine, but it's really too early to project.

I just read 9th and it sounded like that is likely to stick.

I am repeatedly told this by clever people who do a lot of research. I'm just an old guy who has watched a lot of football, so my opinion don't mean much, but he sure looks like a keeper to me.

You are certainly a donkey's donkey. Welcome to the ignore club.

Yes, but traditionally we always win these games. I think the Phish are going to fall flat and send Gase his walking papers.

Hoping for the next Brady but thinking Allen is "highly unlikely" to be a successful NFL qb seems to me compatible with pessimist as I understand it. Pessimist doesn't mean "rooting for Allen to be bad." I liked Allen before the draft and I am encouraged by his overall play, so it's evident our criteria and sensibility differ greatly. I really don't see Jackson and Allen as the same type of player, though both obviously are garnering benefit from running ability. You seem to have put a lot of time and effort into scouting Allen. I don't think you're insincere or stupid. I do not spend that kind of time in analysis. My life is invested elsewhere too much and I doubt I have the acumen to do the close analysis some on here do. I have watched a lot of football over a fairly long life and I'm going to stick with my holistic vision of a fella, even if the number crunchers think differently. Regrettable that you think my tone is condescending. I also wish you a happy new year.

The team is 5 - 10 and with the talent on offense, it was never going to be a competitive team. If you develop a franchise qb, you have the most important piece in being a long-term playoff team. So you think the fan base is irrational to be caring more about qb potential this year?

Yep. Are these folks projecting the same kind of stark absolutes they frequently engage in onto those they disagree with or are they using a sophist tactic of replacing actual counter-arguments with ridiculous straw men and then asking folks to defend what nobody asserts?

You're already walking him out the door and I'm halfway to buying his jersey (to be sure, I'm waiting till next year because maybe you're right and I'm wrong.) I've been watching football for fifty years. I do not scrutinize numbers. I am not seeing the trainwreck you are. Allen seems to me very much a promising rookie.

Yeah, when I say they I really mean the players and not the coaches who I am rather skeptical of with regards to evaluation of offensive talent. You are an analytics guy, hated the pick, and have mostly remained pessimistic through the year. I am seeing the same performance and perceiving hopeful signs of light. Our criteria and sensibility are just different. I'm guessing next year will clarify any ambiguity.

I thought your response to what appeared to me a rather thoughtful post was pithy and dismissive. It's just easy to respond to a long post with a brief pejorative. Possibly you didn't intend that. I think Allen's performance is not properly gauged by statistics. I think that was the main point of the other fella's post. I'm personally not bothered by "bottom-dwelling" because I believe much of that is due to surrounding talent and a rookie qb who is still learning to read NFL defenses. No doubt, Allen has to improve. I think it is likely he will and you don't. I am not an analytics guy and maybe your pessimism will prove correct. I think the team believes in Allen. I think they think he's going to be a good one and probaby have a better feel than what the numbers are saying right now.

Greg Little appears to have the most upside, though folks question his desire to actually play football. I've read that Williams is better suited to play Guard in the pros. It's not evident there is a top LT in the draft. Oliver is supposedly undersized and possibly a bit of a headcase. I'm not terribly keen on any of these fellas.

I think you're dismissing a pretty cogent argument with facile generalization that simply ignores and thus leaves unaddressed the reasonable points offered.

I'd sorta like to move Dawkins inside to LG and draft a potentially better LT as I think Dawkins is just okay there. Not sure if Jonah Williams or Greg Little are worth taking a chance on in the draft though. In general, I like your thinking. Personally, I like Metcalf if his neck injury is not a perduring issue.

Well, he's not seeing the field like a veteran qb. I'm still glad he isn't instinctively a checkdown qb. We've had plenty of those over the years. I don't think there is anyone on this board who doesn't think Allen needs to develop and improve his game. Just as you are irritated by perceived pedantry, others are irritated when a predraft narrative about inaccuracy results in false conclusions such as Allen has shown no growth over the course of his rookie season. Decision making needs to improve, but he simply isn't "wildly inaccurate" and his numbers would be considerably improved with average NFL receivers on the team.

God bless, old friend. And good for that nun!

I don't know what the psychology is behind a fan of another team who goes on other teams' message boards (not even rival teams at that, really) ostensibly just to antagonize that teams' fans. I don't think it's a good look. But giving the benefit of the doubt that your mental development is beyond that of twelve, your qb rankings also oddly seem to coincide with the level of surrounding talent on each team, which is not to detract from Mayfield's success -- he's a nice player -- but let's not pretend he'd be having the same year playing for the Cardinals.

I think if you improve the line, Shady still has value, especially if you don't ask him to be the main back. At minimum, I don't see why he couldn't be a good 3rd down back who can catch out of the backfield, etc. No rb would have success behind our current oline. Clay looks beat up and played out to me. TE ought to be a reliable safety valve for a young qb, so I hope draft and free agency is used to upgrade the position.

Nah, we want instant gratification and if we can't have that, instant certitude that usually amounts to OBD is stupid.

Allen had a few decent players on his 2016 team. 2017 Wyoming team was very similar to his rookie Buffalo Bills' experience. He was asked to carry the team with very little support around him. Without him, Wyoming was a bad college team. With him, they won games. Imo, you're too driven by stats which I'm sure you are aware can be misleading outside of context. In any event, it will be much more clear what we have in Allen next year, presuming the front office makes at least decent use of draft and free agency to upgrade the woeful talent on offense. (I am agnostic on Daboll. I am still an arrow up fella on Allen.) Tate and DK Metcalf would be nice additions to WR corps.

Let's see what happens when you surround Allen with competent offensive players. He won't be running a WCO, so higher risk passes and fewer "long hand-offs" will always result in somewhat lower completion percentage. I don't judge franchise qb by completion percentage alone, but by how effectively they lead a team. I expect Allen's completion percentage will improve when the abundance of missed opportunities become a reasonable amount of catches. But I'm not seeing significant inaccuracy now (I already explained why not and you reiterated Juco, Wyoming, and rookie season), so I don't expect to see Allen get worse with better players around him.

He's not wildy inaccurate. He's making passes average NFL receivers ought to catch most of the time. The reason folks are "making excuses" is critics keep falsely looking at Wyoming completion percentage as "proof" the guy has an accuracy problem. He has a "touch" problem that strong-armed rookie qbs often have. And is it true or not that the oline, rb, wr, and te are basically bad on this team? Rosenites excuse far worse performance because supposedly no talent -- Larry Fitzgerald is now slow and done (he probably is, but at least you can count on him to catch the ball when it's in proximity to his hands), David Johnson is apparently negligible, etc. But folks who think Allen is a potential franchise qb are gullible (though one can forgive them for being dopes because fans of team) . . .

Nedboy has White Dwarf syndrome.