Why the Josh Allen hate (draft reaction)?

[NY to VA to NV to TX to AZ]

All I can tell ya is that originally I wanted Baker Mayfield, glad we didn’t get him. But once Mayfield was taken off the board, Josh Allen was my next choice so I am not eating any crow. I hated Josh Rosen as the pick, nothing special about him and usually when the “analysts” say someone is the most NFL ready, that means they are not ready at all. Lamar I never thought was very good and I still don’t believe he is very good. I have always believed that we got the right guy for us, for the city. I’m glad we didn’t get Baker, he kinda seems like another Johnny Manziel (?), a lot of hype, but little to show for it. Quite honestly, I said at the time it was either/or. I didn’t really care which one, just one of the two Mayfield or Allen and I was chanting the opposite of what many here were when they drafted Allen, we got the right Josh. Rosen always seemed like a douche bag to me, and he is.

[Shaw66]

3 hours ago, WhitewalkerInPhilly said:

Josh is the one in a million player who gets more accurate. He got help, he got coaching, he got time and he worked his ass off so I won't call it luck, but he is the exception, not the rule, and if there is a single Bills take I am happy to be wrong about it was this one.

I so hate this take.  There was nothing one-in-a-million about Josh.   Mechanically, some things were tweaked in him, but anyone with half a brain could look at Josh Allen throwing a football in college and tell that he was fundamentally a great thrower.   Stand him on the fifty and ask him to throw footballs at targets 10, 15, 30, and 40 yards downfield, and he'd hit those targets over and over.  A guy with bad mechanics can't do that, but Allen could, because his fundamental throwing motion was really sweet, better than Mayfield, Darnold, Rosen, or Jackson.  

 

It was pretty clear that Josh's "accuracy" problem wasn't that he was fundamentally inaccurate.  His problem was that he didn't have the athletic discipline that comes from years of quality coaching.  He wasn't going to the best QB clinics in high school.  He played at a podunk high school, a podunk junior college, and a podunk college.   Rosen, on the other hand, had the benefit of all the coaching that was available to a rich kid from LA, which is what he was.   That meant what you saw was what you were going to get - no one was going to make Rosen into a better thrower than he was.   

 

Allen's a one-in-a-million talent, but he wasn't some kind of athletic miracle who transformed himself from a substandard college thrower, mechanically, to a great thrower.   He was always a great thrower, just undisciplined. 

[finn]

13 hours ago, KentuckyBillsFan said:

I’m not right often but I was thrilled when we took him. His physical traits were elite. He just needed some refinement. People just listened to the “experts” on ESPN. 

To be fair, Mel Kiper thought he was terrific. He was mocked by his colleagues for that stance, and they've never forgiven him for being right. 

[The Frankish Reich]

12 hours ago, Low Positive said:

You don’t have to wonder what people thought. Here it all is in glorious detail:

 

Thanks for linking that. 

Awesome reading! I don't want to scroll thru the whole thing to see if I had any reaction at the time. But kudos to those posters who don't change their names here every 6 months. I have no idea who some of the Allen naysayers were, but I do know they're still here ....

[PaoloBillsFanFromItaly]

There was also on YouTube some comments by a woman (if I remember correctly) "mocking" the Bills because the pick didn't make any sense from the stats point of view.

If someone has a link, I cannot find it anymore...

[Nihilarian]

That season for whatever reason I researched the QBs and came away loving Josh Allen as a prospect. I was elated when the Bills drafted him. 

 

So many wanted Josh Rosen and were crying to Beane to trade up with the NY Giants to the #2 pick by giving away the farm. It was all about accuracy and one of the noted draft pundits here stated Josh was a 3rd round pick because of his accuracy issues.

 

The thing is the kid knew all about his accuracy problems and was working on them before the draft...footwork. Josh did well in the Senior Bowl.

 

I was afraid that the Browns were going to draft him #1 overall or at the #4 spot. Or that the NY Giants would draft him at the #2 spot or the NY Jets at the #3 spot. 

