Taking Flight: Inside Josh Allen’s Leap From No Offers to NFL MVP
Taking FLIGHT
Inside Josh Allen’s Leap From No Offers to NFL MVP
On the cover
FRONT COVER: The Lake Effect Leap against the San Francisco 49ers during a snow-filled Week 13 was one of Josh Allen’s signature moments of the 2024 regular season.
JOSHUA BESSEX / BUFFALO NEWS
BACK COVER: Josh Allen descends into the smoke as he’s introduced prior to a Week 4 home game against the Houston Texans on Oct. 3, 2021. HARRY SCULL JR. / BUFFALO NEWS
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher.
Published by Pediment Publishing, a division of The Pediment Group, Inc. www.pediment.com
• Printed in Canada.
This book is an unofficial account of the Buffalo Bills and Josh Allen’s career by The Buffalo News and is not endorsed by the Buffalo Bills or NFL.
Corey Desiderio, Connolly Studios Director of Storytelling
SPECIAL THANKS
Perryn Keys, Buffalo News Executive Sports Editor
Amy Yakawiak, Buffalo News Rights, Permissions and Reprints
THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATION CONTRIBUTED TO THIS PROJECT
Connolly Studios
All photographs are by The Buffalo News unless otherwise noted. Some stories have been edited for length.
Foreword
BY MARK GAUGHAN
The Buffalo Bills spent a generation figuratively wandering in the desert without a quarterback.
It was a football ordeal of biblical proportions. Forty days and 40 nights? Hah. The Bills’ playoff drought lasted 17 years, as the franchise searched aimlessly for a franchise quarterback.
All the while, the NFL increasingly became a passing league as the calendar turned to a new millennium. During one miserable, six-year stretch, from 2004 through 2009, the Bills’ quarterbacks combined to produce just three games with 300 passing yards. The rest of the league saw quarterbacks hit the 300-yard mark 468 times over that span.
Finally, general manager Brandon Beane and head coach Sean McDermott assumed control of the Bills’ front office. Beane moved heaven and earth — making three separate trades over a nine-month period — to position the team to move up in the 2018 NFL Draft and select a quarterback.
When the pick was made — the University of Wyoming’s Josh Allen — it was met with more skepticism than praise and even some derision.
The Football Outsiders Almanac called Allen a “parody of an NFL quarterback prospect,” because he looked the part of a star QB but, from their perspective, didn’t
possess the skill to succeed as a pro.
Here we are seven years later. Allen has been the savior of the franchise in almost every conceivable way.
Allen has the most regular season wins (76) in NFL history by a quarterback in their first seven seasons. He holds the NFL record for the most total touchdowns by a QB (262) and most total yards (30,576) in his first seven seasons. Allen is the first player in NFL history with five straight 40-plus TD seasons. He already has surpassed Jim Kelly for most passing TDs in the playoffs (25). He already has tied Thurman Thomas for career rushing TDs (65).
The Bills are five-time defending AFC East Division champions, a franchise record.
But it’s not just about numbers. Allen plays the game with a joy and passion that has captured the imagination of the entire football world.
From Allen’s first start, when he vaulted over Minnesota linebacker Anthony Barr and led Buffalo to an upset of the Vikings, Allen has kept Bills fans on the edge of their seats. At 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds, Allen simply is the biggest, strongest elite quarterback in the NFL. He has the arm talent to rocket-launch the ball anywhere on the field. Think of his 98-yard touchdown pass to Gabe Davis in
the wind against Pittsburgh in the 2022 season. And when he scrambles out of the pocket at full speed, Allen resembles an angry ostrich who runs past, over and through defenders.
Then there’s Allen off the field. At first blush, one might not think a kid from Firebaugh, Calif., would be a perfect fit for Buffalo. But Firebaugh is an unpretentious farming community in the central part of the state, far removed from the glitz and glamour of Southern California. And unlike many quarterbacks who star at powerhouse college programs, Allen has not been on a pedestal, lavished with praise and adulation since he was 17 years old.
In fact, Allen was a no-star recruit with zero offers coming out of high school. Even after enjoying one big season at a junior college, Allen had only one scholarship offer when he signed with Wyoming.
Allen embraces his humble roots. Teammates love his goofy sense of humor. He has no airs. He doesn’t big-time people. Perfect for Buffalo, the city with no illusions.
Now Allen is the most valuable player of the NFL. The Bills are one of the marquee teams in the league. It was a long wait for a quarterback worthy of being the face of the franchise. As these pages show, Allen was worth it.
YOU BLOOM WHERE YOU’RE PLANTED
The cultivation of Josh Allen
BY TIM GRAHAM • MAY 19, 2018
The Buffalo Bills drafted their next great hope at quarterback with the seventh overall pick of the 2018 NFL Draft. This is the first of a five-part series, “You bloom where you’re planted.”
