Josh Allen talks ball with Kirk Cousins: Allen is a smart fella

[BringBackFergy]

1 minute ago, racketmaster said:

What a great series!! Loved Cousins in those videos and this needs to be a bigger series next year.

 

Allen seems to have a good grasp of coverages and reads. It sure seemed like the interception in the Nebraska game was on the RB who read a different coverage. Still need to make sure everyone is on the same page. But some people watching it may just chalk it up to being an inaccurate throw when in fact it was just miscommunication. 

 

Thanks OP

The other nice thing I noticed was Allen took it on himself and wasn’t throwing anyone under the bus. He’s learning to be a pro not only as a football player but also as a team mate. 

 

Kudos the Cousins for giving him a lot of good advice in this series...especially “have conviction in your read on a mismatch Tall WR vs smaller CB. Throw it and let him get it”. Something tells me Allen will sling it with conviction and not worry about INT (as in the case of Tyrod when we would all yell at the screen “Throw the f———-ing ball!!!”

[gjv001]

Allen is the best NFL QB in this years class. If Beane and McDermott can build a team around him, he will lead the Bills to multiple championships. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

14 minutes ago, Thurmanator 12074 said:

Just real good stuff here, I see Kirk becoming a coach or going Into broadcasting when he is done. Allen is a late bloomer. Really the guy believes in himself. 1,000 letters sent out and not one scholarship. How good could  his coaching been at Jr. College. Wyoming is not a guru of coaching talent. This guy is just beginning to see his potential.  Jordon Palmer really got him squared away on his base and foot work. It showed at the senior bowl with near 70 percent completion and 2 TD’s. He seems humble and all about the team. I get a good vibe nothing has ever been handed to him. He has had to fight for everything he has gotten. We are lucky to have him his arm talent is Fave and Elway lethal. Allen had the best wonderlic score. Man his potential could be off the charts. Maybe beane and company really do know what there doing. 

 

I hope you're right on all of it here!

 

The base and footwork, we have to see it in games of course before we call it 'squared away'.  No blitzing and limits on defensive packages in Senior Bowl.

 

Re 1,000 letters I do wonder in hindsight if the tweets had something to do with that.  I believe colleges these days research social media & background too.  Issues along those lines may have impacted a HS player on my kid's school team not getting offers (the player in question had put slurs about an opponent on SM then removed them but....).  Kids have done dumb impulse stuff since the Stone Age but now it can be immortalized with one mouse click.

• Edit

[17 Josh Allen]

10 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I hope you're right on all of it here!

 

The base and footwork, we have to see it in games of course before we call it 'squared away'.  No blitzing and limits on defensive packages in Senior Bowl.

 

Re 1,000 letters I do wonder in hindsight if the tweets had something to do with that.  I believe colleges these days research social media & background too.  Issues along those lines may have impacted a HS player on my kid's school team not getting offers (the player in question had put slurs about an opponent on SM then removed them but....).

It would not surprise me that someone with the Cardinals leaked those to Yahoo sports to get him to drop. Lot of teams have ex FBI agents that work for them for the security and back ground checks of players. It’s reported that they were not happy and devastated when the Bills traded up to draft him. When it comes to football and drafting, these teams do some back handed stuff.  

Edited April 28, 2018 by Thurmanator 12074

[Gigs]

1 hour ago, mead107 said:

I made a list of all the haters.   

That way when they start saying I loved the pick,  I can tell them shut the !@#$ up.   

Just like the 200,000 fans that say they were at the comeback game.   

 

Love the pick 

This post makes me think your dad was merely a twinkle in your grandads eye back in ‘93. Just sayin

[cd1]

1 hour ago, mead107 said:

I made a list of all the haters.   

That way when they start saying I loved the pick,  I can tell them shut the !@#$ up.   

Just like the 200,000 fans that say they were at the comeback game.   

 

Love the pick 

you can take me off your list - I am already warming up to this kid!!!

[mead107]

3 minutes ago, Gigs said:

This post makes me think your dad was merely a twinkle in your grandads eye back in ‘93. Just sayin

Daughter was 11 and Son was 9 back in 93

[BobDVA]

1 hour ago, mead107 said:

I made a list of all the haters.   

That way when they start saying I loved the pick,  I can tell them shut the !@#$ up.   

Just like the 200,000 fans that say they were at the comeback game.   

 

Love the pick 

I think a monthly posting of the list is in order.  With a notation on the right of the date of conversion to love the pick.

[Buffalo_Stampede]

9 minutes ago, cd1 said:

you can take me off your list - I am already warming up to this kid!!!

I can't do it until games. I will say he is miles ahead of Losman and Manuel on the board. Cousins pressed him to and it looked like Cousins was trying to see how smart this guy is. It doesn't show on the field, Cousins looked surprised. 

