Brilliant, battered and unkillable: Josh Allen lurches towards the Super Bowl | Buffalo Bills
Two things about the NFL playoffs are predictable: Josh Allen will play out of his skin…and Josh Allen will suffer a mind-boggling, stunning loss. Except maybe this year.
We all know the heartaches and playoff shortfalls over the years for Allen and the Buffalo Bills. Every season since 2019, Buffalo’s run has ended in the division or conference championship round, usually at the hands of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. But with no dominant team coming out of the regular season and no Mahomes in the playoffs, it may be time for Allen and the Bills to finally win the franchise’s first Lombardi Trophy.
If the Bills were to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday in the wild card round, it would be up to Allen to be Superman. This was a particularly bad game for a Bills team that leads with one of the best running games in the NFL, as Jacksonville, under first-year defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile, had the best running defense in the NFL. Meanwhile, Buffalo’s run defense has been among the worst in the NFL all season long, and the Jaguars have taken advantage of it at times. Jacksonville had 154 rushing yards on 23 attempts (6.7 yards per carry), while the BIlls managed just 79 yards on 26 carries (3.0 yards per carry).
Of course, the Bills got the running game right on two extremely important plays. With 1:10 left and the score 24-20 in favor of Jacksonville, the Bills had a fourth-and-1 at the Jacksonville 11-yard line. The idea was for Allen to throw a Tush Push to get the first down, but he did much more than that. His run was initially ruled an 11-yard touchdown run, overturned after review. No worries for Allen, who put the ball over the line for the 27-24 victory on the next play.
Never mind that Bills head coach Sean McDermott wanted to ban the Tush Push before the start of the 2025 season. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
It was all up to Allen, and he did whatever it took to get his team ahead. He completed 28 of 25 passes for 273 yards and a touchdown, and he had 33 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 11 carries. With this, Allen became the first quarterback in professional football history to complete at least 80% of his passes and throw for multiple touchdowns in a playoff game.
And he did all this with a foot injury he’s been dealing with since late December, not to mention the knock he took in that match. There was the concussion check…and the part where he suffered from his throwing hand…and the part where blood was seen dripping from his ear…and the part where he limped to the sideline after a first-half touchdown. Despite all of this, he once again put his team on his shoulders and rallied the Bills from behind several game deficits for the victory. And it’s plays like this that show why Allen is such a brilliant player. Yes, he can throw a pinpoint pass 50 yards down the field, or fend off linebackers on one of his super-soldier runs. But the fact that he staggers forward, like a seemingly invincible footballer El Cid, is crucial: it’s terrifying for his opponents and inspiring for his teammates.
“This arises from [Allen]the toughness of the team,” McDermott said after the game. “When your quarterback is that type of warrior, that type of competitor… from a leadership standpoint, it runs through the whole team. However, we need to get him as healthy as possible for next week, and that’s not something we take lightly.
MVP of the week
Christian McCaffrey, running back, San Francisco 49ers. With 14:52 left in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game between the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles, the Niners were down 16-10, tight end George Kittle was out with a campaign-ending torn Achilles tendon (just the latest in a gruesome series of injuries the team has suffered this season), and Kyle Shanahan’s team had first-and-10 at the 29-yard line. Philadelphia.
And that’s when Shanahan decided to be tricky, taking a cue from the best offensive playbook at any level of football, Brock Purdy handed the ball to Skyy Moore, who returned it to receiver Jauan Jennings, who threw a dart to McCaffrey for the 29-yard touchdown that gave San Francisco a 17-16 lead that would ultimately hold in a 23-19 victory.
Of course, the victory might not have happened if Purdy hadn’t found McCaffrey for the game-clinching touchdown with 2:57 left. Despite all the injuries, McCaffrey has been the 49ers’ constant throughout the season. His 413 touches were the most in a regular season since DeMarco Murray’s 449 for the Dallas Cowboys in 2014, and with McCaffrey’s 15 carries for 48 yards and six catches on eight targets for 66 yards and two touchdowns, this win was yet another example of his value to this organization.
Video of the week
That back-and-forth between Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni and receiver AJ Brown during the first half of Philly’s loss was a fitting encapsulation of all the frustration over an offense that has bulldozed the NFL through the 2024 season under offensive coordinator Kellen Moore.
When Moore took the job as head coach of the New Orleans Saints, Sirianni opted to promote Kevin Patullo to offensive coordinator, and nothing has been the same since. Patullo seemed to be in over his head from the start, the Eagles’ once brilliantly aligned offense collapsed more often than not, and when Brown dropped two passes he should have caught on two straight plays on Sunday (with a false start on right tackle Fred Johnson in between for good measure), it all boiled over.
