Buffalo Bills' Josh Allen Lagging Behind His 2018 Draft Quarterback Peers

Buffalo Bills' Josh Allen, the No. 7 pick in the 2018 NFL draft, lags behind most of his first-round contemporaries in three important passing categories over the past two seasons.

We are comparing Allen with Baker Mayfield (No. 1 pick overall), Sam Darnold (No. 3 overall), Josh Rosen (No. 10 overall) and Lamar Jackson (No. 32) over the course of their two NFL seasons.

The categories we analyzed were: pass completion percentage, yards gained per pass attempt and passing yards per game.

And again, these statistics are a cumulative number over the 2018 NFL season and this season.

Those passing categories strip out the imbalances of other statistics that can be padded by more games played. For instance, Baker Mayfield is going to have more passing yards than Josh Allen because the Browns QB has played 20 games since 2018 and Allen has played only 17.

We are not considering the effects of injuries or other variables such as the fact that Josh Rosen was traded from Arizona to Miami at the beginning of the 2019 season.

Let's look at Josh Allen. He isn't first in any category. He stands fourth among the top five drafted in completion percentage, fourth in passing yards per attempt, and third in passing yards per game.

If we create a points system, starting with five points for a first-place finish, four points for a second-place finish, and so on, we can see who has been the best overall QB among the five in the three passing categories we are evaluating.

Cleveland Browns' Baker Mayfield was the winner overall with 14 points (two first-place finishes and a second). Baltimore Ravens' Lamar Jackson and New York Jets' Sam Darnold tied for second with 10 points each, while Josh Allen was third with seven points and the Dolphins' Josh Rosen was last with only four points.

As the bar chart below illustrates, Jackson comes out ahead of all the others with a completion percentage of 61.9 since 2018. Mayfield is a close second at 61.7%. They are the only first-round QBs from 2018 who are above the 60% threshold.

Darnold has completed 59.5% of his passes, while Allen comes in fourth with a 56.1% completion percentage over two seasons. Rosen ranks last of the five with a 54.8% completion rate.

When you consider that Jackson was the fifth QB taken in the 2018 draft, at No. 32 overall, his performance has been especially satisfying for Baltimore.

At the same time, it's perhaps a disappointment in Buffalo that Allen is doing so poorly in this category compared to his draft stock.

Of course, Allen's mark is somewhat skewed by his terrible rookie campaign when he had an NFL-low completion rate of 52.8% among starters. Allen's performance was a major reason why the Bills finished at 6-10 and failed to make the playoffs.

This year, Allen has been much improved in the accuracy department. After five games, the Bills QB has a completion percentage of 62.6% and he has led Buffalo to a 4-1 record. But his first-year numbers have kept his career percentage down.

When you look at yards gained per pass attempt, the order of the five QBs is very similar to the comparison in completion percentage. The QB who is No. 1 is Mayfield with 7.6 yards per pass attempt. Josh Allen again comes fourth.

The third and final category to compare the five quarterbacks taken in the first round of the 2018 draft is passing yards per game.

Mayfield again comes up on top with an average of 261.1 passing yards per game. Josh Allen ranks No. 3 with an average of 188 yards per game. This was the only category where Lamar Jackson came up last with an average of only 123.1 yards per game. But much of that is due to the fact that the Ravens run the ball more than most other NFL teams.

So, using this evaluation method, the best-performing quarterback from the first-round of the NFL draft in 2018 has been Baker Mayfield. He had 14 points on our scale (5 points each for first place in two categories and four points for a second-place finish).

Josh Allen lags behind Mayfield, Jackson and Darnold overall in the three key passing categories considered here. But there is some consolation that the Bills didn't take Josh Rosen, who has been a disaster with the Dolphins.

Yet, there will be those in Buffalo who would argue that so far it looks like Lamar Jackson might have been the better choice for the Bills in the 2018 NFL draft.

Again, only passing numbers were considered. Not rushing numbers.

But if you were to look at rushing numbers only, Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen are neck and neck, with Jackson averaging 52.5 yards per game over the past two seasons, while Allen has averaged 46.4 yards - by far out-legging the other three QBs in their draft class.

The comparison between Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen will be interesting to watch as the season progresses.