FIREBAUGH, Calif. — Joel Allen slowly rolled his brown GMC Sierra pickup past a field of beardless wheat. The night before, swather machines began reaping the lush, green grass into windrows, the long lines of a desperately needed, lucrative harvest.
“This looks beautiful right here,” Joel murmured, never breaking his gaze out the passenger window.
A month ago, his 2,000-acre Allen Ranch was on the block. Three neighbors recently had surrendered. He couldn’t stand any more drought, maybe another infestation, certainly more of California’s unyielding water politics that made growing cotton, wheat and cantaloupes in the dusty San Joaquin River Valley a dangerous gamble.
“It only takes one bad year,” Joel said, “and I’ve had three in a row.”
Allen Ranch had a suitor, but the offer was lopsided. Joel was loath to accept payments over the next five years. He
required liquidity as much as his crops thirsted for irrigation. He had too much debt after three years of getting the fertilizer stomped out of him.
Joel is tan, quick to laugh and carries a worldly confidence without betraying his country charm. He’s smooth, was a decorated swimmer in his day, speaks fluent Spanish, sings Neil Diamond at karaoke and still knows his big number from playing the male lead in “Annie Get Your Gun” at Firebaugh High.
But optimism be damned about this farming gig. He said he couldn’t help but ponder: “Why do I keep doing this? There’s got to be a better way to make a living.”
He has farmed here 30 years. His father and grandfather were farmers. His father-in-law is in his 58th year of farming in Firebaugh, a town with a population of 7,619, according to the signs stabbed into the sagebrush alongside Route 33 at the corporation limits.
Joel’s brother, Todd, farms another 1,200 acres on adjacent land.
“Sometimes you work so hard, and it’s so hot, you just want to sit there and cry,” Todd said. “You kill yourself out here.”
Joel and LaVonne Allen have two sons in their early 20s. While their two daughters have no interest in agriculture, the boys were superstar Future Farmers of America students. Yet they wonder if the family business can sustain a fourth Allen generation.
“I would love for my sons to get into this business,” Joel said, “but the stress is agonizing. I frowned on my boys getting into this because I don’t want them enduring sleepless nights and constant worry.”
One of his boys never had interest in farming anyway, even though he earned a Future Farmers of America degree that one half of 1% of the membership receives. Manual labor wasn’t his aversion. Nor was
OPPOSITE: Josh Allen’s parents, Joel and LaVonne Allen, were raised in neighboring towns, met at Cal Poly and are both thirdgeneration farmers. HARRY SCULL JR. / BUFFALO NEWS
the monotony of turning over crops, nor the 100-degree days, nor the crop-killing insects and weeds, nor the water crisis.
Absence of control is what revolted Josh Allen.
“Seeing everything he’s been through, having no water, being in a drought, going to rallies,” said Josh, sitting by his father in the Allen Ranch office two weeks ago, “it probably added onto my commitment to football without even realizing it.
“It’s something I don’t want to deal with. I hate to see him deal with the things that he does, but he’s extremely smart about his moves and tactical in providing for his family.
“Now it’s my turn to do that in my own way.”
On April 26, right around the time Joel contemplated that unappealing offer to buy the ranch, the Buffalo Bills made Josh Allen the seventh overall selection of the NFL Draft.
Unlike his kinfolk, Josh is in the alpha-control business. He’s an NFL quarterback with a lightning bolt for a right arm. He’s expected not only to dictate Buffalo’s offense, but also to become the face of the franchise.
Josh Allen will have his own lined, green field to tend each week, his windrows found in the win column.
“I just love how fluid football has to be,” Josh said, “how much time and energy it takes to practice and then taking it to the field and executing in a game situation.
“In my opinion, there’s nothing better
than practicing a play all week and then going on the field and thinking, ‘This is going to be a touchdown.’ Then frickin’ throw a rope…
“There’s nothing better. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt, and that never changes.”
Staying true to his hometown
You can examine his University of Wyoming stats and video clips, but you won’t truly know Josh Allen until you learn how he was raised and the odds he has overcome to reach the NFL.
The Buffalo News this month interviewed 22 family members, Firebaugh elders, school administrators and staffers, his earliest coaches and former teammates to retrace the rookie quarterback’s journey from a mom-andpop farmstead to college football to an NFL contract that will make him an instant millionaire about 15 times over.
Dig around the Allen family soil and a credo repeatedly crops up: “You bloom where you’re planted.”
When it was mentioned to Josh, he sighed.
“My dad has sayings for days,” Josh said. “ ‘You bloom where you’re planted’ ties into farming, but it also sums up the ideals and morals that we have as a family by staying in Firebaugh.”
Joel Allen admittedly borrowed “you bloom where you’re planted” from one of televangelist Joel Osteen’s popular sermons.
“You can stand out or blend in,” Joel Allen said.
RIGHT: The Central Valley offers some of the world’s most fertile conditions, but California’s water shortage has had a critical impact on those in the agriculture industry.
