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These stats are prior to either of them getting elite recievers. It will be interesting to see how much better Tua will look with an O-line, running game, and an elite receiver. He will never play the game the same way but he can absolutely have similar success if thngs come together like many think it will.


Tua's first 20 starts
4,336 Passing Yards
32 total TDs
15 INTs
66.2% Completion %
13-7 Record


Josh Allen's first 20 starts
3,727 Passing Yards
32 total TDs
19 INTs
55.4% Completion %
11-9 Record

In my opinion it'll come down to this:

https://twitter.com/TJDMCR/status/1426609732031287305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1426609732031287305%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=

Can whatever is needed in Tua's surroundings to overcome that difference be assembled?

If that was a common problem you might be on to something but I'm guessing if I tried I could probably find a similar play where Josh Allen was intercepted too ... especially during his first two seasons. Most of the great QBs have made many mistakes along the way to figuring out what they can and can't get away with.

I learned this coaching soccer. You can't be afraid to make mistakes and get any better. If you always play it safe then you have topped out ands will actually regress. I don't think Tua has topped out just yet.

Tua vs Allen is a really bad comparison, IMHO. It's pretty difficult to find two more different quarterbacks. The knock on Allen was that his accuracy was horrible. The knock on Tua is that his arm is weak. Allen managed probably the biggest turn-around in accuracy for a quarterback. What can Tua do? Hard to imagine him suddenly increasing his throwing velocity massively. Unless the deficiency is due to poor mechanics (and it isn't), then there's just very little that can be done to improve Tua's velocity.

So, basically, Allen always had the potential. He had the raw physical tools that GMs drool over, but without the ability and accuracy. Winning in the lottery is very rare, but that's basically what happened with Allen. Don't get me wrong, there are probably aspects of coaching (and not giving up on him), surrounding him with talent, and aspects of his mentality that maximize the probably of winning that lottery, but it's still very rare.

Does that mean Tua cannot develop into an elite quarterback? No, I don't think so. His accuracy down-field was actually very good and his short-range accuracy is already elite. The problem has actually mainly been the 10 to 15 yard range where he has "only" been league average. (And of course the league-low YAC, but in this context that's not on him.)

Basically, league average completion percentage by depth of target goes from about 90% to 80% behind the line of scrimmage, then drops sharply to around 75% for 1 yard passes and decreases linearly from there to the high 20s, crossing 50% at pretty much exactly 20 yards depth of target.

Tua had only 10 throws with a depth of target of 20 yards or more, but he completed exactly 50% of them - way above average, since those throws ranged from 20 to 35 yards deep (and not just exactly 20, which is where the league average hits 50%). Although with such a small sample size, it's pretty much impossible to really say  anything from a statistical point of view.

For completeness sake: Tua's throws in the -5 to +10 yard (depth of target) range were elite - in the same range as players like Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Joe Burrow. The 11 to 15 yard throws were the problem, with below-average completion rates. To be fair, considering who this started as a comparison with, Tua's below average here was still significantly better than Josh Allen's "downright embarrassing". Allen was truly special beyond 20 yards, though.

I do not expect that Tua will have the 3rd year that Josh Allen had, but he now has the tools where he must be a Top 10 QB this season, no excuses barring a ton of injuries to key players. That's all this is about and all you can ask for. His first 2 seasons we did everything to sabotage him, now it's all on him.

Hope he is the guy since this appears to be our window.

What I mean is that it's entirely possible Tua's meager arm strength could place a ceiling on what he's capable of in the league, not only in terms of avoiding interceptions, but also in making throws into tight windows.

The refrain after his first season was that he wasn't making throws to receivers who were "NFL open," as though that was a vestige of his college career, where "college open" is more substantial.  However, it's entirely possible that pattern of play on his part represented his inherent (or even unconscious) acknowledgement of a limitation in his arm strength, whereby he "knew" on some level that he couldn't get the ball there in time to avoid the defender(s), despite that the receiver was "NFL open" as they called it.  If that was the case, that's potentially a serious limitation on performance.

As with all limitations on performance however, they can be overcome to some degree by the presence of optimal surroundings.  Ryan Tannehill's limitation in pocket awareness is overcome by a tremendous offensive line, for example.  Likewise Tua's limitation, if it exists, could potentially be overcome by other variables.

