Exclusive two-body decay amplitudes of charmed mesons evaluated by Blok and Shifman (BS) using QCD sum rules are analyzed using the model-independent quark-diagram scheme, which helps to pin point the generic structure of the BS calculations, and their difficulties when compared with the experimental data. We also point out what experimental improvements on the data and which new data are most helpful in sharpening these comparisons. Some comments on possible ways of further improving the theoretical calculations are given.