Josh Allen - an inconvenient truth

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Poke in New England
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I couldn’t have been the only one who watched both WYO/AF and Bills/Chiefs this weekend, and it got me thinking. It is an incredible source of pride to see Josh Allen continue to take leaps and get his deserved recognition as an elite NFL quarterback with a real chance to bring Buffalo its first Super Bowl. Hearing him say “Josh Allen, Wyoming, Go Pokes” on a premier Sunday night football game before balling out in front of the whole nation is a really special thing.

But, given the state of Wyoming football, I can’t get rid of this sour taste from my mouth. This coaching staff, led by Bohl, seems to get credited often for Josh’s emergence as an NFL superstar. Indeed he was a diamond in the rough who they saw something in and brought to Laramie (had just one other school done so we may not have been so fortunate). In reality I think the Josh Allen arc calls into question how much credit this staff actually deserves. As far as the product on the field at Wyoming goes, it is an inescapable truth that we failed to win a conference title (or even an outright division title) with this once-in-a-century prospect at Quarterback and a supporting cast full of players who have stuck in the NFL as well. The season where we achieved the most national prominence ended up 8-6, with 3 humiliating losses to inferior teams and a gut punch Bowl game loss to a bitter rival.

As far as Josh himself, I cant help but think that we nearly broke him, wasting a generational talent through poor development, recruiting, and in-game coaching. The year following the 8-6 season is a “what-if” due to an Allen injury, but he was hardly set up to succeed. We all like to dunk on the draft analysts who missed so badly on Josh, but they could be forgiven for looking at his numbers that year and coming away unimpressed. The real crime was that they judged Josh by these numbers instead of looking at the film and context, which would have shown that his incredible raw talent was being almost completely wasted at Wyoming.

Josh Allen is, statistically, a total anomaly in the NFL for having improved over his first 3 seasons the way he did. If not for the patience and overall competence of the Bills organization, which put in the work to develop Josh by fixing his flaws, putting pieces around him and scheming an offense to maximize his skills, who knows where he is right now. All of that is work that Wyoming failed to do, and it almost cost a very talented, hard-working kid a very lucrative and successful career. As we debate the future direction of the Wyoming program, it is time to have a hard conversation about these inconvenient truths.
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MrTitleist
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Still perplexes me to this day the number of players -currently- in the NFL that played on that Poinsettia Bowl team vs BYU and we still somehow lost. That might literally be the most talented Wyoming team to ever take the field.
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ragtimejoe1
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I think most of the narrative outside of 307 was that Josh succeeded DESPITE WYO. There is very little evidence that Bohl and company can develop a QB, and so far, can run an offense unless there is simply more talent on the offensive side of the ball.

I'm hoping that at some point, Bohl recognizes his limitations on offense and takes the appropriate steps to correct it. To me, the biggest thing is QB recruitment and development. Outside of Josh, WYO has missed wildly on both accounts. With respect to Josh, they succeeded in recruitment only, imo. I've been hoping this is the Vigen effect that will correct itself in the coming years---we'll see.
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307bball
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I guess we are again getting into the question of what the effect of head coach really is. Does a team that Bohl is the head coach of make quarterbacks better?...Seems safe to put this one into the negative category. He was only ever with Vigen until very recently so I suppose if you feel like the OC has a large part to play then you could be at least hopeful. I am less optimistic on this front. I had some hope that things would be different for our offense in the post Vigen era .... Kind of like what happened when Bohl parted with Stanard. Does not look like that is happening so far. Is it too early to say definitively?...sure...but the forecast is not good.
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MrTitleist wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 9:45 am Still perplexes me to this day the number of players -currently- in the NFL that played on that Poinsettia Bowl team vs BYU and we still somehow lost. That might literally be the most talented Wyoming team to ever take the field.
Agreed, and I think that’s pretty damning. The failures of that season are the main reason I have such strong reservations about Bohl.
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LanderPoke
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We can't develop QBs. It's painfully obvious by now. This is why I think Wyo Vaquero was onto something when he said we should get a good JC QB. A JC QB would be the way to go because our staff can't develop QBs
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The 2016 team is up there with teams like Alabama in terms of contributions at the NFL level. You are right that it is a bit crazy that team didn't win more games.

