Josh Allen might be the wild card the Buffalo Bills have needed all along
The Bills quarterback represents the kind of human self-confidence that prompts some people to think they could successfully swim a channel, jump a canyon, wrestle a bear.
The hardest part about being very rich, other than the way it can sap empathy for your fellow humans, might be the choices. When you can buy almost anything, what should you buy? What’s the right car, the right yacht, the right charity, the right politician? What’s the best decision when you can do almost anything you want?
This is not a William Nylander column, by the way, no matter how little he seems to have given up in that contract. No, this is about Josh Allen, the most interesting, thrilling player in football. Allen delivered for the Buffalo Bills Sunday night in the final game of this NFL season, throwing for 359 yards and two touchdowns while completing 30 of 38 passes, running for another 67 yards and winning a fourth straight AFC East Division in Miami. The Bills were 6-6 at the end of November and now they’re the No. 2 seed in the AFC and the only team in the league that’s won five straight, including wins over Kansas City, Dallas and the Dolphins. Pretty good.
Sunday night was also, of course, another exciting episode of the Full Josh Allen Experience, and god, it’s the best when you’re not actually rooting for the Bills. On the first Bills drive, Allen got them to the five-yard line and hucked an absolute no-hope interception into the end zone. On Buffalo’s second drive, Allen started one of his signature plays: flushed out of the pocket, dodging defenders, creating time but running out of time, scanning downfield, the sideline and defenders and everything closing in.
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Let’s pause the tape for a moment. I love when Allen in particular does this because the possibilities are so vast. He could make any decision, try any throw. He could tuck the ball for some doomed heroic run through a minefield, or maybe attempt a lateral, all depending on what he sees. More exciting of all, there’s a decent chance he won’t throw the ball out of bounds and try again. That is what Tom Brady would probably do: safe, boring, correct. Brady eviscerated the Bills for a solid 20 years.
Anyway, on that play Allen threw another end-zone pick. Allen also threw a pass two yards short of the end zone on the last play of the first half, and he was stripped for a fumble just outside the 20 to start the third quarter when Christian Wilkins came steaming in and Allen, instead of turtling and protecting the ball, tried to juke him, like trying to juke someone in an office cubicle. Every one of those mistakes cost Buffalo points. Any one of them could crush the confidence of a quarterback who actually has the ability to be rattled by mistakes.
Except And while he sometimes panics in small windows, his overall confidence doesn’t really fade. On that second drive, Allen threw one of his famous jump passes off his back foot that turned into a comically bad interception, but later he threw another jump pass off his back foot that was a comically precise 36-yard pass. His 15-yard run on third-and-13 late while up 21-14 in the fourth quarter was folk-hero stuff. In a movie, that run is derided as too cinematic.
And this is where we come back to being rich. Josh Allen is the size of a small horse, and can run like a medium-sized horse. He has an arm that can do more or less anything he asks it to. Ken Hitchcock used to say of Sidney Crosby that Sid would look at a 10 per cent play and see a 50/50 play. Yeah.
All this creates a player who could do almost anything, and even though he talks about trying to make better decisions — like taking fewer hits — he still tries things. Patrick Mahomes channels his outrageous talent more precisely; Allen turned the ball over a league-high 22 times this season, and since his second season as a starter nobody has turned the ball over more. The only stats he ever leads the league in are turnovers, fantasy points and, this year, lowest sack percentage. Huh.
Anyway, the point is this: Allen is all about the intoxication of possibility, and if you root for Buffalo that idea cuts both ways. The Bills lost one game to a playoff team all season, in that 37-34 OT defeat to Philadelphia. Their six losses came by a combined 26 points. The defence is coming around — nearly a top-five unit the second half of the season — and the rushing attack, too. When James Cook ran for 179 yards against the Cowboys four weeks ago, Bills fans didn’t have to worry about Allen at all. Buffalo sits third in DVOA, which is more or less the most predictive advanced football statistic: Baltimore, with the best record in football, is first; San Francisco, the best team in the NFC, is second. This season, Buffalo beat No. 4 Dallas, No. 5 Kansas City and No. 6 Miami, twice.
A lot of people in Ontario root for the Bills, and it’s understandable. It’s an underdog franchise in an underdog town that loves this team and has been defined by agony for a very long time.
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Now, with a team coalescing around him, Josh Allen has so much in his hands. He is the sport’s premier creator and destroyer, the stunt driver with an entire fan base and franchise in the passenger seat, and in those moments where possibility arises — when he is running for his life and scanning the field and time is running out — everyone will find out whether Josh Allen makes the right choice enough times for it to matter. Hey, Brett Favre won Super Bowls, right? Bills fans should enjoy it, because if it works it will feel incredible, incredible. And if not, empathy for Bills fans will again be required.
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