Brown, who dropped yet another pass on the Eagles’ final drive, has expressed frustration throughout the season with his role, but it’s hard to be on his side when he’s had so many opportunities and blown them all.
At least his head coach is behind him. “I think he knows how I feel about him,” Sirianni said of Brown after the game. “I have a special relationship with him. We probably have [gone] through all the emotions you can experience together. We laughed together. We cried together. We shouted at each other. We are both emotional. I was trying to get him off the field, and that happens in this game. It happens in this game, but I love it.
Stats of the week
94%. When Packers quarterback Jordan Love hit wide receiver Matthew Golden for a 23-yard touchdown pass with 6:43 left against the Chicago Bears, it brought Green Bay’s win probability to 94% and the score to 27-16 in their favor. Of course, things didn’t go the way the Packers should have expected. For what? Because the Packers were facing a team that doesn’t know when it’s supposed to quit. The bears I won seven matches when trailing in the final two minutes of the season, which is an NFL record, as you would expect.
Elsewhere in the league
– After all the excitement of Saturday and Sunday morning’s games, Sunday night’s game between the Patriots and Chargers was a relatively one-sided affair with the result going 16-3 in favor of New England. Drake Maye struggled a bit in the first half against a Jesse Minter-led defense that threw him all sorts of coverages, but the quarterback returned to his MVP form in the second half. As for the Chargers’ injury-ravaged offensive line, Justin Herbert was sacked six times and pressured incessantly, which was the main story for the Chargers all season long. Herbert is now 0-3 in his playoff appearances. Next season should be better for him once the Chargers offensive line is healthy, but we have yet to see Jim Harbaugh fully exploit one of the league’s best talents.
– Despite beating the Los Angeles Rams 31-28 in Week 13, the Carolina Panthers were serious underdogs at home (-10.5) on Saturday. The disparity had a lot to do with the fact that the Rams entered the game with a +172 point differential, while the Panthers were -69 – by far the worst of any team in the playoffs.
Still, the Panthers played like a teenager who took his mom’s car for a joyride…and almost got away with it. When Bryce Young hit Jalen Coker for a touchdown with 2:39 left to give Carolina a 31-27 lead, it looked like we had a surprise on our hands. But on the Rams’ next drive, Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero opted to rush four defenders and leave seven in deep coverage, over and over again, which allowed Matthew Stafford to feast on easy completions underneath. Stafford’s 19-yard touchdown pass to Colby Parkinson with 49 seconds remaining, which put the Rams ahead for good 34-31, seemed preordained.
– If you were surprised by the topsy-turvy nature of Chicago’s aforementioned victory, welcome to the 2025 Bears, the NFL’s Kings of Variance. In the regular season, the Bears led the league in turnover differential (+22), but their defense was just as vulnerable as it was opportunistic. On the offensive end, Caleb Williams had been responsible for a ton of big plays this season under first-year head coach and offensive shooter Ben Johnson, but he also entered this game with the lowest completion rate in the NFL (58.3%).
This is a team that dug crater after crater throughout the season, then filled those holes until the end. It’s a real waste of energy, but it works somehow. The Bears had six fourth-quarter comebacks in the regular season (in the last two minutes of matches) to lead the league, and when trailing in the regular season, Williams had completed 178 of 295 passes for 2,174 yards, 18 touchdowns, four interceptions and a 97.8 passer rating. In Saturday’s fourth quarter, which began with the Packers leading 21-6, Williams completed 10 of 21 passes for 184 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 110.0. The play that saved the Bears’ season came with 5:37 left. Chicago closed on fourth-and-8 at their own 43-yard line 27-13, and Williams made a throw that Bears fans will talk about forever.
– Monday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Houston Texans features the wild card round’s most obvious mismatch: Houston’s carnivorous defense against a Pittsburgh offense that remains a mystery from week to week. The Texans don’t plan much defensively because they don’t have to; they will simply line up their guys against yours with the advantage in hand.
The Steelers are hoping the return of wide receiver DK Metcalf, who was suspended for the final two games of the regular season after a confrontation with a Detroit Lions fan, will give their passing attack some much-needed juice. Aaron Rodgers has thrown 24 touchdown passes this season, but only one to Metcalf in those two games. Pittsburgh doesn’t have another Rodgers target capable of disrupting a defense; certainly not one that can upset a defense of this caliber.