HARRY SCULL JR. / BUFFALO NEWS
Firebaugh minted Josh Allen. Yet staying true to his hometown almost cost him, too.
He could have gone to a larger high school with a superior football program an hour away in the Fresno area. The stage would have attracted recruiters. But he remained in Firebaugh because that’s where he was sown.
His grandfather, A.E. “Buzz” Allen, donated the land the high school was built upon, so Firebaugh residents wouldn’t have to attend Dos Palos High, 15 miles and another county away, anymore. Buzz Allen was the Firebaugh-Las Deltas Unified School District’s first president and served 12 years on the board.
Josh, passed over or flat-out rejected by teams since his Pop Warner days, did it the hard way, helping establish a Firebaugh football program that hadn’t gained much acclaim before him.
He yearned to play for Fresno State, which snubbed him out of high school and junior college. He attended nearby Reedley College, where he began as the backup and elicited one legitimate Division I opportunity at Wyoming, where he again began as the backup.
Wherever he was welcomed to take root, he sure did eventually bloom.
“He’s wired at a competitive level that’s very, very rare,” said Firebaugh High principal Anthony Catalan, once the school’s Future Farmers of America supervisor and Josh’s agriculture mechanics teacher. “He wants to be the best at everything he does. That doesn’t matter if it’s FFA or taking AP calculus when he doesn’t have to just because he wants to be the best.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again. I hope I do, but that’s not something you
learn. He has a drive like no other.”
Josh’s willpower was buoyed by a series of twists, breaks and quirks that led him from one tiny dot on the map to the next, not-quite-as-tiny dot on the map.
Now he’s in Buffalo, the NFL’s secondsmallest market, a place he and his family say feels just right.
Life on the edge
Vaughn Von Allman has been negotiating with God for decades.
Josh’s grandfather, “Papa Vaughn,” they call him, has been farming since Eisenhower was president. The deep furrows in his ruddy cheeks and jowls denote decades toiling under the hot sun.
He’s still at it, growing cotton, alfalfa and cantaloupes on his 3,000 acres. Von Allman has added young pistachio trees, a transition many Central Valley farmers, Joel Allen among them, would love to make if they had sufficient money to withstand five or six years without a crop.
Time is a precious commodity for Von Allman. He turned 79 this month and has conquered cancer twice. Part of his colon was removed in 2001. Thirteen years ago, a spot was discovered early on his pancreas. He prayed persistently he would live to see Josh play in the NFL.
“It’s like a dream come true,” Von Allman said. “I have to pinch myself. Do I really have a grandson in the NFL?”
Farming is not in Josh’s DNA like others in the family. Two of Josh’s cousins will become Papa Vaughn’s partners and eventually take over Von Allman Farms and maybe sweat out a living for their children.
Good Lord — and the federal government — willing. They control the
water, after all.
As Josh realized as a tyke, playing defense in life wasn’t appealing to him.
“You’ve got to have it in your blood,” Von Allman said. “You’ve got to love what you do.
“There’s very few young people interested in farming. It’s hard for a farm of our size to compete with your corporations. Maybe we work a little harder. We probably don’t go on vacation as often as others. But it’s been a great ride for my wife and me.”
Von Allman came close to giving up the farm business four years after he started. He and his father were dairy farmers before selling the cows to grow cotton.
In May 1963, he recollected, a hail storm wiped out the entirety of his crop. Cotton here needs to be planted in April for the best harvest and to allow proper time to double-crop the field for cantaloupe season. Von Allman buckled.
“My wife thought it was over,” Von Allman said. “When I told her we lost all our cotton, she asked, ‘What are you going to do?’ I said, ‘I’m going into town and get drunk this afternoon, and then tomorrow I’m going to plant it all over again.’”
In other seasons, damage may well come from a hard freeze, flooding, beetles, mites or morning glory run amuck.
The past few years, drought and water restrictions have handcuffed Westlands Water District farmers like Joel Allen.
Such unpredictable hardships hammered any desire for agriculture out of Von Allman’s daughter, LaVonne.
“One of the last things I said to my father when I went off to college,” she recalled, “was I won’t be living in Dos Palos or Firebaugh, and I wouldn’t be
marrying a farmer.
“That kind of bit me on the butt.”
LaVonne and Joel, raised in neighboring towns, met 150 miles away at Cal Poly. But that wasn’t enough to draw them back to farming.
LaVonne studied fashion design and merchandising; she was on the dance team. She worked at a Fresno employment agency. Joel majored in agribusiness, but his first job was with a water district.
Then Joel’s parents were in a cataclysmic car accident. His father, never the same, was incapable of running the business. Joel was summoned back to Firebaugh.
Joel had helped as a kid, moving irrigation pipe, driving a tractor, the same types of jobs Josh did growing up for his old man. Thrust into Buzz’s business, Joel had to learn how to manage systems, handle a crop from planting to the market, meet a budget, submit a payroll, maintain heavy equipment.
“Our first 15 years of farming were pretty lucrative,” LaVonne said. “We were making good money.
