The Draw Play

Several Bills fans mentioned having this exact experience in the comments of the previous comic. I’ve seen many other instances of this experience on the web by yet more Bills fans. It seems fitting to just straight up capture the moment here, because it’s more or less the biggest piece of first round hilarity. Of course, this comic may eventually come back to look hilarious in hindsight, but we’ll have to wait to find out.

I’m not much of a scout but by the end even I got pretty skeptical of Josh Allen as a prospect. History seems to offer many examples of the “Physical specimen” with the “Big arm” who just had all the physical tools necessary to be a stud…but actually kinda sucks. Bortles feels like the most recent example of “Guy who looks the part but might not actually be any good”. Bort has improved, but he’s nothing special. If there is any QB in this draft class that screams bust, it’s Josh Allen.

His accuracy sucked. His decision making sucked. His competition mostly sucked and he still didn’t cream them. But damn can he throw the ball real good! Coaches just love the idea of the perfectly shaped specimen that they can teach over the guy who can play but has some physical limits. I guess when you have a system you’d rather find a guy you can plug in and teach than work around a guy with a specific set of strengths. Josh Allen is a giant golem, ready to be molded to Sean McDermott’s whims.

I don’t think the Bills are the right fit for Allen. I don’t know if this Bills team is a good fit for Allen. This is the team that couldn’t develop Tyrod into something slightly better, despite Tyrod being their best QB in a decade. This is the coaching staff that decided Tyrod should sit for Nathan Peterman, he of the 5 first half INTs.

I got a lot of flack from a few Bills fans for pointing this out, saying that “at the time” the decision was correct and only looks bad in hindsight. I disagree with this line of logic. At the time Tyrod had just come off his worst performance (against the Saints, who ended up being very good) and it felt like the Bills panicked.  It was incredibly obvious to anyone watching that game that Nathan Peterman was not ready to be the starter yet. As a coach, you have to make the decisions to put your team in the best position to win. Hindsight is a valuable tool. That move was proven to be quite the mistake, and it reflects poorly on McDermott as a coach. You could argue “If Peterman had played well Sean would have looked like a genius” but that’s not what happened. The move was proven to be the wrong choice at the time. Don’t defend a bad decision on the result in some alternate universe where Nathan Peterman wasn’t in over his head and didn’t suck total balls. Tyrod wasn’t playing good football but playing Peterman instead was not a good decision.

So I’m skeptical this is the situation that Josh Allen belongs in. Maybe he’ll turn out pretty good and this comic will become ironically hilarious. But at this point I think it’s fair to be a little suspicious.

For the record this is what I expect out of the 1st round QB class, with almost no expertise whatsoever:
Sam Darnold – basically Andy Dalton
Baker Mayfield – flashes greatness on occasion but never quite puts it all together and fades away after a couple years
Josh Allen – busts struggles to earn starts in his second year
Josh Rosen – looks pretty good but can’t stop getting hurt and becomes a “what could have been” scenario.
Lamar Jackson – totally owns bones…in two years when he finally starts.

EDIT: This comic is really funny in retrospect from 2020