Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen are making the NFL rethink how to evaluate QBs

Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, and some of their peers have broken our brains.

These two talents, who will stand across the field from each other on Sunday when the Kansas City Chiefs square off with the Buffalo Bills for the first time since their epic AFC Divisional Round game, have warped how we view the quarterback position.

We now grade these quarterbacks on a different scale. We have adjusted our expectations regarding quarterback play as a result. These two, along with other young elite talents at the position like Justin Herbert and Lamar Jackson, have altered our view of playing quarterback. The impossible has become normal, and airbending throws along with shape-shifting scrambles are part of the everyday, when years ago they were barely contemplated.

Gone is the notion of what playing quarterback entails, the image of a battleship in the pocket working through reads as chaos unfolds around them. Instead we crave creativity, a combination of arm talent, athleticism, and arm angles. A player who does not take what the defense gives him, but instead takes what it refuses to concede.

Allen and Mahomes have broken our brains in another way.

They — along with a few of their peers — have broken the mold when it comes to quarterback scouting.

I still remember being at the Senior Bowl during 2018, the year Allen was drafted seventh overall by the Buffalo Bills. Allen was down in Mobile along with Baker Mayfield, who went first overall, and they were on the same team during the week. One day at practice, a coach brought out a big net, with five targets on it, and placed it on the back line of the end zone.

From about 20 yards out, Mayfield hit all five targets. He went five-for-five.

Allen took his turn, and missed the net completely.

It was a microcosm of their respective evaluations. Mayfield seemed like a surer thing at the time, and Allen needed a monumental amount of work. Part of the reason? Accuracy and ball placement. While at Wyoming, Allen’s best single-season completion percentage came in 2015.

When he completed 4 of 6 passes for 51 yards.

The two years he was a starter? Allen’s best completion percentage came in 2017, with a mark of 56.3%. He broke one of the “Parcells Rules,” relating to the seven rules the legendary head coach had when drafting a quarterback, as Allen fell short of the target 60% completion percentage.

It led some analysts to write this about him before the draft:

Allen still needs to learn the finer aspects of playing the position. Touch, timing, rhythm and anticipation. Feel for underneath defenders and making those throws into windows. He tends to rely on his arm too much, and it gets him into trouble in situations where his reads and processing is not up to speed. Too often his Plan B is to “escape to the right and throw the ball downfield hard and fast.” It can work on occasion, but it is not a surefire route to success in the NFL.

Yeah, that’s from me ...

Betting on Allen required faith that he would develop while in the NFL, something that is often a mixed proposition.

The Bills made that bet.

Why?

Because there is more to playing the position than completion percentages, or hitting a stationary target during practice. Playing quarterback goes beyond completion percentage. And while Allen’s numbers in college required him to be an exception to the rule, sometimes in scouting, you have to be open to the exception, and place a bet on it.

The Bills did just that.

Buffalo had a plan in place for Allen, and saw both on film and while meeting with him the talent for playing the position in the modern era.

What did the Bills see? A rocket for a right arm, the athleticism to adapt to the modern NFL, and the willingness to do what was necessary to become an elite quarterback.

They saw more than just a completion percentage. Said general manager Brandon Beane a few weeks after the draft:

“And we brought him here to Buffalo too. You know we saw him in his surroundings in Laramie, so let’s bring him to our surroundings, and he just seemed like one of our type of guys. And you saw that leadership and the things I saw on the sidelines when I saw him play live. Even at the Senior Bowl he was high-fiving linemen, patting guys on the butt, clapping all the time. He’s into it every play. It wasn’t about him, it was about the team, the we, and that’s what I think is really important.”

They saw a leader, a fit with their organization, and one of their “type of guys.”

For many positions, the evaluation is somewhat of a “snap to whistle” proposition. How well do they understand their assignment, and how well do they execute it during the play.

Quarterback is different. Quarterback is more of a “Monday morning meeting room to whistle” proposition. Beyond executing during the course of a single play, which of course remains important, the quarterback has to do more. He is the face of the franchise, a leader both on- and off-field.

A quarterback has to be able to step into the huddle and command the respect of the other ten players around him. He has to be able to look into their eyes and have them believe they will, together, achieve their common goal. The moment you step into that huddle and see ten sets of eyes refusing to look back at you, refusing to believe in you, you are lost as a leader.

Lost as a quarterback.

That ability does not show up in a box score. But it matters at the position.

The Bills saw that, it was part of their vision for Allen and the future of their franchise.

As for the completion percentage concerns? Over the last three years, as Allen developed into one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks, his completion percentage was north of that 60% mark each year.

What looked like a risk at the time paid off, in a huge way, and the Bills have their franchise quarterback.