[BADOLBILZ]

1 hour ago, GunnerBill said:

I have been back and watched some of his Wyoming games again since. I missed on how good his legs were. I definitely missed that in my original scouting of him. The rest? I still don't like the college film. I still see throws that are erratic at best and sail miles over receivers heads. But I will credit the recently returned for a guest appearance @thebandit27 because he and I had quite a detailed conversation pre-draft and he said the inaccuracy is not what I term "natural inaccuracy" it is a technical issue - he has an over striding problem and it throws his mechanics off and if he can get that fixed accuracy will not be a problem.

 

After that first NFL season I remember hearing Jordan Palmer on a podcast say of his work with Josh "we are focussing on his lower half mechanics we think the inconsistent accuracy is caused by a slight over striding that throws the sync between his feet and his upper body off." So Bandit nailed it. There were a few who liked Josh Allen quite a bit but Bandit was the only one I remember here (and frankly I don't remember any of the main talking heads saying it at the time either although I've heard a couple refer to it since) who correctly diagnosed the one critical element that was going to make or break it for Josh. 

 

 

@thebandit27 was also the first guy on TSW on the "we need Patrick Mahomes he is going to be great" bandwagon back in spring of 2016. 

 

And another truth is that Josh Allen was already being whispered up as the potential #1 pick in the 2018 draft in the middle of his 2016 season..........at a time when Mahomes was not really even getting any 1st round buzz for the coming 2017 draft.

[The Frankish Reich]

11 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

I so hate this take.  There was nothing one-in-a-million about Josh.   Mechanically, some things were tweaked in him, but anyone with half a brain could look at Josh Allen throwing a football in college and tell that he was fundamentally a great thrower.   Stand him on the fifty and ask him to throw footballs at targets 10, 15, 30, and 40 yards downfield, and he'd hit those targets over and over.  A guy with bad mechanics can't do that, but Allen could, because his fundamental throwing motion was really sweet, better than Mayfield, Darnold, Rosen, or Jackson.  

 

It was pretty clear that Josh's "accuracy" problem wasn't that he was fundamentally inaccurate.  His problem was that he didn't have the athletic discipline that comes from years of quality coaching.  He wasn't going to the best QB clinics in high school.  He played at a podunk high school, a podunk junior college, and a podunk college.   Rosen, on the other hand, had the benefit of all the coaching that was available to a rich kid from LA, which is what he was.   That meant what you saw was what you were going to get - no one was going to make Rosen into a better thrower than he was.   

 

Allen's a one-in-a-million talent, but he wasn't some kind of athletic miracle who transformed himself from a substandard college thrower, mechanically, to a great thrower.   He was always a great thrower, just undisciplined. 

Just like MLB, the NFL went through a Moneyball style analytics revolution. The key in Moneyball (and that Beane, Billy): scouts underrate actual performance, and overrate things like combine measurements. In football terms: draft the guy with a proven record of success at actually playing football and doing NFL QB type things (Baker Mayfield) rather than the guy with jaw-dropping physical attributes who doesn't have a record of success at NFL-type QB skills (Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen).

Allen and Lamar caused an immediate shift in that thinking (maybe Carson Wentz a little bit too). All of a sudden the "project" guys with tremendous physical attributes shot up the charts. Trey Lance is the clearest example of the Allen/Jackson effect. 

I think things are moving in the right direction now. It's about college success + projectability. MLB has seen a similar shift, at least when it comes to drafting college (not high school) players.

[davetra]

I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times (but maybe my first time on this board)...

Thank God the fans don't run this team!

[GunnerBill]

1 minute ago, BADOLBILZ said:

 

 

@thebandit27 was also the first guy on TSW on the "we need Patrick Mahomes he is going to be great" bandwagon back in spring of 2016. 

 

And another truth is that Josh Allen was already being whispered up as the potential #1 pick in the 2018 draft in the middle of his 2016 season..........at a time when Mahomes was not really even getting any 1st round buzz for the coming 2017 draft.

 

Josh's 2016 tape, when you are right the whispers were out about this big kid at Wyoming being the 1st overall pick, was better than his 2017 tape. That is one of the biggest things I've adjusted in my QB evaluation process. I used to mark guys down on the basis of a regression. But Josh Allen was proof that isn't always terminal if you can legitimately look at external factors. It led to me ending up defending Jordan Love some on that basis too. Yes, his final year was worse, but that might not really be on him. Definitely one rule I've completely scratched since Josh.  