“But the last 10 years, our struggles got pretty serious.”
As Josh’s love for football galvanized on the local Pop Warner and high school fields, his aversion to a farming career swelled with every setback he watched his parents face.
So, too, did his admiration for their commitment and perseverance.
Seven years ago, Allen Ranch’s cotton crop was devastated by a lygus infestation. When the insect pierces a cotton bud, most of the bud sheds. Plants fall apart. They can be deformed, discolored or stunted.
“Seems like I’ve been playing catch-up ever since,” Joel said.
Far more critical to Allen Ranch since then has been California’s water shortage.
The Central Valley offers some of the world’s most fertile conditions. America’s only Mediterranean climate — mild, wet winters and arid summers — bolsters California’s $50 billion agriculture industry. The brownish-gray Panoche clay loam around Firebaugh and Dos Palos absorbs the moisture and produces more than 60 types of crops. Almonds, grapes and cantaloupes are paramount. Water is a farmer’s most vital resource, and the Westlands Water District essentially has gone dry. Environmental concerns, drought and, cynics would say, politics have restricted the flow.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation determines how much water each district will receive annually. Westlands water comes from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The allocation is based on reservoir levels, precipitation and snowpack in the Sierra Nevada.
A full water allocation for Westlands’ 600,000 agricultural acres is 1.2 million acre feet (enough to cover an acre at a depth of one foot). The allocation for 2014 and 2015 was 0%. In 2016, it was 5%.
“I think my son’s seen me the last year and a half, I wasn’t the same person,” Joel Allen said, glancing at Josh back in the ranch office, “because when they take away your main resource, that makes it hard to do business.”
Many stakeholders aren’t sympathetic. Westlands’ full agricultural allocation, for instance, is roughly twice the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power’s annual supply for residential use.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is an estuary, where salt water transitions to fresh water. The balance is delicate to wildlife and concerns commercial fishermen. Too much water pumped south to farms turns the water brackish downstream and negatively impacts salmon populations, which have collapsed.
Environmentalists have tried in vain to save the delta smelt from extinction. The 2-inch freshwater fish simultaneously has been championed as a bellwether of the Delta ecosystem and derided as a silly cause that punishes farmers.
All for nothing, perhaps. California Fish and Wildlife found two whole delta smelt while trawling from September to December. The delta smelt is on the brink of becoming the first fish to go extinct since Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
Josh Allen has attended waterawareness rallies with his family and other Central Valley farmers disgusted by the restrictions.
Allen Ranch ceased growing tomatoes. The crop relies too heavily on water.
“The political arena here in California, it stinks,” Joel said. “If I had my way, I would pick up and leave. But you just can’t do that.”
Looking ahead
Although the Allen children worked the ranch, they were insulated from it in
some ways.
The homestead is surrounded by rows of trees and impeccably positioned bushes that create a sanctuary and block out the surrounding flatness. Turn up the Allens’ driveway, and you’d have no idea you’re in the middle of vast farmland.
There’s a basketball court by the garage, a batting cage alongside the house, a putting green and a pool out back. This is where Josh kept his edges sharp, competing against his brother, his sisters and his buddies.
“LaVonne and I just wanted to create an environment for them,” Joel said, “because we don’t live next to a park or have schools nearby where they can go hit balls or play hoops.
“They didn’t go without as far as resources to keep them entertained, and they took advantage of it.”
But Joel couldn’t simply take refuge here and pretend the rest of his world didn’t exist. Real problems remain beyond the tree lines.
That’s why his windrows of bearded wheat looked so heavenly. The Central Valley, crowded with dairies, started lining up for weeks ago for the precious feed. His two fields will bring in $300,000, a juicy-looking number. But he has six full-time employees and a stack of bills to pay.
He’s still trying to recover from his three-year thumping.
In 2017, coming off the region’s wettest hydrologic year on record, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation opened
Westlands’ spigots 100%. Climate analysts, though, warned farmers not to get too excited. Restrictions should remain the norm. This year’s allocation plummeted to 40%.
To survive, Joel said he probably will have to install two deep agriculture wells at $750,000 a pop. Then he could supplement future restrictions with lower-quality water from 900 to 1,300 feet below.
Long-term viability, he asserted, depends on permanent crops instead of row crops. Pistachio trees are substantially more bankable than cotton, but they require more water and bring no revenue for at least five years amid ongoing costs for labor, fertilizer, equipment and taxes.
All told, April was a good month for the Allens, and not entirely because the Bills invested their future in Josh.
Joel rejected that offer to purchase Allen Ranch. He finally secured financing to keep him afloat, lack of water not withstanding.
“Now I’m in a much better frame of mind; I’ll tell you that,” Joel said.
Josh’s little brother, Jason, has decided to study agriculture at Fresno State and get into the family business. Joel contends Jason was a better athlete than Josh, but back injuries snuffed his baseball pursuits at Saddleback College.
