One of the pieces of evidence I'm pleased tob see is...

[KingRex]

One of the pieces of "conventional" wisdom which SOME posters seem to think applies in all cases, but Sundays game provided a piece of evidence where this old saw was not true is the idea that:

 

ACTUAL PLAYING TIME IS THE ONLY WAY A YOUNG PLAYER CAN LEARN TO PLAY THIS GAME.

 

This idea is simply wrong in a bunch of specific cases.  The real fact is that many players from great ones like Eric Moulds *2 years of sitting and learning followed by years of being a perennial Pro Bowl candidate to Tom Brady who consistently has spoken of the importance not only of this 6th round pick sitting, watching, and learning for a year but also the importanbt and actually essential role that noneother than Bledsoe played in helping him understand his SB winning second year (Bledsoe even played the ESSENTIAL  to Brady's career role of throwing the winning TD pass in the AFC championship game when Brady went out due to injury).

 

Even beyond these cases of extraordinary players the norm is actually that a ton of legit but average pros simply do not have the mental knowledge of how to operate in an NFL O OR D until seeing the game and broken in slowly on ST or garbage time o have a physical habit which needs to be trained out of them before they are ready for primetime b(ex. Bills failed to train Todd Collins out of happy feet when the Bills threw him min to start when he was not ready or more successful cases like former Bill Ryan Denny who needed to sit for a year while he learned to bend his knees and play lower leading to him being an OK  though never great DE player. 

 

What yesterdays game pretty clearly showed was that Allen is a very talented but really rough player who produced highlight reel plays (like when he leaped over a tackler for a 1st down earlier this year but clearly was a pretty rough performer until he got hurt).  However, while not conclusive (yet) it seems clear that during his injury forced benching these past four weeks Allen learned some stuff watching DA and Barclay run the O.  His play reading clearly improved and even his touch on shorter passes (though still needing work) improved.  He still needs work (he seems to take some scary risks running rather than simply sitting down and sacrificing a few yards to avoid a hit) but from what I see Allen improved as a QB from a talented but seemingly totally raw player in the first half of the season  to the baller who produced a 130+ QB rating yesterday.

 

I was impressed with Allen yesterday.  I just hope he survives his PT  this year to lead the team as a vet next year.

 

My GUESS  is that McD's process likely envisioned McCarron or Peterman winning games to allow Allen to sit and improve for at least 8 games (if not the full season) before leading the TEAM as soon as possible.  However, reality has forced Allen to learn while playing.  The good news is that (so far) Allen has survived while getting PT and even better though forced to sit he appears to have elevated his game while simply watching these past few weeks.

 

Rookies do learn from PT but rookies also learn from watching and learning.

 

Yesterday's game provided some evidence of this. 

 

 

[Domdab99]

no, u

[billsfan1959]

Sort of a pointless argument to me as there is no way to know if the "successful" players, that sat any length of time before playing, would have been less successful had they started immediately - just as there is no way to know if those "unsuccessful" players who started immediately would have been more successful had they sat for a while.