[BillsPride12]

9 hours ago, JaCrispy said:

When we drafted Allen,  wanted to throw a bowling ball through my tv…Thank God I didn’t do that…😉

Pinto Ron is that you?

[Man with No Name]

43 minutes ago, Lieutenant Aldo Raine said:

 

Because they are scouts and not arm chair GMs who constantly get their scouting news from the TBD wanna-be General Managers and pundits out to make a name for themselves.  

But there never has really been such a raw talent that they nailed as a high first round pick like this...is there? Typically, people only know what they have seen before. Where did they see a Josh Allen before? 

 

Even a Josh Allen at a different position...

Edited January 31 by Man with No Name

[Shaw66]

16 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Just like MLB, the NFL went through a Moneyball style analytics revolution. The key in Moneyball (and that Beane, Billy): scouts underrate actual performance, and overrate things like combine measurements. In football terms: draft the guy with a proven record of success at actually playing football and doing NFL QB type things (Baker Mayfield) rather than the guy with jaw-dropping physical attributes who doesn't have a record of success at NFL-type QB skills (Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen).

Allen and Lamar caused an immediate shift in that thinking (maybe Carson Wentz a little bit too). All of a sudden the "project" guys with tremendous physical attributes shot up the charts. Trey Lance is the clearest example of the Allen/Jackson effect. 

I think things are moving in the right direction now. It's about college success + projectability. MLB has seen a similar shift, at least when it comes to drafting college (not high school) players.

Thanks.  That is really good.  

 

And, in fact, when Beane tells the story of the decision to go after Allen, it clearly was an example of what you say.   They spent a lot of time on projectability.  Allen had had college success, in the sense that he had succeeded at a lot of things that are important, like leadership and playmaking ability.  But where they really succeeded, and the Browns, Jets, Broncos, and Giants all failed, was in evaluating his projectability.  They learned about the guy, who he was, how competitive he was, how much his teammates liked him, etc.   They decided he had all the attributes he needed, which meant that he projected as a star.   It was great scouting and drafting.  

 

The Jets had more trade capital and traded up to a spot that was more or less impossible for the Bills to reach, and they took the wrong guy.  

[GunnerBill]

1 hour ago, BritBill said:

You got the day off today, @GunnerBill? 😀

 

No, no. Just come out of a meeting on deaths in custody settings. Believe me you need the light relief this place brings. 

[The Frankish Reich]

2 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

The Jets had more trade capital and traded up to a spot that was more or less impossible for the Bills to reach, and they took the wrong guy

And that's the other part of the draft equation: sometimes you need a little luck (most "insider" reports say Beane wanted Darnold)

[Shaw66]

1 minute ago, Man with No Name said:

But there never has really been such a raw talent that they nailed as a high first round pick like this...is there? Typically, people only know what they have seen before. Where did they see a Josh Allen before? 

 

Even a Josh Allen at a different position...

Well, Carson Wentz hadn't failed yet.   Lots of people were comparing the Allen pick to Wentz.   Wentz had had more college success - more wins, but when he came out there were a lot of questions about whether he could do it.   Wentz went #2. 

 

On the other hand, there was JaMarcus Russell.   

1 minute ago, The Frankish Reich said:

And that's the other part of the draft equation: sometimes you need a little luck (most "insider" reports say Beane wanted Darnold)

And I think Darnold was the second best guy of the four.   I think Darnold might very well have succeeded in the McDermott environment.  

 

I think the Jets quickly started asking Darnold to be the savior, while the Bills were pleading with Allen to STOP thinking of himself as the savior.  

[mannc]

31 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Thanks for linking that. 

Awesome reading! I don't want to scroll thru the whole thing to see if I had any reaction at the time. But kudos to those posters who don't change their names here every 6 months. I have no idea who some of the Allen naysayers were, but I do know they're still here ....

It’s fine to have been wrong about Josh Allen—most people were—but the truly awful thing about that thread is the posters who turned their embarrassing takes into crusades against what would become the single greatest draft pick in Bills’ history, entirely certain that Josh Allen was a bust before he ever set foot on an NFL field.

