Why Bills fans shouldn’t let themselves get too excited about Josh Allen

The numbers and film do not paint a very encouraging picture for the Bills’ QB of the future.

It appears Josh Allen is, at the very least, OK at football. That obviously isn’t a high bar to clear, but based on the way he was covered before the Bills drafted him in 2018, Allen being good enough to lead his team to a 10-5 record in his second season has proven a lot of people wrong.

In the process, Allen has put up impressive numbers and turned in some exciting performances in nationally televised games, forcing a lot of NFL fans and analysts to adjust their priors. The Bills ended up falling short in Foxborough last Saturday, but the 24-17 loss to the Patriots, which included some remarkable plays by Allen, definitely changed a few minds.

Since Week 7, Allen has thrown 15 touchdowns and rushed for another six, all while turning the ball over just four times in 10 games. While he hasn’t thrown for a lot of yards this season, the Bills have won and Allen has played a significant role in those wins, orchestrating an NFL-leading five game-winning drives.

We’ve gotten to the point where the Bills are being discussed as Super Bowl sleepers, and Allen’s improvement — especially in the turnover department — is actually one of the reasons people believe in this Buffalo team.

While it would be foolish (or downright ignorant) to deny that Allen has improved, I’m just not sure that his improvement is as significant or encouraging as many people seem to believe. There is overwhelming statistical evidence backing that up, but before we get to the numbers, we’ll go to the film, which shows a tremendously flawed quarterback who still struggles with the most basic aspects of playing the position.

Footwork is the foundation for every quarterback, and this is the area where Allen may need the most work. He takes awkward drops, from both under center and the gun, which gets his feet all out of whack when it’s time to throw. Here’s a particularly ugly drop that leads to an even uglier delivery.

The pass is batted down, but that’s not the point. Look at his base when he releases the pass. This is a clean pocket by NFL standards and Allen throws it as if he’s never thrown a football in his life.

Obviously, not all of Allen’s drops are that ugly – but that lack of rhythm is almost always present, and that’s what leads to unsightly misses.

More concerning than the footwork is Allen’s inability to anticipate his receivers coming open, which throws off his timing. While most franchise quarterbacks are able to read the leverage of a defender to figure out if the receiver will get open, Allen needs to see it happen before starting his throwing motion.

The ball should be coming out when the receiver is coming out of his break. That’s how plays are designed. When the quarterback is late (and inaccurate to boot) the defender has time to get back into the play.

Allen also struggles coming off his first read in a timely manner. He’ll lock his eyes onto receivers and just hope they get open rather than immediately looking for other options.

It looks bizarre at times. Allen will freeze in an upright position as he stares down a receiver.

This leads to an inordinate number of avoidable sacks. The Bills rank 24th in adjusted sack rate, per Football Outsiders, while the offensive line ranks fifth in ESPN’s Pass Block Win Rate metric. The offensive line is doing its job, but you wouldn’t know by looking at Allen’s sack totals.

But the most concerning issue for Allen is, of course, his accuracy. He ranks dead last in completion percentage. Now, completion percentage isn’t the best measure for accuracy as it doesn’t account for drops (the Bills receivers have dropped more passes than all but two teams) or how far downfield a quarterback is throwing, but Allen also ranks poorly in the accuracy metrics that do. He ranks 32nd in on-target throw percentage, per Sports Info Solutions. Only four quarterbacks have a lower “completion percentage over expectation” — David Blough, Dwayne Haskins, Gardner Minshew and Jared Goff — per Next Gen Stats.

Allen has, however, improved in the intermediate range, where he’s completing passes at a rate higher than the league average.

AirYards.com

But everywhere else on the field, Allen’s accuracy has been scattershot. His deep-ball accuracy has been particularly bad and has cost the Bills some big plays in recent weeks. Allen ranks 27th on throws over 10 yards, per Sports Info Solutions.

Overall, Allen’s advanced metrics do not paint an encouraging picture. He ranks 24th in QBR and has a negative Expected Points Added total. And he’s 25th in net-yards-per-attempt due to all of those sacks he takes.

Even Allen’s improvement in the turnover department appears to be flukey. Yes, Allen has turned the ball over only four times (two interceptions and two fumbles lost) in the last 10 weeks, but only two players in the entire NFL have fumbled more often over that time — Buffalo has just recovered seven of his nine fumbles. And, according to Sports Info Solutions, defenders have dropped five would-be interceptions thrown by Allen since Week 10 alone. Allen hasn’t really protected the ball any better. He’s just been luckier.

How about that game-winning drive stat I cited earlier? Well, that’s not nearly as impressive as you probably think. Here are some other notable quarterbacks who have led the league in game-winning drives in recent years: Geno Smith (2013), Blake Bortles (2015), Marcus Mariota (2017). It’s a fun stat, but it means very little.

The main argument for Allen is that he’s still young and has a lot of room for improvement, which is certainly true. It’s just that there isn’t a whole lot of evidence to suggest that he will greatly improve. His clean pocket stats, which carry the most predictive power of any statistical split, are not very good. He ranks in the bottom-third in the league in every major metric from a clean pocket, including EPA, yards-per-attempt and accuracy percentage. This was the major knock on both Mitchell Trubisky and Blake Bortles after their sophomore seasons and we all know how that turned out.

This is even more concerning…

Allen (or Sam Darnold for that matter) is not in good company there on the right, which is concerning because it looks like we can pretty much call these things after just two seasons. There isn’t a quarterback from the right side of that list that turned out to be any good, except for maybe Ryan Tannehill, who is having a breakout season in Tennessee … at age 30. And even if you just use Allen’s 2019 ANY/A (5.75) as the cutoff, the only quarterback of note you’re adding to the “bad” side is Andy Dalton. Now, Bills fans may love Dalton for ending their playoff drought in 2017, but I don’t think they’d want him as their franchise quarterback — and that’s looking like a best-case scenario.

The 2019 Bills might be this year’s version of the 2018 Bears and the 2017 Jaguars: A dangerous playoff team led by an elite defense that is ultimately held back by its young quarterback before regressing the following season. Like Bortles and Trubisky, Allen has certainly shown enough flashes of brilliance to give Bills fans hope for a brighter future. Like this throw to Dawson Knox in the Patriots loss…

The problem is there are even more examples of him missing the exact same throw…

History has not been kind to quarterbacks like Josh Allen. He has the physical talent to be a special player but so have many failed quarterbacks before him. If Allen is going to turn things around and blossom into the franchise quarterback Buffalo is hoping for, he will have to overcome some seriously long odds to do it.

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