But when we evaluate a coach and the state of the program, we can't just say this coach/program is poor in this area we need to move on. Every coach and program is going to have its strengths and weaknesses. Bohl's strength has been to identify and bring in talent. Bohl has consistently put a team on the field that will compete all 4 quarters. The weaknesses have been offensive production (specifically the passing game), head scratching losses and becoming an elite team. But when we look at the program as a whole - this is the strongest it has been since Tiller. Bohl has his weaknesses but the strengths outweigh them and make him the right person for the job.
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Name a quarterback that has improved under Bohl... Crickets. This staff somehow has managed to cause every passer in their time at UW to regress as passers. Josh only succeeded because he's a freak athlete with a cannon arm along with the crazy amount of NFL talent he played with at UW. Josh Allen had to learn basic throwing mechanics once he made it to the NFL. How pathetic is that? It's unfortunate all of us little league coaches can see the issue but the million dollar man can't.

With that said, we have seen the ceiling with Bohl and it's not very high. The reality is this is Wyoming and it could be so much worse. I'll take Bohl and his good defense and 6-6 most years over the train wreck UW could become with a bad hire. The players still buy into the poop so we could basically kiss every decent player goodbye if UW moved in from Bohl.
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People always mention our identity as a strength. In some ways it is. But it's a double edged sword. At this point, I think Bohl is an absolute top tier defensive coach who is nearly clueless on offense as far as head coaches go. And that has a lot to do with identity on both sides of the football.
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Poke in New England
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MrTitleist wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 9:45 am Still perplexes me to this day the number of players -currently- in the NFL that played on that Poinsettia Bowl team vs BYU and we still somehow lost. That might literally be the most talented Wyoming team to ever take the field.
7 active roster NFL players:

J Allen
M Epps
C Roullier
C Granderson
J Hollister
L Wilson
A Wingard

4 others with NFL time:

B Hill
T Gentry
R Gafford
T Mayfield
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LanderPoke
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Poke in New England wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 3:58 pm
MrTitleist wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 9:45 am Still perplexes me to this day the number of players -currently- in the NFL that played on that Poinsettia Bowl team vs BYU and we still somehow lost. That might literally be the most talented Wyoming team to ever take the field.
7 active roster NFL players:

J Allen
M Epps
C Roullier
C Granderson
J Hollister
L Wilson
A Wingard

4 others with NFL time:

B Hill
T Gentry
R Gafford
T Mayfield
You forgot Cash Maluia. He started the conference championship game.

SDSU had an insanely talented team too. Two teams laden with NFL talent going at it.
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Bohl has flat out said that he is only a CEO of this team - the OC & DC and their assistants do the coaching of the players. I don't believe Vigen was a great QB coach, but I do believe Scotty Hazelton was a great defensive coach. It was a blow to this team when we lost Hazelton. The jury is still out on the new OC & DC.
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Poke in New England
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LanderPoke wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 4:16 pm
Poke in New England wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 3:58 pm
MrTitleist wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 9:45 am Still perplexes me to this day the number of players -currently- in the NFL that played on that Poinsettia Bowl team vs BYU and we still somehow lost. That might literally be the most talented Wyoming team to ever take the field.
7 active roster NFL players:

J Allen
M Epps
C Roullier
C Granderson
J Hollister
L Wilson
A Wingard

4 others with NFL time:

B Hill
T Gentry
R Gafford
T Mayfield
You forgot Cash Maluia. He started the conference championship game.

SDSU had an insanely talented team too. Two teams laden with NFL talent going at it.
Thanks. Tyler Hall was on the roster too. He's been on a few practice squads
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