Josh Allen, warts and all, has stormed into the top pick picture

The 2018 quarterback class has been heralded for at least a year as an embarrassment of riches at the top of the draft, with the likes of Sam Darnold, Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, and Josh Rosen to be handed the keys to the kingdom for whichever franchises get the chance to draft him.

Yet, even with that extensive buildup, the prototypical tall, big-armed quarterback has muscled his way into the picture in the form of Josh Allen. The Wyoming product has been discussed as a possibility to leapfrog some of those buzzed about QBs in the top five. Along with Jackson, the Browns plan to meet with Allen this week.

There’s been considerable chatter within the last week of the Browns taking a shine to Allen as a potential top pick. In the weeks leading up to the draft, there’s little knowing what constitutes legitimate information and what are cryptic smokescreens fed to reporters to throw off other general managers.

The Browns front office’s purported love for analytics notwithstanding, Allen fits the mold of quarterback that drives teams batty come draft time. Allen is 6’5” and has the strongest arm of the first round graded QBs this year. He also was a rising prospect coming out of the combine, which shouldn’t mean a great deal, but still somewhat does with personnel people. Though Blake Bortles was something of a fan and media darling this past postseason, for the most part he’s been a disappointment since the Jaguars shocked everyone by taking Bortles third overall in the 2014 draft. Why? Well, he’s a big guy with a big arm. That archetype continues to hold sway in NFL circles.

It also helps that new Browns GM John Dorsey has a history with big-armed passers during his stays in Seattle, Green Bay, and Kansas City. Dorsey was a scout with the Packers when they traded for Brett Favre, another quarterback who had struggled with accuracy in college. For whatever it’s worth, a friend of Dorsey’s told Peter King at the start of April that the Browns will take Allen over Darnold with the first pick, then take Penn State running back Saquon Barkley with the fourth pick.

Allen’s college tape isn’t terribly difficult to nitpick. His completion rate hovered at just about 56 percent in each of his two years as a starter. That’s not the sort of stat that translates well to today’s NFL. In the pros last year, QBs like Tom Savage and Brock Osweiler put up those numbers. Not the kind of company you want your incoming franchise quarterback to be associated with.

Former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky noted some salient weaknesses when watching college tape of Allen, including a tendency to stare down receivers and a poor ability to react to the unexpected. And not some crazy inexplicable stuff but the garden variety things quarterbacks will deal with multiple times a game, like rushers breaking free.

“There’s a clip against Iowa where he changes a protection. The Will linebacker blitzes and everybody runs hot and Josh Allen does not move till his third step of the drop,” Orlovsky said of Allen on King’s podcast. “What were you thinking? What was going on? And that shows up way too much for me. And again, that stuff is not fixable. You think Dick LeBeau is easier to do it against? When he’s got Star Wars on the back end going on? … When the ball is snapped it's almost like, I don't know what's going on … It seems like he doesn't have a plan and a process, and to get to the NFL level and to not be able to do the little things—if you can't do the little things, you can't do the big things. The little things are your plan and your process. The big things are executing against what happens. And so it just seems like he doesn't have that as part of his DNA, as part of his quarterbacking. And that for me I go, 'Well, what does it matter how big he is, how athletic he is if you could throw it to the moon, the field’s a hundred yards.' To not be able to adjust or react to a Will linebacker blitzing is alarming to me. Alarming.”

The comparison of Allen to Carson Wentz is tempting, given that they’re both big guys from smaller schools. One anonymous front office person shot down that likeness to King this week, saying any team that looks at Allen and imagines getting another Wentz is making a massive mistake. Again, there’s little knowing how much manipulation is going on there, so as all things in draft silly season, it’s reasonable to take with a helping of salt.

Also, spurning the big schools for prospects from more obscure programs might be a way for a GM to look smart but doesn’t always make for the best prospects. Last year, both Mitch Trubisky and Pat Mahomes went before Deshaun Watson, who had led Clemson to a national championship months before. Watson’s rookie season was tragically cut short by injury. Prior to that, he already appeared as though he belonged among the league’s best. It’s still early on Trubisky and Mahomes, but the odds aren’t in their favor.

The main benefit for the Browns and Allen is he has the proverbial biggest upside of the first-round quarterbacks. That can be a trap, except the Browns do have the luxury of being more patient than a lot of other teams might be in their position. After all, they are still mostly building their roster, have conditioned their fans to low expectations, and managed to land a respectable stopgap QB in Tyrod Taylor. Still, for a fan base that put forth a sardonic parade after the Browns went 0-16, they likely won’t want to see the team take a quarterback that will presumably be years away from usefulness.