[nedboy7]

When TBD is in an uproar, you know you are on the right path.......

Take note McBean. 

[The Frankish Reich]

34 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

Well, Carson Wentz hadn't failed yet.   Lots of people were comparing the Allen pick to Wentz.   Wentz had had more college success - more wins, but when he came out there were a lot of questions about whether he could do it.   Wentz went #2. 

Agreed. Wentz was probably the start of the new trend toward drafting the "protectable" guys with great athletic skills. Wentz was good in college, but against minor league competition, so there were big doubts (now confirmed I guess) of how his skills would translate to the NFL.

[BADOLBILZ]

9 hours ago, JaCrispy said:

When we drafted Allen,  wanted to throw a bowling ball through my tv…Thank God I didn’t do that…😉

 

 

That reaction would sum up why I stopped doing full-on draft analysis.   

 

After about 10 years of my 1st round board being consistently better than John Butler and Tom Donahoe's......and watching players I had first round grades on for the Bills still passed over in subsequent rounds.........Donahoe broke me with his foolishness. 

 

But I think I have agreed with more of Beane's 1st round picks than I did any of the prior 30 years of #1 picks combined.

 

 

[WhitewalkerInPhilly]

1 hour ago, Shaw66 said:

I so hate this take.  There was nothing one-in-a-million about Josh.   Mechanically, some things were tweaked in him, but anyone with half a brain could look at Josh Allen throwing a football in college and tell that he was fundamentally a great thrower.   Stand him on the fifty and ask him to throw footballs at targets 10, 15, 30, and 40 yards downfield, and he'd hit those targets over and over.  A guy with bad mechanics can't do that, but Allen could, because his fundamental throwing motion was really sweet, better than Mayfield, Darnold, Rosen, or Jackson.  

 

It was pretty clear that Josh's "accuracy" problem wasn't that he was fundamentally inaccurate.  His problem was that he didn't have the athletic discipline that comes from years of quality coaching.  He wasn't going to the best QB clinics in high school.  He played at a podunk high school, a podunk junior college, and a podunk college.   Rosen, on the other hand, had the benefit of all the coaching that was available to a rich kid from LA, which is what he was.   That meant what you saw was what you were going to get - no one was going to make Rosen into a better thrower than he was.   

 

Allen's a one-in-a-million talent, but he wasn't some kind of athletic miracle who transformed himself from a substandard college thrower, mechanically, to a great thrower.   He was always a great thrower, just undisciplined. 

Fair enough. Perhaps I should rephrase.

 

I would say that there is a reason why players with Josh's talent often get that level of refinement. It astounds me how big of a business that college football is to the extent that you saw Harbaugh eff off to Michigan for almost a decade after never having a losing record as a NFL head coach and making the NFC Championship game three years in a row. College scouts are heavily motivated to kick over every rock imaginable for a superstar, that it's amazing that Allen had to go to JuCo, then to the Mountain West conference (not a historically competitive one) without being poached. And kudos to the Bills scouting staff for finding those things you mentioned, that his mechanics were fine but that he hadn't had top tier coaching and WR support.

[Plano]

best of the draft, what's not to love?

 

I went at it with an open mind. Nobody knows who will perform in the NFL, it's all speculation.

 

People get too worked up about these things. Too much time on their hands. 

[Another Fan]

14 hours ago, Low Positive said:

You don’t have to wonder what people thought. Here it all is in glorious detail:

 

That thread has probably been edited a lot over the years to no man I loved the pick. LOL 

[TheBrownBear]

LOL.  I was one of those people.  I didn't really love Rosen, but I preferred him over Allen due to his pedigree.  I'm a UCLA guy and knew that Rosen, despite his unlikability factor and occasionally suspect decisionmaking, could really spin the football.  I saw a little of Allen in the Mountain West and wasn't particularly impressed with him as a QB.  How wrong I was.

[TheBrownBear]

3 hours ago, Jay_Fixit said:

It was probably 80% unhappiness. Just look through that old thread. So if 80% isn’t universal, you may be technically correct. Even through you’re not.

