BUFFALO — In the days after the disconsolate conclusion of the Buffalo Bills’ season in January, players trickled into General Manager Brandon Beane’s office for postmortem interviews. Amid the fog of a playoff loss, Beane has learned, nobody wants to hear what they need to improve. “They’re looking at you, kind of fighting back on what you say,” Beane said.
When Josh Allen staggered into the room, Beane had little to critique. The Bills asked as much of Allen as any player in the NFL, and he had carried them to within a missed field goal of potential advancement to the AFC championship game. Beane planned to gently remind Allen he needed to limit turnovers and better protect his body. Before Beane could start, Allen launched into a self-appraisal that mirrored the notes in front of Beane.
“Josh will reel it right off to you as if he was reading your mind,” Beane said. “He don’t even want to hear it from you. He’s that kid that walks in — ‘I know; I f---ing did this, this and this. And I got to be better.’”
For years, Allen has been Buffalo’s Atlas — carrying the franchise, if not the entire city — and yet he has taken on even more responsibility in his seventh season. His constant quest for improvement has yielded a quarterback playing at the highest level of an awing career. After an offseason in which the Bills reset their roster, Allen has led them back to the upper reaches of contention and mounted the league’s strongest challenge to Lamar Jackson’s MVP hegemony.
Allen will again lead the Bills on Sunday afternoon against the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs, the boogeyman who eliminated them from last year’s playoffs and has blocked Allen from the NFL’s pinnacle. The Bills have won a playoff game in four consecutive years. Patrick Mahomes’s Chiefs have ended their season in three of them.
It has not dimmed Allen’s resolve, even in a season when the Bills were expected to regress. The Bills purged a raft of veterans in the offseason — most notably with their trade of mercurial wideout Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans — to bolster their future financial outlook. Players not on their roster account for nearly $70 million against the salary cap, second most in the NFL.
But the Bills have Allen, which means they have enough to be 8-2 and cruising to a sixth straight playoff berth. Allen’s statistical résumé does not stand apart from previous seasons, aside from his career-low interception rate. Still, coaches and teammates are unequivocal in their belief he has never played better or been more in command.
“He just finds ways to improve every year,” Bills tight end Dawson Knox said, “when you don’t think that might be possible.”
In ways both obvious and unseen, Allen epitomizes what it means to be an NFL franchise quarterback. He throws military-grade passes and scrambles like a hurricane. He also organizes remote offseason workouts, calls players-only strategy sessions, picks up the tab at celebratory dinners, makes post-practice tee times and hosted the team’s Halloween party. At 28, Allen has mastered the delicate art of being both the Man and one of the guys.
“He’s basically got the weight of this entire city on his shoulders,” Knox said. “I don’t know anyone else that can do it like he does. I can’t imagine the type of pressure and stress he has to deal with. The way he does it is just mind-blowing. He hasn’t changed one bit in terms of just being a good dude. I don’t know how that’s possible with what he has to deal with.”
Allen grew up on his family’s farm in rural central California — “the middle of nowhere,” Allen said. His mother stayed home and raised him. His father worked the cotton, cantaloupe and alfalfa crops. When Allen reached high school, his parents made their home the social hub for Allen’s friends and teammates. They played cards and video games and pickup sports. “Not a whole lot to do out on the farm,” Allen said.
The experience provided Allen a framework for how togetherness off the field creates bonds on it. When Allen entered the NFL, he deferred leadership to older teammates. Even as he became a captain and a superstar, he allowed elder voices — Diggs, center Mitch Morse, safeties Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde — to dictate the tenor of the locker room.
As those veterans departed, Allen became one of the most tenured players on the roster. He felt emboldened to shape the team’s culture.
“I’m careful to say it because it wasn’t just a Diggs thing,” Beane said. “Their relationship, what it was or what it wasn’t, even if it was perfect, he still would have acquiesced. It took the weight off.”
When the Bills gathered for their first offseason practices, the only wideout Allen had thrown a pass to was third-year slot receiver Khalil Shakir. Allen made it his mission to take “as many mental reps as possible” with new teammates, “whether we’re on the football field or we’re just hanging out, we’re on the golf course, talking.” He applied the ethos of his family farm to the Bills’ locker room.
“Getting to know somebody deeper,” Allen said. “I do believe that pays dividends on the football field.”
“He doesn’t make guys feel like he’s above everybody else. That’s not him,” wide receiver Khalil Shakir said of Allen.
