Sean McVay called Josh Allen an alien. Damien Woody called him a mutant. But the catalyst for his last three games was a kneel-down. And since proposing to actor Hailee Steinfeld during the Bills’ bye week, the quarterback has won more than Steinfeld’s heart. In all probability, he’s won the hearts of MVP voters.
In Buffalo’s 48-42 win at Detroit on Sunday, Allen capped a three-game stretch with no turnovers, no sacks and only one play that netted negative yardage.
Against the Lions, he passed for 362 yards and two touchdowns and added 68 yards and two touchdowns on the ground. And his most impressive play didn’t even count.
Last week, he registered three touchdown passes and three rushing touchdowns. Allen is the first player ever with at least two touchdown passes and two rushing touchdowns in consecutive games. He’s also the first in NFL history with three such games in a season. More importantly, Allen has now led the Bills to wins over the No. 1 seeds in each conference, including a Week 11 victory over Kansas City.
“Again, we’re just trying to find ways to win,” Allen said. “This is going to help us in the long run but still a lot of things we can learn from, take away. Still, offensively I think we need to find some more. Too many plays we left out there. I know it’s – to nitpick a game like that where you score 48 sounds kind of dumb, but still feels like we left some out there.”
Buffalo’s next three opponents, two games with New England (3-11) sandwiched around a Week 17 home game with the Jets (4-10), are a combined 10-32 (.238).
That’s not good for the rest of the league, or the NFL record book. On Sunday, Buffalo became the fifth team in league history to produce 30 points in eight straight games within a season. In the process, the Bills tied the five longest streaks ever (2013 Denver Broncos, 2007 and 2010 New England Patriots, and 2000 St. Louis Rams).
No one circles the wagons like the Bills. And circle Feb. 9 on the calendar because the Chiefs could be without their starting quarterback entering the final stretch of the regular season, and Buffalo owns the head-to-head tiebreaker.
Super Bowl preview: Buffalo and Detroit kicked off with a combined 22-4 record. Sunday marked only the seventh game in the league-merger era in which the teams entered with a combined winning percentage of at least .846 in Week 15 or later, the first since Kansas City (12-1) beat New Orleans (10-3) on Dec. 20, 2020. According to Elias Sports Bureau, each of those previous six late-season showdowns have produced an eventual Super Bowl berth: Kansas City in 2020, Seattle in 2005, Tennessee in 1999, Green Bay in 1996, both Buffalo and the New York Giants in 1990 and Washington in 1983.
For more information on the Bills and Lions, visit the Buffalo and Detroit team pages at ProFootballPost.com.
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