Edited April 28, 2018 by TheTruthHurts

[Hapless Bills Fan]

23 minutes ago, Thurmanator 12074 said:

It would not surprise me that someone with the Cardinals leaked those to Yahoo sports to get him to drop. Lot of teams have ex FBI agents that work for them for the security and back ground checks of players. It’s reported that they were not happy and devastated when the Bills traded up to draft him. When it comes to football and drafting, these teams do some back handed stuff.  

 

Some team for sure!  I would just hate to think the Bills were involved in something like that.  It bites me to say it because I think the Pats***, because of their record, get away with it, but for ordinary GMs, long term, I think it's a small world and word gets around.  I don't think it does a team any good in the negotiations they have to keep making with peers.

[Shaw66]

1.  I was on the Cousins bandwagon.   These videos show you what kind of guy he is.   Bills just didn't have the cash to play in that game.  

 

2.  Every time I see a video like this, I'm impressed by how complicated the game is.  Fans complain that this QB doesn't go deep often enough or that QB doesn't throw over the middle enough.   The truth is that practically all the fans simply don't understand what's going on out there.   I don't either. 

 

3.  In these videos, Allen SOUNDS like he know what he's talking about.   

 

4.  I do think, as someone else said, that this is a guy who hasn't gotten nearly as much coaching as the other first-round guys.   IF he's coachable, and IF he's willing to do the work, I think we will see a lot from him.  It's hard not fall in love with the throws he can make.   

 

5.  Hapless - I suppose it's possible that a coach here and there found one of the tweets, but I think they do that kind of digging on guys generally only after the kid has gotten onto their short-list of players they're interested in.  Allen more likely was ignored by college coaches because he didn't make it past the first few screens they have.   Maybe Allen never made it to the right showcase clinics, so coaches didn't see him.   Maybe he didn't come from the part of the country where coaches expect to find talent.    These coaches gets thousands videos from players, and they don't have time to study them.   Frankly, they don't even have time to look at them. 

 

A couple of my kids were good athletes in high school   I saw the process.  The D I coaches make up their minds very quickly about kids.   They go to some clinics and to some tournaments, see some kids, hear from some coaching colleagues about kids, develop a list and move on.    If you're not on the list, they don't spend much time on you.  You can send them video, they often don't watch.  They just have to decide what to spend their time on.  

 

I saw it hiring folks at my firm.   We looked at the top 25% of the local school.   There always were some people in the bottom 75% who were going to become excellent in their field, but mistakes were expensive to us.   The probability that a kid in the top 25% would succeed was higher than the probability of the kid in the bottom 75%.   It was a losing proposition for us to try to figure out who those people in the bottom 75% were.   The kid might tell us he'd make it, but every kid is telling us that.   So, just like coaches, we looked at a little data and quickly eliminated a lot of people.    

 

The Michael Jordan story is interesting.   I think he got cut from the JV team as a freshman.  When he was, I think, a junior, some UNC assistant coach went to a game Jordan was playing in, but the coach was there to scout another kid.   He saw Jordan, and when he got home he told Dean Smith that Smith ought to see Jordan, because there was something about him suggesting he could be special.   Several of Jordan's advisors told him he would get buried on the bench at UNC and he should set his sights lower. 

 

Finally, coaches don't take chances.   You've got maybe 20 scholarships a year (95 total, five years per kid).   So you look for the guys who project as likely successes.   It's easy after the fact to say that it was stupid of these coaches to have missed on Allen, but really, it was understandable.   The guys who project as successes succeed more often than the guys who don't project as success.  You're betting your job if you go after guys who give you some feeling in your gut, because most of those guys let you down.   So Dean Smith, for example, could afford to offer a scholarship to Jordan, because Smith was so secure at UNC that he wasn't betting his job.   But if you're at Texas and you pass on a five star recruit because Josh Allen looks like he might grow into something, you won't be at Texas for very long, because most of those Josh Allens fail.  

 

Point is, there are a lot of reasons why colleges fail to identify talent, and it's usually because they don't, can't, take the time to study every kid in detail.   

 

 

[Buffalo_Stampede]

3 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

1.  I was on the Cousins bandwagon.   These videos show you what kind of guy he is.   Bills just didn't have the cash to play in that game.  

 

2.  Every time I see a video like this, I'm impressed by how complicated the game is.  Fans complain that this QB doesn't go deep often enough or that QB doesn't throw over the middle enough.   The truth is that practically all the fans simply don't understand what's going on out there.   I don't either. 