Each week during offseason practices, Allen took a new trio of teammates out for rounds of golf, his offseason obsession. He made intentional choices to bridge different ages and positions — one nine-hole round included Shakir, backup quarterback Shane Buechele and third-year linebacker Terrel Bernard.
Between June’s mandatory organized team activities and late-summer training camp, Allen arranged a trip with his wideouts, tight ends and running backs. He wanted to bring them to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the state where he played college football. When he realized logistical hassles would mean better attendance elsewhere, he made arrangements for his teammates to stay in Nashville.
In the mornings, Allen would throw passes and instruct how he wanted routes run. In the afternoons, they might play golf. At night, they would extend dinner long into the night, talking football and sharing personal stories before Allen grabbed the bill.
It can be challenging for a franchise quarterback to connect with teammates, especially younger ones. They face pressure other players cannot fathom. They make more money. Their fame opens doors — Allen played Pine Valley this past offseason; ask your best golf sicko friend if you don’t know what that means — but also burdens every public movement. Their stature promotes ego.
“That’s the cool part — I don’t even think about that,” Shakir said. “He doesn’t make guys feel like he’s above everybody else. That’s not him. That would never be him. That’s Josh. He’s such a dope person inside and out.”
Allen’s ability to connect stems from both his natural outlook and his self-awareness. As his fame has grown, Allen realizes that rookies and young players new to the team may regard him at first as the star from highlights and national commercials. “Probably the first time they all see him throw a pass, it’s just like, ‘Wow!’” offensive coordinator Joe Brady said. Allen ensures they view him as a teammate they can approach and ask for help, not a distant figure they have to worry about impressing.
Allen organizes offseason workouts and in-season team gatherings. “He understands the locker room, understands the people, understands how to communicate with certain guys,” Brady said. “That’s a unique and special trait. When you’re the quarterback, the city, the organization is always on your shoulders. Every decision is magnified. Every throw. Everything. That’s a lot.”
During the season, Allen takes teammates out to eat and invites them and their wives to his home. Allen and his girlfriend, actress Hailee Steinfeld, hosted the Bills’ team Halloween party. They dressed up as circus ringleaders and greeted every Bills player at the door.
“The attendance matters, too,” Buechele said. “If you have a party and only a couple guys go, that kind of shows. But the whole team was there, and they wanted to be there, and we wanted to be around everybody. It’s a testament to Josh.”
On a recent Monday, longtime Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins and former Bills center Eric Wood, now a Bills radio analyst, hosted charity events on the same night. “He could have told Eric, ‘Hey, man, I already committed to Dion’s thing,’” Beane said. “But instead he goes to both.”
Allen is the most recognized person in Buffalo. Allen undertakes those commitments with a particular weight. Being a franchise quarterback in a small city may not be more difficult than being one in a bigger market, but it is undoubtedly a different, more intense obligation. Allen’s visage covers 11 stories of the Statler, an iconic downtown building. His No. 17 adorns backs in dive bars, hospitals and offices on Fridays — only seven players moved more jerseys this season, per the NFL Shop. He is the most recognized person in town, the most important player on the most important team, the reason hundreds of thousands people will be happy or sad on Monday morning, one man responsible for civic well-being in a way that’s both ludicrous and inevitable.
“It’s not easy being Josh in any city,” Beane said. “But in Buffalo, he can’t go anywhere.”
On a Saturday in October, two days before the Bills played a Monday night game, Shakir held a pet adoption event at a local brewery. “My wife called me,” Beane said. “She was like: ‘This place was a zoo. Then Josh got there. I felt so bad for him. They’re trying to have a roped-off area, and people were just swarming him.’ But he handles it so well. I just don’t know many people that would care enough. He knows him showing up is going to do something for Khalil Shakir.”
“He’s a pleaser,” quarterbacks coach Ronald Curry said. “He plays for more than himself.”
‘Whatever he touches, it’s been good’
Every offseason, Allen identifies facets he wants to improve. “There’s always something,” he said. In January, he chose to focus his spring and summer on the mental side of football. He wanted to comprehensively understand an offense Brady was rebuilding around him. He determined he would throw fewer interceptions.
Bills Coach Sean McDermott said Allen’s “command of our offense” has reached a new level. Brady described the evolution of Allen’s grasp as the difference between knowing the offense and being able to teach it. Allen already knew where every player should be on a given play. Now he can tell teammates their assignment and explain the multilayered rationale behind it.