What's interesting to me is that some posters literally decided to die on that hill.  Looking through that thread there was a guy named "T-Bomb", apparently a Tyrod fan, who was apoplectic after the Allen selection, made a ton of histrionic posts in the 24 hours following the selection, and then never made another post on the board again.  This was a guy with over 1000 posts over the years.  I wonder what happened to these fans.

[PromoTheRobot]

15 hours ago, Process said:

Everyone wanted this guy 

 

The fans are never wrong.

[davetra]

Also...

You pick a guy like Allen if you feel you have the coaches to coach them up.  Raw talent with sub par instruction (Coaching) equals a flop in the NFL.

 

[HomeskillitMoorman]

Far and away Beane's best moment here. He did something that was relatively unpopular and stuck to his convictions. 

 

You couldn't have found a more perfect fit for Buffalo. And I won't pretend I knew that then. 

[muppy]

The drafting of #17 was a high risk high reward pick. We hit LOTTO

 

Its never an exact science. An analogy is he was a lump of coal that turned into a diamond 

 

and he is ours! Haters can suck it  as far as I’m concerned. 

Edited January 31 by muppy

[JerseyBills]

I was absolutely thrilled, I'm not a big cfb guy so stay outta mock drafts but after watching his pro day I wanted him bad, pause, I would have taken him 1, by far the most untapped potential in that draft

[muppy]

One last thought. He clearly ( and except for douchy bottom feeder media types) Has proven himself so worthy of his draft position. 
 

it just goes to show no one is right about everything. Cheer up all you bad prognosticators. It was a fun read back in time 

 

posters do drop off the radar. A few I miss reading but a lot do still post.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 31 by muppy

[MJS]

16 hours ago, The Jokeman said:

That and Rosen felt Brady esque in that he didn't have an elite arm but was good at reading defenses. Able to lead his team back (see win at USC). He just seemed to be the safest QB to draft. 

I've learned since then that the safe choice is never the right choice when it comes to QB. Draft the guy who has the ability to be elite physically and hope for the best.

 

The QB position is not what it used to be. It isn't enough to be a cerebral pocket passer who can make the right read and deliver it with accuracy. You have to be at least somewhat of a dual threat. You have to make off-schedule plays. You have to do things that make people's jaw drop from time to time.

[The Jokeman]

1 minute ago, MJS said:

I've learned since then that the safe choice is never the right choice when it comes to QB. Draft the guy who has the ability to be elite physically and hope for the best.

 

The QB position is not what it used to be. It isn't enough to be a cerebral pocket passer who can make the right read and deliver it with accuracy. You have to be at least somewhat of a dual threat. You have to make off-schedule plays. You have to do things that make people's jaw drop from time to time.

True but you still need to be able to routinely move the ball with your arm otherwise you've got another LamarJackson V 2.0

[Brand J]

34 minutes ago, JerseyBills said:

I was absolutely thrilled, I'm not a big cfb guy so stay outta mock drafts but after watching his pro day I wanted him bad, pause, I would have taken him 1, by far the most untapped potential in that draft

It’s funny because I had the opposite reaction after watching his pro day. I felt he was trying to throw the farthest footballs he could rather than actually trying to complete the pass by hitting his downfield man in stride. Like he was trying too hard to show off what a cannon he had. I felt he was a physical specimen of a QB, but didn’t do all the other things well enough to ever be a good QB, much less a great one. It’s funny when I look back on it now, but you just never really know how a guy will pan out based on his college tape and measurables. 

[MJS]

21 minutes ago, The Jokeman said:

True but you still need to be able to routinely move the ball with your arm otherwise you've got another LamarJackson V 2.0

Elite arm talent and physical traits.

 

But I think Lamar Jackson is a top 5 QB in the NFL. He is unique, though.

[DrBob806]

2 hours ago, davetra said:

Also...

You pick a guy like Allen if you feel you have the coaches to coach them up.  Raw talent with sub par instruction (Coaching) equals a flop in the NFL.

 

Yep. 

 

I see some are bashing Mayfield here. One has to wonder if any other of the 2018 QB prospects would have survived a guy like Hue Jackson like Mayfield did. Mayfield's attitude was the only thing that saved him, I give him a lot of credit for that. In case you're in disagreement there, remember he had Nick Chubb on the bench for an aging Carlos Hyde. 