Within a couple of years, Joel now can venture, he’ll start planting those pistachio trees for a fourth generation of Allen farming after all.
And with some nurturing and resolve, they’ll bloom where they’re planted.
OPPOSITE: Josh Allen earned a Future Farmers of America degree that one half of 1% of the membership receives, but he set out to make a future for himself on a different type of lined field. HARRY SCULL JR. / BUFFALO NEWS
ALLEN’S ASCENT
WEEK 3 • 27-6 WIN AT MINNESOTA
Bills thrive on underdog role in historic upset
BY VIC CARUCCI • SEPT. 23, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS — Go ahead. Pile on the criticism and the doubt and the point spreads. The Buffalo Bills love it. Or, at least, for as long as it lasted.
“If you’re going to look past us to the next week, well, we’re going to show you how the Buffalo Bills play football,” defensive end Jerry Hughes said.
The Minnesota Vikings have a Thursday night showdown against the Los Angeles Rams. Some have billed it as a preview of the NFC Championship Game. But the Vikings had other business they were supposed to take care of first on Sunday: embarrassing an opponent they were favored to beat by at least 16.5 points.
Instead, it was the Bills who did the embarrassing with a 27-6 victory their most optimistic supporters never saw coming. So be warned, Green Bay Packers, these Bills — even after all of their stumbling through the better part of eight quarters — apparently mean business.
“You turn on the TV, you look at the paper, across the boards from every sports channel, no one’s picking the Bills,” Hughes said of what he and his teammates saw all week. “The NFL is not like college. It’s not where someone can write up wins on a blue board. You’ve got to come out here and play four quarters of football and let the chips fall, because anything can happen.”
This is how rare what happened Sunday was: The Bills, according to ESPN’s Bill Barnwell, became only the fifth NFL team since 1990 to win as an underdog of 15 points or more and the first do so by more than seven. The Bills have won three times as a double-digit underdog, and the one that seemed closest to comparing to Sunday’s surprising win was in 1984 when, at 0-11, they beat the 7-4 Cowboys, a 10-point favorite.
And the most encouraging part was the way the Bills — who did all of their
scoring on their first five possessions — won.
They won with dynamic play from rookie quarterback Josh Allen, who threw for one touchdown and ran for two others, sending a clear message that the franchise has a legitimate reason to anticipate a long and prosperous future with the seventh overall pick of the draft.
They won with dominant play from a defense — which had coordinator Leslie Frazier calling plays again — that through two games had been a huge disappointment. The Bills forced three turnovers, with the first two leading to 10 points. They also put a chokehold on an offense that was supposed to have one of the best receiver duos in the league in Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs, and intended to take full advantage of them with the heavy free-agent investment in quarterback Kirk Cousins.
“It was just a great week of preparation,”
OPPOSITE: In his third game and second start, Josh Allen threw for one score and ran for two more — including this 10-yard touchdown on the game’s opening drive — to earn his first win as quarterback of the Buffalo Bills. JAMES P. MCCOY / BUFFALO NEWS
ABOVE: The first signature hurdle of Josh Allen’s career, over 6-foot-5 linebacker Anthony Barr on the way to a 10-yard run to convert a third-and-9. “I jumped off the bench, man,” safety Micah Hyde said. JAMES P. MCCOY / BUFFALO NEWS
Hughes said. “Our coaches do a fantastic job of giving us information. And it was great to see the guys put the extra work in to communicate, come in after practice on Wednesday and Thursday to watch a little bit more film together as a unit so we could communicate and play as one, unison group.”
Sure, the Bills had suffered the worst season-opening loss in the 59-year history of the franchise and had a player retire at halftime in Week 2, and had the head coach yank play-calling duties from his veteran defensive coordinator. And, sure, on Sunday morning, they scratched their top running back from the lineup with sore ribs.
But they also had a whole lot going for them, beginning with Allen’s talent. Rough edges? You know it. But this is a kid who can do things with his passing arm and his legs and his leadership that the Bills haven’t had at quarterback in a long time.
Three snapshots from Allen’s performance highlight a day that will be remembered for a long time in Bills history: His 10-yard touchdown sprint — on which he showed far more speed than one expects from a 6-foot-5, 237-pounder — to cap the game’s opening drive.
His hurdling (yes, hurdling) linebacker Anthony Barr, covering an amazing five yards in the process, on the way to a 10-yard gain on third-and-9. “Did you see that hurdle?” a still wide-eyed safety Micah Hyde asked. “I jumped off the bench, man. I think I was on the field trying to dab him up. It was a huge play. Don’t do it again, though.”
His rollout and 55-yard connection with wide-open running back Chris Ivory — starting for injured LeSean McCoy — on the same drive as the hurdle to help set up Allen’s 1-yard touchdown keeper to make it 24-0.
“Hey, that kid’s got something that you don’t see from many rookies, man,” offensive tackle Jordan Mills said. “His enthusiasm, the way he works every day. He’s going to have mistakes, but he’s going to make plays. And he’s going to get better and better and better.”
