Longtime ESPN NFL Draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. had Wyoming QB Josh Allen mocked as the No. 1 pick months before he eventually fell to the No. 7 pick of the 2018 NFL Draft. Here’s how he justified it:
There are reasons to like Bills No. 7 pick Josh Allen. ‘He just wins games’ does not apply.
He’s a promising athlete who could become a great QB. That’s about it!
Photo by Matthew Holst/Getty Images
GRAAHHBHBBHHHRRHRHRRRRRARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.
There were good reasons to draft Allen at No. 7:
- He’s tall, which NFL teams adore.
- He’s really athletic, especially for a big guy.
- He makes some great throws.
There are also plenty of reasons not to draft Allen in the first two rounds or so, including his completely mediocre stats and his alarming number of not-so-nice throws.
And there are some QBs for whom you can use He Just Wins as an argument.
Clemson’s Deshaun Watson, for example. We hammered that case home before last year’s draft, and he validated every word of it in his rookie season.
Boise State’s Kellen Moore and Florida’s Tim Tebow were two other examples of He Just Wins quarterbacks. Though their actual NFL cases were slimmer than Watson’s, they did — in fact — win a lot of ballgames in college.
Allen does not fit the He Just Wins archetype in any way.
Wyoming went 15-9 against FBS teams with Allen as a starter, thanks in large part to a solid defense. It’s absolutely true that that’s a good mark for the Cowboys, who hadn’t won eight games in a season since 2011.
But if we’re gonna make No. 1 picks out of every QB who wins a Mountain West division and/or the Potato Bowl, we could pick Boise State’s Brett Rypien or Idaho’s Matt Linehan, who were two of the many QBs to outrank Allen in passer rating in both of the last two years.
I’m just confused.
Baker Mayfield is a He Just Wins quarterback, as is J.T. Barrett. Lamar Jackson is a He Somehow Overcomes His Vaporous Offensive Line And Defense To Usually Win quarterback. Josh Rosen is your He’s Simply Good At The Physical Act Of Playing Quarterback guy. Sam Darnold has taken the He’s All Over The Place, But Really Looks Like A Quarterback slot.
Allen should be in that last mold as well, but trying to cram him into the role of a winner-y winner has me just as confused with his NFL hype as I was back in August.
If the draft-industrial complex were to just say, “We like Josh Allen because we like Josh Allen, and that’s all there is to it,” that’d be preferable to whatever’s been going on for the past 18 months.
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