The overwhelming majority of what I know about scouting and player evaluation comes from Dan Hatman. Hatman, a former NFL scout with both the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants, now runs the Scouting Academy, a program that teaches prospective scouts, media members or even fans how teams scout and evaluate players year-round.

I have gotten to know Hatman as both an Academy student, and then later as a colleague in the media space at Inside the Pylon.

Years ago, Hatman expounded on a list of scouting rules for Inside the Pylon. In the series, the former scout expanded on a list of scouting rules put together by long-time draft analyst Matt Miller. Among the list you see Rule #4.

“Traits not scheme.”

Particularly with quarterbacks, impressive college production could be more a product of the player’s scheme, not their traits at the position. Eye-popping numbers might not translate to the next level, if the player’s actual athletic and mental traits are not conducive to NFL success.

That leads us to Mahomes.

Coming out of Texas Tech — where he played for Kliff Kingsbury — Mahomes operated in a system influenced heavily by Air Raid concepts. That, combined with the idea that “nobody plays defense in the Big 12,” led to the notion that Mahomes was more a product of his surroundings and the scheme he played in, and not a product of his traits at the quarterback position.

For his part, Mahomes did his best to push back on the narrative, dismissing the notion that Kingsbury’s offense was “simple” and telling anyone who would listen that he was ready to handle an NFL offense. Prior to the 2017 draft, he sat down with the brilliant Doug Farrar, then with Bleacher Report, to watch film and talk about his college system.

As Mahomes put it:

“The things I did that were easily transferable—the coaches would call the play into me, I had to signal to the receivers, and tell the linemen and running backs what the protection was. So, I had a lot on me to do that stuff, plus I had the freedom to change the play. So, those two things are things that NFL quarterbacks already do; to see if this play works against this coverage. Is it the coverage we wanted, and what does it look like pre-snap?”

Or, to put it another way:

Will he have a problem with NFL verbiage? How about if he breaks down what he considered to be Texas Tech’s most complicated play from a verbiage standpoint?

“Probably ‘Green Rug Rock Pop 2 East Bill Log 95 Z Post B Will.” Pop is play action, and the formation is Green Rug Rock—that’s the backs behind me. Rug means that the B back [second running back] is on the line of scrimmage. We have our ‘Y’ receiver in the game, and our ‘Z’ receiver, and the H-back is out [away from the formation]. ‘Pop 2 East Bill Log’ means that we’re going to fake our outside zone to the right, with the B-back blocking in front. We’re going to fake that. ‘Log’ means the backside tackle is going to lock on the [backside defensive] end, and ‘95’ is our concept of the play. We tag a Z Post [the ‘Z’ receiver running a post route], and for the B-back, we tag a ‘Will.’ [the second running back blocking the weak-side linebacker].”

Still, many NFL teams were not convinced. Rather than looking at Mahomes’ impressive traits as a passer — the jaw-dropping creativity he shows now in the NFL was on full display while in college — there was a focus on the system. The scheme. He was a product of the offense, and when he got to the NFL his flawed footwork, loose mechanics, overly-aggressive nature and more would be exposed by better defenses.

Sure.

There were some who believed. If you have some time, you can watch this hour-long film study I did with Matt Waldman, the creator of The Rookie Scouting Portfolio, where we studied Mahomes before the draft. We moved from being excited about Mahomes, to almost just giggling over him at the end. We were convinced it could work:

I include this not to highlight something I got right, but to illustrate the point that the following year, I failed to see it with Allen.

Everyone makes mistakes, even the NFL, when it comes to quarterbacks.

Let’s return to the Hatman scouting rules for a moment.

Number 10? We all make mistakes.

Teams miss on quarterbacks all the time. Despite having all the resources at their disposal, from hiring investigators to calling up high school and youth football coaches, teams miss all the time at the game’s most important position.

Some teams missed on Allen. Some teams missed on Mahomes. Some missed on both.

The same goes for us in the media.

But the success of these two quarterbacks has shaped the league’s evaluations at the position. In recent years, teams, along with those of us in the media, have altered our evaluations of the position. Shaped by the mistakes of the past, and the trends in the league, we have expanded our view of what it takes to succeed at the position. During the 2021 draft cycle, we saw three quarterbacks go inside the top 11 that might not have been first round picks in prior seasons: Zach Wilson, Trey Lance and Justin Fields. All three were athletic quarterbacks with big arms, who faced questions about schemes, systems and their NFL futures.

The accurate, pro-ready, pocket passer? That was Mac Jones. Who was the fifth quarterback selected in the first round.

Allen and Mahomes helped break the quarterback-scouting mold.

And we should be thankful for it.