By Nick Wojton / Billswire.usatoday.com
For many observers of the Buffalo Bills, the bar is high for quarterback Josh Allen in his second season. You can count the team’s offensive coordinator in Brian Daboll among them.
Ahead of the next round of organized team activities on Tuesday, Daboll compared the Allen of last year and Allen of today. In doing so, Daboll stressed how much a second-year pro improves from his rookie year. Daboll is certainly believing Allen will be one of those.
“(I’ve seen) a lot [from Allen],” Daboll said.
“From Year 1 to Year 2 for any player, is huge. Usually you make a big jump because there’s so many unknowns when you come here. You can talk to these young rookies who are going through rookie meetings and they don’t know their way around to a Tim Horton’s or short cuts to the stadium. All the little things you take for granted, it’s all new to those guys.”
For the Bills, Daboll explained that there is reason to believe Allen will be improved come September, and that reasoning is going on this week in OTAs. As a rookie, the Bills never said Allen would start the opening game.
After Nathan Peterman’s career as a starter went up in smoke very quickly, Allen eventually did play in the opener. Rewinding back even further to OTAs at this time last year, Allen was taking reps with the third-team offense, not the starters like he is now.
Daboll made it clear how important that is in regard to building chemistry with both new faces and returning teammates.
“I think having him out there is very helpful. He’s going with the one’s for the most part,” Daboll said. “That’s really beneficial for him,”
“I think the more reps we get, the better off it is for him,” Daboll added.
Last week, Allen also discussed the chemistry he has off the field with Daboll, which is beneficial to his second-year growth.
“Being in the same system for a year, having the verbiage down, having the same terminology, having the rapport that I do with Coach Daboll, it’s been a huge help. Just going in knowing what types of plays and concepts that I like, Dabes knows those,” Allen said. “It’s a complete 180 feeling from last year to this year.”