NFL

There are at least 3 games where their defense just couldnt make a stop in late 4th quarter and lost because of that

my first reaction was “mvp level?!” He just throws it deep and hopes for the best when things dont work out. Hes singelhandedly cost them games with his overaggressive play style. He has moments when he looks great but he balances it out with just as bad plays.

Narratives are dumb and are driven by team results and short term thinking more than anything. Allen has one bad game, he’s trash. One great game, he’s God.

Smartest thing to do is look at his overall body of work and realize that he’s actually a damn good QB who consistently gives his team 5000+ yards and 40+ TDs of total offense a year (on track to roughly match those numbers for a 4th straight year, I say roughly because in 2020 he was 35 yards short of 5,000.) Despite mostly having had bad O-lines and limited run games (although I think they’ve been better this year) and a lot of inconsistency past his #1 receiver.

He definitely has flaws. He will never be Aaron Rodgers in terms of taking care of the ball and avoiding turnovers. His career INT% is 2.4, which is roughly comparable to Drew Brees, Tua Tagovailoa, Joe Flacco, Matt Stafford, Ryan Tannehill, Ben Roethlisberger, and Andrew Luck. From 2019-2021 it was 2.0%, which is better than Jalen Hurts’ and Lamar Jackson’s career averages and in line with Joe Burrow. The last two years, with insanely injured defenses adding even more pressure for him to be everything on top of being the Bills’ pass game AND run game, those percentages have gone up. Take all that for what you will.

It’s unfortunate that we can’t run more experiments in the NFL. It would be fun to see what Josh Allen’s or Lamar Jackson’s numbers might be if they played for Andy Reid or Doug Pederson or had two elite targets like Joe Burrow and Tua do. It would be fun to see what Herbert could be doing if he wasn’t held back by Staley’s coaching and a terrible defense. It would be fun to see what sort of numbers Burrow could have by now if he could stay healthy. I feel like there are too many contextual factors that cause year to year swings in players’ performances for Reddit/Twitter/bloggers to always jump to such definitive conclusions on a player being either elite or trash.

The NFL is both the best and worst sport for sports talk by a mile. Opinions on the entire careers of players change by the week. Brock Purdy went from star to bust to star within about a month. Same with the Josh Allen takes, everything from Favre to MVP to bust. Allen's obviously a great player, but people love to shit on players after a loss or bad performance, to the point that it reads like satire even though it's not.

Been the narrative since he entered the league. Dude loves turning the ball over. Usually, winning teams don’t do that. Hence their record.

There is no illusion, Josh Allen is losing these games for the Bills.

Yeah, it’s definitely not an MVP season lol

Yes. Media got to talk about something.

He's had two awful turnover filled games (that were tied or leading late in the game anyway) and had some bad luck with tipped passes but other than that he's been lights out.

Orlovsky had some good analysis on this a week or two ago.

That was the narrative yes (and randomly is again every few weeks) but not the reality

That's the narrative despite throwing the 6th least amount of turnover worthy passes according to PFF. (That was before the eagles game, so it likely changed.)

I think that was 2 weeks ago. And 2 weeks before that he was mvp caliber again lol. You really don't see nearly as much overreaction as in other sports. Lebron's team got cooked by almost 50 last night and there's no "he's washed" talk at all. Wonder why that is? Maybe becasue they play so many more games.

He still is but so is the “front runner” who really shouldn’t be higher than 5th in the MVP conversation behind 3 other QBs and 2 position players.

It’s legit the difference between people who value analytics and really dive into the game versus people who just follow narratives and listen to talking heads. The narrative says turnovers make him an overrated qb because it’s an easy lazy argument to make in 2 sentences. People who actually are understanding what they are watching, who I respect, say otherwise.

Allen has two more turnovers than mahones and hurts but hasn't been on bye yet (so has one more game played). He also has the most TDs.

Like anything in sports news the most dramatic take become the official narrative.

He's had a better TD:Int ratio than Mahomes for most of the season. He was never the issue other than week 1, even when we we had a JV offensive coordinator he was the only reason things worked at all.

He's always gonna be a guy who throws a decent number of picks cuz he trusts his elite arm to make throws into the tightest windows. Sometimes you win, sometimes you get burned, but either way that capability adds a pretty big advantage to the offense.

He has around the same turnovers as the other top QBs other than Purdy and Herbert.

Allen is 29th in the league for PFF turnover worthy plays. He's had a few bad picks, but way more bad luck.

Compare his numbers to the current MVP favourite.

Allen has 2 more than Jalen Hurts, with one more game played this season. Let’s see how many the MVP favorite gets this week.

I think hes tied as a league interception leader right now. Hes a great qb but hes not having an mvp level season. I dont think theres any fair argument for that.

Occasional MVP for opposing defenses

He’s got a total of 2 more turnovers than Tua and hurts, other mvp candidates and has a lower turnover %per touch and lower turnover worthy play rate. It’s a narrative but a lazy one.

Guys going to end up with over 5,000 yards total offense and close to or exceeding 50 TDs. While being too 5 in completion % and #1 in EPA.

In 4 of our 6 losses he lead the team down to take the lead on his last drive only For the D to squander.

If the D holds up on 2 of those games he would be the betting favorite for MVP, by far right now.

Among people who Josh and us that is the narrative but it requires you to forget literally every other statistics exists. In context the primary driver is volume, and he is very efficient with his volume.

His INT are up and his fumbles are way down compared to the last couple of years.