Edited January 31 by DrBob806

[Shaw66]

3 hours ago, WhitewalkerInPhilly said:

Fair enough. Perhaps I should rephrase.

 

I would say that there is a reason why players with Josh's talent often get that level of refinement. It astounds me how big of a business that college football is to the extent that you saw Harbaugh eff off to Michigan for almost a decade after never having a losing record as a NFL head coach and making the NFC Championship game three years in a row. College scouts are heavily motivated to kick over every rock imaginable for a superstar, that it's amazing that Allen had to go to JuCo, then to the Mountain West conference (not a historically competitive one) without being poached. And kudos to the Bills scouting staff for finding those things you mentioned, that his mechanics were fine but that he hadn't had top tier coaching and WR support.

Good points.  I don't really know, but I think the college coaches are the victims of all the scouting services and the showcase circuit.  That is, they rely on this whole establishment that identifies, grooms, and showcases high school talent, and they don't, really can't, run a nationwide scouting operation that is turning over every stone.  In turn, the people who run that infrastructure are like the sports media in that they listen to each other, and they form this sort of group think that is closed to new ideas.   

 

Spencer Brown is another example.  Both Josh and Brown came out of these tiny high schools playing in remote areas, and they were pretty much ignored.  Once a kid falls outside that system, the big-time coaches aren't likely to find them.   They end up at JuCo or small-time schools, not because they aren't good enough, but because the bigger schools, the schools that might actually develop them, aren't looking at them.   Someone called the coach at Northern Iowa and told him he should look at Brown, who was on no one's radar.   The coach was on a road trip and realized he could drop by Brown's town on his way home.  But for that, Brown might have been communications major at some school that didn't even have a football team.   Not every overlooked kid sends emails to 1000 coaches looking for a scholarship.  

 

So, the kid starts to show something in JuCo or at Northern Iowa.   It was before the transfer portal, so getting a kid to transfer and sit out a year wasn't very attractive to the kids, and the coaches aren't anxious to take a flyer on a guy who's just lighting it up in a second-rate conference; most big-time schools already have their guys, they're invested in their guys. 

 

Why do those scouting services ignore them?  Well, sometimes they're just lazy.   But the reality is that very few guys come out of those environments and make it anywhere.  They're local phenoms, but when they get into serious competition, they can't compete.  Yes, there could be a world class athlete playing in one of those tiny high school leagues, but much more often the kid is burning up the conference because the competition is so bad.  

 

I'll give you an example from my personal life.  Yesterday I watched my grandson play freshman basketball.   He had 30-something points.  Last week he had 37.   Is he a phenom?  Should the college scouts be flocking to see him?  Well, no.  He also plays on the JV team, kids are one year older, and there he looks like an ordinary player.  If I call a scout and say you should look at my grandson, he'll ask where he can see the kid play in real competition.  

 

Bottom line, kids still get missed.

44 minutes ago, DrBob806 said:

Yep. 

 

I see some are bashing Mayfield here. One has to wonder if any other of the 2018 QB prospects would have survived a guy like Hue Jackson like Mayfield did. Mayfield's attitude was the only thing that saved him, I give him a lot of credit for that. In case you're in disagreement there, remember he had Nick Chubb on the bench for an aging Carlos Hyde. 

I love Mayfield.  A rare combination of guts and a great, competitive attitude.   He just doesn't have the body.   Doesn't have the arm, the height, the legs.   Close, but not enough.  

[RobbRiddick]

8 hours ago, gjv said:

I believe it was Marv Levy who once said " if you listen to the fans, you will end up sitting with them".

I think this was the mistake Takeo Spikes made

[The Jokeman]

On 1/31/2024 at 10:06 AM, Westside said:

LOL! You're correct sir! I miss those days. Do you remember hogboy? I think that was his name. Didn't he call volunteer Firefighters arsonists? OMG, That was hilarious!

hogboy sounds familiar and a volunteer firefighter being an arsonist definitely ringing bells too.

[LeGOATski]

I wanted Josh Rosen, but I trust McD/Beanie. They broke the drought, after all. Hopefully this Josh Allen guy turns out good, but I just don't see it from watching his college tape. He's so inaccurate. We all know you can't teach accuracy.

 

Oh well.