 

3.  In these videos, Allen SOUNDS like he know what he's talking about.   

 

4.  I do think, as someone else said, that this is a guy who hasn't gotten nearly as much coaching as the other first-round guys.   IF he's coachable, and IF he's willing to do the work, I think we will see a lot from him.  It's hard not fall in love with the throws he can make.   

 

5.  Hapless - I suppose it's possible that a coach here and there found one of the tweets, but I think they do that kind of digging on guys generally only after the kid has gotten onto their short-list of players they're interested in.  Allen more likely was ignored by college coaches because he didn't make it past the first few screens they have.   Maybe Allen never made it to the right showcase clinics, so coaches didn't see him.   Maybe he didn't come from the part of the country where coaches expect to find talent.    These coaches gets thousands videos from players, and they don't have time to study them.   Frankly, they don't even have time to look at them. 

 

A couple of my kids were good athletes in high school   I saw the process.  The D I coaches make up their minds very quickly about kids.   They go to some clinics and to some tournaments, see some kids, hear from some coaching colleagues about kids, develop a list and move on.    If you're not on the list, they don't spend much time on you.  You can send them video, they often don't watch.  They just have to decide what to spend their time on.  

 

I saw it hiring folks at my firm.   We looked at the top 25% of the local school.   There always were some people in the bottom 75% who were going to become excellent in their field, but mistakes were expensive to us.   The probability that a kid in the top 25% would succeed was higher than the probability of the kid in the bottom 75%.   It was a losing proposition for us to try to figure out who those people in the bottom 75% were.   The kid might tell us he'd make it, but every kid is telling us that.   So, just like coaches, we looked at a little data and quickly eliminated a lot of people.    

 

The Michael Jordan story is interesting.   I think he got cut from the JV team as a freshman.  When he was, I think, a junior, some UNC assistant coach went to a game Jordan was playing in, but the coach was there to scout another kid.   He saw Jordan, and when he got home he told Dean Smith that Smith ought to see Jordan, because there was something about him suggesting he could be special.   Several of Jordan's advisors told him he would get buried on the bench at UNC and he should set his sights lower. 

 

Finally, coaches don't take chances.   You've got maybe 20 scholarships a year (95 total, five years per kid).   So you look for the guys who project as likely successes.   It's easy after the fact to say that it was stupid of these coaches to have missed on Allen, but really, it was understandable.   The guys who project as successes succeed more often than the guys who don't project as success.  You're betting your job if you go after guys who give you some feeling in your gut, because most of those guys let you down.   So Dean Smith, for example, could afford to offer a scholarship to Jordan, because Smith was so secure at UNC that he wasn't betting his job.   But if you're at Texas and you pass on a five star recruit because Josh Allen looks like he might grow into something, you won't be at Texas for very long, because most of those Josh Allens fail.  

 

Point is, there are a lot of reasons why colleges fail to identify talent, and it's usually because they don't, can't, take the time to study every kid in detail.   

 

 

Khalil Mack's only D1 offer was UB for example. Some players slip through for whatever reason. 

[drf1835]

1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

PS why is it that people can't just have opinions and point out flaws, they become transformed into "haters"?  I HATE that

 

The haters are easily to recognize, in my opinion. They often have very brief messages about a player or person that spews only negativity. They do not talk or have not talked about any positives of that person that they dislike, despite their being positives in that person, or despite others bringing up opposing or valid positive arguments. The haters may have little or no facts to back any of their claims, or resort to total fiction, half truths, or generalizations to support their position.

 

They can make either wild accusations, seem not open minded, follow other opinions like sheep, and seem to be saying things out of just strong emotion, and without rationality, logic, research or reasoning. It is fine to have opinions, as we all have such, but those others who I am talking about and not you, as you seem to back up your opinions often with facts, healthy debate, and with a desires to learn and listen, I am asking the ofhers to show some fairness, lack of rigidity,  and some balance, and then persons will not think of you as a hateful persons or dummy with some agenda. 

 

Also, for those posters who admit wrongs, or show a desire or willingness to listen to opposing opinion or to change their position or attitude, once more compelling evidence or facts are learned, those are the persons I relate most to, and will reply most to. Not everyone on this board have opinions I agree with, and that is fine, but at least I will often explain my opinions in detail, and be open minded to change my opinion if others provide info that makes more sense. In general, I think pessimism breeds negativity, and optimism brings out more of the truth, but there are always exceptions to rules.

Edited April 28, 2018 by drf1835

[BillsFan17]

Rich Eisen said that about Allen in his segment with Dilfer and Brenkus, that Allen was apparently doing really well on the grease board.

[SouthNYfan]

1 hour ago, Thurmanator 12074 said:

It would not surprise me that someone with the Cardinals leaked those to Yahoo sports to get him to drop. Lot of teams have ex FBI agents that work for them for the security and back ground checks of players. It’s reported that they were not happy and devastated when the Bills traded up to draft him. When it comes to football and drafting, these teams do some back handed stuff.  