The Bills’ defense was supposed to have significantly improved after the free-agent signings of linemen Star Lotulelei and Trent Murphy (and a cornerback named Vontae Davis, who quit in the middle of last week’s loss against the Los Angeles
Chargers), and the drafting of linebacker Tremaine Edmunds. On Sunday, it finally played that way.
Maybe the Vikings weren’t worthy of all of the hype they had received before the season and even after a 1-0-1 start. Maybe
the Bills weren’t deserving of all of the wrath they incurred.
Either way, Buffalo’s season has suddenly become a whole lot more interesting with one game left in what was thought to be the most daunting portion
of the schedule.
“People can say what they want,” Mills said. “It’s about what we think about each other and sticking together, and as long as we’ve got that camaraderie and that playoffcaliber mindset, we’re going to be fine.”
ABOVE: Josh Allen’s final touchdown of the day, a leaping 1-yard keeper, makes it 24-0 early in the second quarter.
JAMES P. MCCOY / BUFFALO NEWS
WEEK 17 • 42-17 WIN VS. MIAMI
‘Building something special here’
BY VIC CARUCCI • DEC. 30, 2018
If you’re looking for something promising, something to provide hope for the Buffalo Bills in 2019 and beyond, you got it Sunday.
Josh Allen provided a ton of it with his passing and running in the Buffalo Bills’ 42-17 victory against the Miami Dolphins at New Era Field.
Perhaps the rookie still has more to prove about whether he’ll be the long-term franchise quarterback the Bills expected when they made him the seventh overall pick of the draft.
But Sunday’s season finale — albeit against a Miami team that seemed unprepared and unmotivated with the firing of coach Adam Gase a distinct possibility — offered immense encouragement. Allen threw for 224 yards and three touchdowns, and ran for 95 yards and two scores on nine carries in the greatest performance of his rookie year.
“We’re building something special here,” fullback Patrick DiMarco said. “Watching Josh do what he did is super encouraging, and I think there’s great things ahead for
this organization.”
With a 6-10 finish to a season that was technically over when the Bills were eliminated from the playoffs with three games left, all that is left is to look down the road. When LeSean McCoy does that, he can’t help but smile.
“He has a bright future,” McCoy, who had a nine-yard scoring run on an otherwise quiet rushing day, said of Allen. “Put the right pieces around him, and it’s going to be dangerous.”
One of Allen’s completions was a nineyarder to defensive tackle Kyle Williams, who was playing the final game of his 13-year NFL career.
Williams’ first pro catch put the topper on a gamelong celebration that began with his being the last player introduced and greeted by his wife and their five children at midfield, and continued with tributes from several former teammates shown on the stadium’s video screens.
“It was fun to watch Josh go out there and kind of dazzle up,” DiMarco said. “From a rookie to the old guy, to send Kyle
off the right way, it was pretty cool.”
Yes, Allen’s passing was a little uneven. He had an ugly pick-six and some other misfires. In that regard, Allen still looked very much like a rookie.
Yet, he more than made up for it with the dynamic talent that he has shown throughout the year. It was clear that by season’s end, he had elevated his passing skills thanks, in no small part, to the guidance he received from coaches such as offensive coordinator Brian Daboll and quarterbacks Matt Barkley and Derek Anderson.
“I definitely think I’ve made a lot of progress this year, having the help that I have had,” said Allen, who completed 17 of 26 attempts and had a passer rating of 114.9. “Coach Daboll has done a great job, Coach Culley, and bringing in Matt and DA, they’ve been great for me. They’ve really opened my eyes to a different side of football.
“I feel like I’m seeing things a lot better, and I think that growth is going to continue, having those guys in the locker
OPPOSITE: Josh Allen saved the greatest performance of his rookie year for the season finale, with a five-touchdown performance in a blowout win over the Miami Dolphins. JAMES P. MCCOY / BUFFALO NEWS
WEEK 15 • 32-29 WIN VS. MIAMI
Allen goes Superman
BY JAY SKURSKI • DEC. 17, 2022
MVP Josh is back.
That was the immediate takeaway in the aftermath of Saturday’s thrilling, 32-29 win for the Buffalo Bills over the Miami Dolphins at snowy Highmark Stadium. Quarterback Josh Allen looked every bit like the best player on the planet in leading the Bills’ offense to the game-winning points.
You name it, Allen did it against Miami, going 25 of 40 for 304 yards and four touchdowns, while also adding 77 rushing yards on 10 carries.
With the Bills trailing 29-21 in the fourth quarter, Allen tied the game with a 5-yard touchdown pass to Dawson Knox on third-and-goal, then converted the twopoint conversion with a leap over the goal line that would make Superman proud.
Originally ruled short of the line, Allen was deemed to have broken the plane before losing possession on a replay review.
“He’s Superman,” Bills quarterback Matt Barkley said. “He always finds a way.”
