Josh Allen threw three touchdown passes Sunday and ran for three more scores. / Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images
There are Bills offenses that exist in theory. And when we talk about those Bills offenses, we can talk about managing the way Josh Allen plays. We can talk about offensive coordinator Joe Brady and his spatially complex ethos. We can talk about the ways Buffalo’s true transformation this offseason was into a unit that was able to convert into different formations more quickly rather than one that needed to rely on deep-ball passing. And we can talk about the importance of creating a running game not centered around the quarterback, which absolutely seems to have taken place.
But then there are games like Sunday’s 44–32 win over the Buccaneers, in which Allen accounted for six touchdowns (three passing, three rushing), that make the nuance feel like discussing advanced physics when you’re about to get run over by El Toro from Monster Jam. It also makes the usage question on Allen feel, well, useless. It’s very clear that this team is tethered to all of Allen’s best and worst tendencies in perpetuity and the sooner the Bills accept that and drop the pretenses about what needs to change _around_ Allen in order to maximize him, the easier it will be to understand the team’s overall performance.
Just last Sunday, the Bills were embarrassed by the Dolphins, as Allen was completely sapped by the South Florida heat and bogged down by the pace of the game. There were some portions of the game _this Sunday_ in which Allen retained his confounding form, and he cost Buffalo with a disastrous early turnover by heaving an interception into traffic that he’s lucky only resulted in a Buccaneers field goal.
And then there were large portions of Allen’s outing against the Bucs in which he retained this sort of toxic, Superhero-like luminescence, able to take a couple of laps from sideline to sideline and fire a bullet to Tyrell Shavers in the back of the end zone. His apparent indecision and willingness to wait for a bigger play (we don’t technically know if this was a designed scramble play, which are starting to become more popular with mobile, big-armed quarterbacks) was weaponized against an excellent defense.
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This is the kind of moment that should just suspend all other conversations. About the lack of receivers. About whether Allen has the correct coordinator. About how much Allen is running. About whether Allen has the correct head coach. About whether Allen is in the right _system._ Because as much as there is a system, there is a man who is capable of running in a certain way and scrambling in a certain way and throwing in a certain way that transcends the plays that are called.
The Bills would be close to 7–3 right now with the nipple-pinching farmer from _The Waterboy_ as head coach and a handful of goldendoodles playing offensive line. That doesn’t take away from what coach Sean McDermott is doing from a defensive game-planning standpoint or the real improvements Brady has made to the team’s thought processes on offense. It just reflects the fact that Allen is who he is. And, for the past seven years, he has been one of the best players in the league about 80% of the time he suits up.
While Tom Brady and Peyton Manning were systems in and of themselves, Allen is closer to the love child of Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and Ben Roethlisberger (don’t try to make sense of that visually). While he can be contained in a system, as Rodgers briefly was with Matt LaFleur, winning a pair of late-career MVPs, there is always going to be the inclination to take over. To make big throws. To, when deep in the red zone, call your own number. To stretch plays to their impossible outer limit because the outer limit is their comfort zone. That’s engrained into the marrow.
So, as the Bills try to chase down the Patriots and vie for either a wild-card spot or another crack at the division title, they can do so comfortably on Allen’s shoulders. The Buccaneers game was the perfect example of what can happen when the defense gives up 32 points—as opposed to two weeks ago when McDermott truly emptied the cupboard against the Chiefs and hit Patrick Mahomes more times in four quarters than he ever had been in his career—and Allen throws two interceptions. The Bills _still_ beat a quality opponent by more than 10 points. Because, well, _Josh Allen,_ man. There’s no point in trying to change it now.