We'll have to see how it shakes out, but the difference in arm strength between Tua and Allen is definitely something to pay attention to, in terms of how it impacts his game going forward.

All of that is good info, but again we have to broaden this concept of "arm strength" to include velocity as opposed to just distance -- the ability to get the ball there before defenders close the gap -- even on shorter throws.  If Tua doesn't have enough of that he's going to experience a significant limitation in his game.

I'm not sure if the Tua arm strength thing isn't just a meme that sprang up after his hip injury.

Are there metrics that support the claim that Tua has a weak arm?  We know his average depth of target does not indicate that he has a weak arm (there are several elite QBs with similar-or-less ADoT), nor does his completion % down the field.

I'm not even sure one would use something like raw average velocity to measure useful arm strength.  The NFL has a long history of failed QBs firing rockets into the ribs of receivers 7 yards away; it seems counterproductive to punish a QB for using touch on his passes, especially at short range.

What makes this a difficult analysis is that for it to be thorough it would need to include throws he didn't make, perhaps due to his awareness of his inability to generate sufficient velocity to complete those throws before they would be successfully defended.  It becomes very difficult then to objectively analyze things that didn't happen.

We do know his passing efficiency has been lacking through his first two years, which could indicate that some throws are "not" happening, though there isn't a sufficient sample size to know what to attribute that to.

Every QB in the league has throws they choose not to make, though.  So how can we evaluate Tua's purported lack of arm strength statistically, instead of just as a media narrative that seemed to pop up the moment Joe Burrow became an elite prospect?

It's one thing to say Tua is an inefficient passer, has poor accuracy, or exhibits bad decision making.  Josh Allen had all those traits in spades as a green NFL QB.  But that's not the same thing as a lack of arm strength.

Yeah, I'm not so sure his arm is lacking in power. I've never seen him make longer throws that looked like Chad Pennington's. He just makes very short throws due to a variety of factors and it's best that those don't travel 130 MPH.

This question will very likely be answered this season with the field much more opened up.

I saw a post on reddit from an article that showed QBs quickness of release, arm strength and other metrics.  Tua had a quicker release than Aaron Rodgers who has a quicker release than the GOAT Dan Marino.  As far as arm strength, which is velocity in this instance, he was low on the list, however it scored almost the same as DeShaun Watson who no one says has a weak arm.  We all know Tua can throw far, we've seen him throw a 55 yard dime to Jakeem Grant that he dropped, and there are videos circling now of him throwing 70 yards to Lynn Bowden.  I think the whole weak arm thing is overblown.  

https://medium.com/@thetim_dix/nfl-draft-how-strong-is-joe-burrows-arm-b69abd897399 (https://medium.com/@thetim_dix/nfl-draft-how-strong-is-joe-burrows-arm-b69abd897399)

Cool, now do rushing stats between the two.

Why would I do that? The Tds of Allen are included in the total so it doesn't change anything as far as production.

Add an NFL average YAC to his throws and his efficiency rockets up. I'd wager there's a pretty solid correlation between efficiency and time-to-throw as well, so having something that even resembles an offensive line might help.

I don't know if you can say he has a weak arm, I don't remember any talk of this when he was being drafted.  I think it's just a result of his stats not showing long passes because he didn't have the protection for the couple extra seconds for the receivers to get down field.  If it is "weak" there is always the ability to increase that through strength training.

He is a natural right hander, his father made him throw lefty; maybe he should start throwing righty. lol

I think the major question mark was the (hip?) injury prior to the draft, how much that affected not only his mobility, but in turn his ability to lean into the throw to really zing it.

The instability of the OL last season did not help one bit, and injuries to key deep targets not named Waddle didn't either. You just can't take that as a even a half decent sample size to evaluate this.

Hopefully the addition of quality beef to the OL to buy time, along with the likes of Diggs to seriously get deep, we can finally see just how much Tua can hit a deep target - because there will actually be some!

Diggs? Freudian slip? He re-signed with Buffalo.  I'm sure you mean Hill. lol

Whoops! Haha, yeah I meant Hill.  :D :-[