 

Actually something we agree on!!

[BringBackFergy]

2 hours ago, drf1835 said:

 

The haters are easily to recognize, in my opinion. They often have very brief messages about a player or person that spews only negativity. They do not talk or have not talked about any positives of that person that they dislike, despite their being positives in that person, or despite others bringing up opposing or valid positive arguments. The haters may have little or no facts to back any of their claims, or resort to total fiction, half truths, or generalizations to support their position.

 

They can make either wild accusations, seem not open minded, follow other opinions like sheep, and seem to be saying things out of just strong emotion, and without rationality, logic, research or reasoning. It is fine to have opinions, as we all have such, but those others who I am talking about and not you, as you seem to back up your opinions often with facts, healthy debate, and with a desires to learn and listen, I am asking the ofhers to show some fairness, lack of rigidity,  and some balance, and then persons will not think of you as a hateful persons or dummy with some agenda. 

 

Also, for those posters who admit wrongs, or show a desire or willingness to listen to opposing opinion or to change their position or attitude, once more compelling evidence or facts are learned, those are the persons I relate most to, and will reply most to. Not everyone on this board have opinions I agree with, and that is fine, but at least I will often explain my opinions in detail, and be open minded to change my opinion if others provide info that makes more sense. In general, I think pessimism breeds negativity, and optimism brings out more of the truth, but there are always exceptions to rules.

Well said brother. 

[GoBills808]

5 hours ago, BringBackFergy said:

https://officialize.com/originals/the-wake-up-call/kirk-cousins-josh-allen-part-3

 

Not sure if this was posted pre-draft anywhere, but this interaction with Kirk Cousins certainly shows how Allen is way ahead of schedule in recognizing defensive alignments, audibles and understanding options in the pass game. 

 

Many on here suggest Allen isn’t too bright or can’t read defenses...this suggests otherwise. 37 on the Wunderlic, pro style offense, took 45% snaps under center, mobile QB who can make ALL the throws....I’m happy with the pick. 

Not gonna lie that made me pretty bummed we didn't get Cousins. That was my dream scenario.

 

Still pumped for Allen though.

[JinxedBill1]

Allen looks like a smart kid.  You know, everyone was trust in the process until the Allen pick.  Now they get no slack?  I don't buy it.

[Guest K-GunJimKelly12]

5 hours ago, mead107 said:

I made a list of all the haters.   

That way when they start saying I loved the pick,  I can tell them shut the !@#$ up.   

Just like the 200,000 fans that say they were at the comeback game.   

 

Love the pick 

A lot of people are just looking at that one stat without knowing a thing about the Wyoming program or having watched a game of Allen's.  I wanted Rosen but I am happy with what they did.  The more I watch and read the better I feel about Allen and I am kind of starting to think he is going to be great.  Go Bills.

Edited April 28, 2018 by K-GunJimKelly12

[Hapless Bills Fan]

3 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

1.  I was on the Cousins bandwagon.   These videos show you what kind of guy he is.   Bills just didn't have the cash to play in that game.  

 

Technically, we could have I think.  I believe Cousins had a short list of teams he was interested in talking to, and B'lo wasn't on it regardless.

 

3 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

5.  Hapless - I suppose it's possible that a coach here and there found one of the tweets, but I think they do that kind of digging on guys generally only after the kid has gotten onto their short-list of players they're interested in.

 

That may be.  But (for example) Fresno State recruits primarily from CA.  And Allen's HS team went to the California Interscholastic Federation Central Section Division-V semifinals his Sr year.  I would think there would have been coaches putting him on their list. 

 

OTOH he said to Cousins he wasn't the physical specimen then that he is now.  Apparently he kept growing after HS.

 

Bottom line you're correct that there could be other reasons for lack of interest.  On the other hand Firebaugh has a reputation (deserved or not) as being a racist kind of place (that Circle Jerks song: "if your car breaks down, don't take a tow to Firebaugh", so if I was a coach with a semifinalist QB on my short list and the grunts I hire to do SM checks came back with those tweets, I'd back away quietly.

 

3 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

The Michael Jordan story is interesting.   I think he got cut from the JV team as a freshman.  When he was, I think, a junior, some UNC assistant coach went to a game Jordan was playing in, but the coach was there to scout another kid.   He saw Jordan, and when he got home he told Dean Smith that Smith ought to see Jordan, because there was something about him suggesting he could be special.

 

So that would be a similar story for Allen.  A Wyoming assistant went to scout another player (a TE maybe?) at Allen's JUCO.  Came back and said "let's look at the QB".