Josh Allen is too good and too tough not to win a Super Bowl
After Sunday's game, Allen looked like a club fighter who had picked the wrong opponent for a payday. You should have seen the other guy.
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Steam was rising out of the hissing showers nearby, and there was Josh Allen slumped on a stool in front of his locker, looking like a club fighter from Jersey who had picked the wrong opponent for a payday.
Though the Bayonne Bleeder had actually won this bout by technical knockout, it sure didn’t seem that way. Dion Dawkins was standing across the room when he nodded toward the quarterback whose nose was starting to resemble a zombie film.
“He’ll have two black eyes tomorrow,” the left tackle said.
Hey, you should have seen the other guy.
Dawkins has been protecting the reigning league MVP for his entire Buffalo Bills career, so not much can surprise him anymore. But when Allen lifted himself off the MetLife Stadium field after a run against the Jets, waved for backup Mitch Trubisky to immediately replace him, and then sprinted off the field as if he were being timed in the 40-yard dash, the four-time Pro Bowl tackle was downright scared.
Dawkins didn’t know what had happened to the best player in football, because nobody in America did.
“Oh my gosh, something’s wrong,” Tony Romo said on CBS. “This is not OK. He would never do this.”
No, Josh Allen would never leave the field for any reason. He plays the game with zero regard for his 6-5, 237-pound body and yet never misses a game.
As it turned out, the Jets’ Micheal Clemons had landed a left hook to Allen’s head on a tackle, and the quarterback’s nose opened up like a fire hydrant. “Obviously gushing blood,” Allen said. “I just wanted to try to get off the field and stop it.”
Trubisky made a huge throw without the benefit of any warmups, but before anyone could start looking up the last time Trubisky made a huge throw of any kind, Allen was back in the huddle.
His bodyguard didn’t say anything to him. “I just looked at him,” Dawkins said.
“It shows Josh is not a fake. It shows he wears that MVP title. Anybody could have came out and sat on the sideline and said, ‘Yeah, take your time. My nose is bleeding. I’m not going back in.’
“Instead, he comes right back in with two bloody nose plugs, and he can’t even breathe. It shows the type of kid he is.”
It shows why Allen is a mesmerizing force of nature, even on a day when he is not scoring a touchdown with his arm or his feet.
“Josh didn’t score?” Dawkins said incredulously. “Damn.”
He threw for only 148 yards, and still, the Bills embarrassed their divisional foe in a 30-10 thrashing that did no favors for Aaron Glenn and his attempt to change the Jets’ losing culture. Clemons embodied that culture for other Jets coaches last year, and Glenn kept him on the roster anyway and paid the price Sunday, when the defensive lineman committed a roughing-the-passer penalty on Allen on a third-and-19 incompletion.
In fairness, Allen sold the call by snapping back his head in something of an NBA or international soccer flop. But Clemons put himself in a terrible position, on cue, and Allen took advantage of it. That’s what special players do.
They also show up every week, regardless of the circumstances. After Buffalo’s breathless comeback victory over the Ravens in the season opener, Allen acknowledged that his team “could’ve easily led into everything that everybody was saying about us.” In other words, they could’ve gotten caught taking the Jets for granted.
Instead, the Bills covered 81 punishing yards to score a touchdown on their first possession, highlighted by Allen’s 40-yard run on third-and-long. The quarterback hurdled a couple of fallen bodies, outran the athletic Will McDonald, and punctuated the dash by throwing a hard right-handed stiff-arm at Tony Allen to knock him to the ground.
Dawkins was asked if his quarterback is as tough as a lineman.
“No,” he responded. “Josh is tough like Conor McGregor. Josh is tough like (Jon) Bones Jones. He’s tough like (Sean) O’Malley. He’s tough like Jorge Masvidal. He’s a top fighter. He can compete at any level.
“I’ve been playing with that kid for eight years. Every game he takes a leap.”
Everyone around the NFL knows what the final leap needs to be. Allen has to find a way to beat Patrick Mahomes or, more to the point, the Bills have to find a way to beat the Chiefs — assuming Kansas City recovers from its 0-2 start. Allen made an incredible fourth-down throw under intense pressure in last season’s AFC Championship Game, and his receiver didn’t catch the ball.
The Chiefs always made that play because Mahomes had the supporting cast required to make five trips to the Super Bowl.
Allen has never had that kind of help. It remains to be seen whether he does now. Though James Cook is a legit star in the backfield, there are no Justin Jeffersons split out wide.
But this much is true: Allen is a freakish combination of Cam Newton and Big Ben Roethlisberger, skilled enough to win five straight division titles after Tom Brady walked away from the AFC East. He doesn’t even throw interceptions anymore. If anyone can finally deliver Buffalo its long-lost Super Bowl victory, Allen is the one.
At 29, with many prime years ahead of him, Allen is simply too good and too tough to leave this game without at least one championship ring. Sunday provided more evidence why.
The quarterback took a shot to the nose and bled all over the place for the first time since his high school basketball days. When it was over in the Jersey Meadowlands, and he was asked how his famous face was holding up, Allen said, “We can breathe, so it’s good.”
Buffalo can breathe a bit easier. Someday, this club fighter will win himself a belt.