The winning drive covered 86 yards over 15 plays and took the remaining 5:56
off the clock.
“I thought (offensive coordinator Ken) Dorsey did a really good job of throwing some runs in there,” head coach Sean McDermott said. “Devin Singletary, the offensive line … it was good to watch those guys kind of get into a good rhythm with some throws, with some passes. Different types of passes, different types of runs. Good communication with the coaches on the headset during that drive in particular with coach (Aaron) Kromer and Ken and Josh, just coming over to the sideline and making sure we were in full control of the situation.”
Arguably the biggest play of the game was one that Allen didn’t make. Facing third-and-6 from the Dolphins’ 34-yard line with 50 seconds remaining, Allen threw down the left sideline intended for Isaiah McKenzie. The pass fell incomplete, but McKenzie was interfered with by Dolphins cornerback Kader Kohou. The 21-yard penalty gave the Bills a first down at the Miami 13-yard line.
Two running plays by Singletary
advanced the ball to the Dolphins’ 4-yard line, with Singletary wisely sliding down instead of scoring the touchdown the Miami defense was trying to give him in an effort to get the ball back.
“Great situational awareness by ‘Motor,’” McDermott said.
On third-and-1, Allen took a knee, allowing the Bills to run the clock to 2 seconds before they brought kicker Tyler Bass out for a 25-yard field goal as time expired. That knee was about the only time the Dolphins stopped Allen.
“He makes plays that I’ve never seen before,” tight end Dawson Knox said of Allen. “Sometimes you kind of turn into a fan while you’re watching him. Unfortunately, I was under a 300-pound three technique on that play that he reached the ball over on the two points, so I didn’t see it till we saw the Jumbotron. But I’ve kind of talked about it before — it’s not even surprising at this point. You’re just like, ‘Oh, there’s Josh being Josh again.’ He’s the best quarterback in the league, the best football player in the
OPPOSITE: Josh Allen’s leap for a tying two-point conversion in the fourth quarter has become just another routine play to his teammates. “You’re just like, ‘Oh, there’s Josh being Josh again.’” said Dawson Knox, who caught a 5-yard touchdown pass one play earlier. “He’s the best quarterback in the league, the best football player in the league.” DEREK GEE / BUFFALO NEWS
WEEK 9
Grinding out a win
BY RYAN O’HALLORAN • NOV. 3, 2024
Josh Allen plopped down in a folding chair and used the perfect word to describe his primary emotion after the Buffalo Bills’ topsy-turvy 30-27 win over the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
“Exhale.”
All together now, Bills fans. Join your team’s players, coaches and staff. E-x-ha-l-e. Take a deep breath. Maybe many deep breaths. And then enjoy what you saw on a perfect afternoon of weather and competition.
That was November football. Toughness was required. Adversity was expected. Drama was anticipated. Despite facing a reeling Miami team, the Bills knew this would not be easy. The Dolphins’ 2-6 record stinks but their talent does not.
That was division football.
No secrets. No gimmicks. No tricks. It was the seventh Dolphins-Bills game in 26 months, and only two were decided by more than seven points. And that was — or has become — Bills football.
Find a way. Lean on different players. Don’t panic. And win the dang game.
Fun, wasn’t it? There was something refreshing about watching a close Bills home game. It’s why pro football has us hooked like a little kid cleaning out his or her Halloween candy bag. We gobble this stuff up.
This wasn’t like Bills-Miami in Week 2, Jacksonville-Bills in Week 3, TennesseeBills in Week 7 or Bills-Seattle in Week 8. This game was tied at three points, 20 and 27. The lead changed four times. Tyler Bass’ record-setting 61-yard field goal came with 5 seconds remaining.
The Bills won one-possession games over Arizona and the New York Jets, but beating the Dolphins in this manner felt different. And it should be viewed as the good kind of different.
This was a fight, a brouhaha, a physical test. A boxing match masked with helmets and shoulder pads.
“It was a hell of a grind, I’ll tell you that much,” defensive tackle DaQuan Jones said.
“You never take for granted how hard
it is to win a game in this league,” safety Taylor Rapp said.
“A total grind from start to finish,” safety Damar Hamlin said.
The Bills’ offense found a way.
They were a pitiful 2 of 5 in the red zone, and their final drive wasn’t exactly an exercise in efficiency, but the Bills won because Mack Hollins, Ray Davis and Quintin Morris all caught touchdown passes. It was one of those days in which everything was difficult. Another bad start. Some Allen low throws that were incomplete. And two more holding penalties.
The Bills’ defense found a way. They allowed Tua Tagovailoa to complete 25 of his 28 passes, but they didn’t get the top torn off the top of them via the monster big play — the Dolphins’ scoring drives lasted nine, 14, nine, nine and 11 plays. The rush defense allowed 4.8 yards per carry.
And the Bills’ special teams certainly found a way, capped by Bass’ winning kick to author a story of redemption within the same half.