“That two-way street of communication has been better than it’s ever been with him,” Knox said.
Allen has thrown only four interceptions this season, one of which bounced off rookie wideout Keon Coleman’s chest. Allen made slight tweaks to his throwing form in the spring, shortening his stride and tightening the path of his arm. But his turnover avoidance hinged mostly on his mentality.
Rather than playing every second and long as a life-and-death struggle, Allen has treated those plays as an opportunity. Allen has recognized, Brady said, that beating defenses playing safeties deep in shell-like alignments requires patience. During practice, Allen sometimes will bypass an open receiver so he can read the entire progression of a play and throw a checkdown.
Even with his increased discernment, Allen has not sacrificed the playmaking that forms the essence of his game. Two weeks ago, against the Dolphins, Allen was hemmed in by pass rushers near the goal line. He darted forward. Two Dolphins converged on him. As they blasted him, Allen flicked a pass at a three-quarters arm angle. It zipped into reserve tight end Quintin Morris’s hands in the end zone.
“It’s insane,” Knox said. “He’s got three guys tackling him, and he throws a touchdown pass. I turn into a fan sometimes on the field with him.”
“He’s in such a groove right now, whatever he touches, it’s been good,” Curry said. “Even his interceptions, those are good decisions. He’s Josh Allen for a reason. He’s going to make those plays every Sunday. That’s just what he does.”
Every offseason, Allen identifies something in his game he wants to improve. (Grace Hollars/USA Today Sports/Imagn Images)
Allen has even managed to lessen, if far from eliminate, his exposure to physical danger. Beane has for years implored Allen to avoid injurious hits, to stop hurdling tacklers and lowering his shoulder into linebackers.
“He’s always holding that ball to the sideline,” Beane said. “When I was getting on to him after three or four games again, he smirked at me and said, ‘You know there’s some stat out there that my completion percentage is higher than anyone’s from within one yard of the boundary.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, d---head, I get it.’”
Early in the season, Allen took a blow that damaged his left hand and forced him to wear a protective wrap. Since then, Beane said, Allen has improved at “protecting himself and understanding we need him fresh in January, not walking in there taped together.”
“I don’t want to brag too much,” Beane said, grinning. “We still got some games left. I could have to yell at him.”
Bills Coach Sean McDermott said Allen’s “command of our offense” has reached a new level. (Jeffrey T. Barnes/AP)
While pushing Allen to reduce risky throws, the Bills have never worried internally about Allen’s interceptions as much as the outside football community has. Many of them, Beane said, were heaved on third and long — effectively punts. Several others occurred when Allen threw to the right spot but his wideout ran the wrong way.
The latter form of excusable picks reveals another way Allen excels in his role. He has received extensive criticism for his interceptions and countless chances to explain them away, to snap just once and fault a wideout’s mistake. He has not done it.
“We all know guys, even when they don’t directly point fingers, you read between the lines,” Beane said. “Josh never even gives you anything between the lines.
“Josh looks at the man in the mirror first. We could put up 35 points in a game and lose. He’s going to sit there and think of a play that could have made it 38 or 42. If you walk in our locker room after a game, he might have had four touchdowns, he might have 80 yards rushing, and he’s got f---ing blood all over him, whatever, and he’s just distraught that we didn’t win the game.”
Allen struck that precise pose in January, sitting in front of his locker in full uniform, still padded and bloodied, after the Chiefs beat the Bills in the divisional round. The Chiefs had come to Buffalo for Mahomes’s first road playoff game after the ugliest regular season of his tenure. The Bills were on the precipice of a roster overhaul, maxed out and built to topple Mahomes. None of it mattered.
This season, the tone has shifted for the Bills. Allen has used the result as fuel, and the Bills have coalesced around him. The Bills’ current era has been defined by regular season brilliance and playoff bitterness, with a backdrop of unease. Diggs could be unpredictable. McDermott could grow tight in close games. With Allen further asserting himself as the franchise leader this season, the tone in Buffalo has shifted.
“A lot of guys that are happy to be where they’re at,” left tackle Dion Dawkins said. “I can’t say that for the previous years. But this is a different team. Everybody is just happy all of the time.”
Dawkins noted that the sun was unseasonably still shining, the western New York winter gloom still at arm’s length. The Chiefs are coming to Buffalo again. Turbulence may yet strike the Bills. But they have Allen, and so they know they have everything they need.
