Quarterback Josh Allen’s second half heroics Sunday kept the Buffalo Bills in the game. He put up numbers rarely seen in league history as he willed his team to come back from a 21-point deficit. But as the Buccaneers won in overtime, his performance quickly took a backseat to big-picture questions of how Buffalo can find consistency at this point in the year.
Greg Cosell, executive producer and analyst of NFL Films’ NFL Matchup, says that the way the Bills' offense is constructed has put Allen in a difficult and magnified position.
In the second half against blitzes, Allen was 12 of 18 for 77 yards, with one touchdown and no sacks.
“Every game becomes a referendum on Josh Allen,” Cosell said Thursday on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “He needs to be great on every play or people think he’s not a good player, because (the Bills) don’t have anything else they can do with any consistency on offense.”
That idea looms larger now with Allen day to day with a foot injury after Sunday’s 33-27 loss to the Buccaneers. He was injured in the fourth quarter on a 23-yard run, his longest of the game. The play put the Bills on the Buccaneers’ 15-yard line, and they scored on the next play to pull within 10 points.
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Allen’s skillset is well established. But as the Bills find themselves at 7-6 in mid-December, his play has been critiqued in a way that doesn’t account for the shortcomings of the rest of the offense, Cosell says. A permeable offensive line and lackluster run game outside of Allen have placed a larger burden on the fourth-year quarterback.
Allen ranks No. 3 among NFL QBs in rushing attempts and rushing yards, and he leads all NFL starting ball-carriers in yards per carry at 6.1. All that is good for the Bills, except for the obvious question: How much is too much?
Allen’s 531 rushing yards this season are third-most by quarterbacks. Only Lamar Jackson (767) and Jalen Hurts (693) have more. A huge chunk came Sunday as Allen rushed for 109 yards against the Buccaneers. Before then, he was averaging 35.2 rushing yards per game.
The 109 rushing yards were his second-most in a single game, and the third time he’s topped 100 in his career. As a rookie, he posted back-to-back games of 135 and 101 rushing yards.
The flip side is the Bills should not have to rely on Allen to put up those numbers. While it speaks to his determination and grit, Sunday was evidence of how damaging it could be. Allen was limping on the field after the injury and he was wearing a walking boot after the game.
Cosell thinks Allen is “most physically gifted quarterback in the NFL,” but the Bills can’t count on only him. Instead, they need to find a meaningful run game that involves running backs. Sunday, neither running back Devin Singletary nor Matt Breida had a single carry in the first half as the Bills fell into a 24-3 hole.
“It just puts way too much pressure on the quarterback, way too much,” Cosell told The Buffalo News. “What he did on Sunday is just miraculous. And people are just going to say, ‘Oh, well, they couldn't finish the game. He missed a few.’ … What he did in the second half is as good performance I've seen by a quarterback this year, and in really difficult circumstances.”
The Bills have received poor return on investment across the board along their offensive line. That’s on Beane, Jay Skurski says.
Allen became just the third player in league history throw for 300 yards and rush for 100 in the same game. Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson did it in 2014, and the Carolina Panthers' Cam Newton did in 2015.
With his 3,524 passing yards and 531 rushing yards totaling 4,055 yards, Allen is handling 81.5% of the Bills' total 4,978 yards of offense. That’s one of the highest percentages among quarterbacks, but the distribution makes it particularly notable. Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, for example, is near Allen at 78.8%, but his splits are 4,134 passing yards and 68 rushing yards.
Any quarterback is subject to extreme scrutiny, but Cosell finds Buffalo’s dynamic to be unique. He watches and analyzes every team, and joins One Bills Live every week, among other appearances. He’s frank with what he sees on film.
“There's nothing like the Bills,” he said. “They don't run the ball at all.”
The Bills know their passing game is their strength, but there have been a few setbacks there.
The second-year receiver played 65 offensive snaps during a 33-27 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium – 83% of the offensive total.
“Last year, they had a meaningful intermediate passing game,” Cosell said. “But this year, they don't have that. So, their passing game is somewhat condensed. I don't know if that's by choice; I can't speak to that.”
The continuity on the Bills was supposed to help. Allen certainly has options at wide receiver, but the team has struggled, at times, to match the explosiveness of last year.
“They don't get as many big plays in the passing game as they did a year ago,” Cosell said. “And when you get big, explosive plays, that's also a nice deodorant that deals with a lot of problems. If you don't have those, then it becomes tougher.”
The Bills have 24 big-play passes (25 yards or more) through 13 games this year. That has them on track for about 31 big-play passes in 17 games. Last year, they had 32 in 16 regular-season games, and four in the postseason.
What’s more important to Allen and the Bills than any stat or outside perspective is finding ways to win. But as long as the offense revolves around Allen at the level that it does, winning and casual viewers’ beliefs about Allen as an individual will remain fully intertwined.
“I think that people are not aware of the process and the ancillary factors that go into it. So they simply look at a performance without a larger context, without a 30,000 feet worldview,” Cosell said.
“He's on a team that has a below average offensive line and a non-existent run game," he added. "So therefore, every single week, Josh Allen has to play great literally every snap to give this team a chance to win. And if he doesn't, all people say is ‘Well, Josh Allen's not a good enough player,’ when, in fact, that is not true at all. It's just way too hard to ask your quarterback to play that way.”