OPPOSITE: Nothing came easy for Josh Allen and the Bills in Week 9, but they managed to pull out a 30-27 win for their fourth consecutive victory and stretched their AFC East lead to four games. HARRY SCULL JR. / BUFFALO NEWS
Bills fans cheer on a firstquarter field goal by Tyler Bass, who set a franchise record later in the game with his 61-yard game-winner with 5 seconds remaining.
“We didn’t play a great game,” head coach Sean McDermott said. “We didn’t have our ‘A’ game — give (Miami) credit. We hung in there.”
That is the main takeaway for the Bills in winning for the fourth consecutive week and stretching their AFC East lead to whopping four games: Everything won’t always be perfect or seamless or routine. What a learning lesson, not just for young players, but the entire roster. Things are going wrong? Suck it up and keep working. Things go right for a bit? Don’t let up; keep playing.
The Bills will be better for what they experienced against the desperate
Dolphins. The offense will regroup to assess why it had another slow start. The defense will evaluate why opposing quarterbacks have feasted on passes to the flats. The penalty issues remain.
“There are going to be these types of games sometimes,” cornerback Rasul Douglas said. “We could have just as easily lost.”
This is a coin-flip league. A play makes the difference. The NFL wants teams to major in one-score games. Heck, 20 teams entered Week 9 with at least four one-possession games on their ledger. The Bills are now 3-1 in those games.
The Bills won without their “A” game,
but those come along only a few times each year, if that. We saw it against Jacksonville. We have seen it in bits and pieces in all of their wins. This was more the norm.
Aesthetically, it wasn’t artful. You should not care. They all count the same in the “W” column, and their seventh “W” moved the Bills into second place in the AFC.
The Bills literally made one more play than Miami. It was enough.
“Nothing will always be perfect or beautiful,” Hamlin said. “Just finding a way is the name of the game.”
RIGHT:
DEREK GEE / BUFFALO NEWS
BILLS 30, DOLPHINS 27
REWRITING HISTORY
Passes Joe Ferguson (181) for second in career TD passes in franchise history
LEFT: Josh Allen signals to go for two points after a Ray Davis rushing touchdown in the third quarter. HARRY SCULL JR. / BUFFALO NEWS
MR. MVP
NFL HONORS
‘Surreal feeling’: The night Josh Allen won his first NFL MVP
BY RYAN O’HALLORAN • FEB. 7, 2025
NEW ORLEANS — Immediately after being named NFL MVP, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen did everything right … kind of like his 2024 season. He kissed fiancée Hailee Steinfeld. He hugged his parents, Joel and LaVonne, who were already tearing up. He properly buttoned his suit coat. And he didn’t trip as he climbed the stairs to the stage to be greeted by teammate Dion Dawkins and others. But during his two-minute acceptance speech?
“I kind of blacked out a little bit,” Josh Allen told The Buffalo News after Associated Press voters made him the first Buffalo Bill to win NFL MVP in 34 years. Understandable because the Saenger Theatre was broiling on an unseasonably warm February night in the heart of downtown New Orleans, because public speaking on national television is never easy and, perhaps most of all, because the gravity of the moment and the journey was hitting Allen like a figurative sledgehammer.
Josh Allen, Most Valuable Player of the National Football League.
Western New York, your quarterback is the year’s most indispensable player. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
“I think it means a lot to the city — I know anytime I step on the field in that stadium, they all chant, ‘MVP,’ and that’s such a surreal feeling to know they care so much about this,” Allen said.
A panel of 50 voters selected by the Associated Press ranked five players for MVP and Allen earned 27 first-place votes and 383 total points. Allen was the first or second choice on 49 ballots (he received one third-place vote).
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson was second with 362 points and 23 first-place votes, followed by Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley (120 points), Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (82) and Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff (47).
Only Allen and Jackson received firstplace votes.
Allen’s edge of four first-place votes over Jackson was the closest since quarterbacks Peyton Manning (Indianapolis) and Steve McNair (Tennessee) tied for the 2003 award.
Allen joined running backs O.J. Simpson (1973) and Thurman Thomas (1991) as Bills NFL MVP winners.
Bills owner Terry Pegula, Executive Vice President Pete Guelli, General Manager Brandon Beane and coach Sean McDermott traveled here for the awards show.
“Just super proud of Josh and all of the work he did and the journey he went on to get to this point,” Beane told The News. “It was like a proud parent moment.”
Said McDermott: “So happy for him, so happy for his family. It’s a great example of what one can accomplish when you put your mind and heart into something.”
It appeared history was working against Allen when Jackson was voted first-team All-Pro on Jan. 10 by the same voting group who selected the MVP. Jackson received 30 first-team votes compared to 18 for Allen.
OPPOSITE: “I kind of blacked out a little bit,” Josh Allen told The Buffalo News on Feb. 6 after Associated Press voters made him the first Buffalo Bill to win NFL MVP in 34 years. DAVID J. PHILLIP / ASSOCIATED PRESS
