The agony was apparent as the reigning league MVP tearfully answered questions following the Buffalo Bills’ latest postseason heartbreaker Saturday – a 33-30 loss to the Denver Broncos. In overtime. Again.
The difference this time? Allen was more antihero than hero, valiantly fighting to save his team – while undermining it nearly as much.
“It’s extremely difficult. I feel like I let my teammates down tonight,” an emotional Allen said at his postgame news conference.
“Missed opportunities throughout the game. It’s been a long season. I hate how it ended, and it’s gonna stick with me for a long time.”
Undoubtedly.
Allen accounted for 349 yards of offense and threw for three TDs. He also turned the ball over four times – two fumbles bracketing halftime and gifting the Broncos six bonus points in a game that had no margin for error.
But it was the interception when the game had entered a sudden death phase – Denver punted on the first possession of OT – that undid the Bills. And maybe receiver Brandin Cooks got outmuscled for a slightly underthrown ball that flipped the momentum. Maybe Cooks even caught it … but Denver corner Ja’Quan McMillian wound up with it. Regardless, Allen must bear his share of the blame at a point when a field goal wins the game.
Remarkably, he’d entered Saturday without a turnover in his six previous postseason appearances, a record among NFL quarterbacks.
“Can’t win with five turnovers,” said Allen, noting the team total (running back James Cook’s second-quarter fumble also led to a Denver TD).
“You shoot yourself in the foot like that, you don’t deserve to win football games.”
But does Allen deserve this?
He’s now wading deeper into waters no athlete wants to drown in. The best golfer to never win a major. The best player to never win a ring − Dan Marino, Karl Malone, Ken Griffey Jr. Locally in Western New York, Allen is replicating the quarterbacking success of Hall of Famer Jim Kelly … less the Super Bowl setbacks.
Allen atoned for his fumbles Saturday – one occurring when he carelessly ran with the ball exposed while (over)aggressively trying to get the Bills into field-goal range at the end of the first half, the other on a strip-sack. Yet he brought Buffalo all the way back from a 20-10 halftime deficit. He nearly did more than that but missed wide-open tight end Dawson Knox on his final throw of regulation – a better pass almost certainly leading Knox into the end zone in the final ticks and sending the Bills back to the AFC championship game.
Instead, Buffalo heads home into the throes of what will figuratively be a long, cold winter.
‘We’re thankful for him,’ said Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins, fighting back tears of his own in the locker room following the game. ‘He (didn’t) let us down.’
Said Buffalo coach Sean McDermott: ‘It’s not on (Allen). We had opportunities, all of us. And I’m extremely proud of him. He’s a tremendous person, tremendous leader, tremendous quarterback.’
Yet the loss to Denver rendered Allen 0-3 in overtime playoff games (and 0-7 overall). If you don’t recall the come-from-ahead loss to the Houston Texans six years ago in his postseason debut, then you certainly remember the 42-36 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2022, when Buffalo couldn’t protect a lead after scoring the go-ahead field goal with 13 seconds to go in regulation − not that it was Allen’s fault.
That doesn’t even account for the pair of AFC championship game losses at Arrowhead. Or the three-point loss to the Chiefs in the divisional round at Buffalo two years ago, when Bills kicker Tyler Bass missed a 44-yard field goal inside two minutes that might have sent that game into OT.
Matters have reached a point where Allen’s legacy is beginning to hang in the balance. He’s won eight playoff games. Great. They’re also the most ever by a quarterback who hasn’t claimed a conference championship.
Hall of Famers like John Elway, Peyton Manning and Brett Favre all had to endure significant postseason tribulations before their Lombardi breakthroughs. More recently, so too did Drew Brees and Matthew Stafford.
But Marino? Kelly? Dan Fouts? Warren Moon? Cam Newton? Philip Rivers? Matt Ryan? Fran Tarkenton? All of them are Hall of Famers or likely will be soon. None were ever Super Bowl champions, ‘merely’ legendary passers so often subject to the kind of January misery Allen has too often experienced.
Allen runs the risks of being a modern-day Marino. Ask around for opinions on who the greatest passer in NFL history is, and you’ll get a fair amount of votes for Marino – his accurate, high-powered arm maybe boasting the quickest release the game has ever seen. It allowed him to shatter passing records and earned him an MVP award in 1984, when the second-year QB carried the Miami Dolphins to Super Bowl 19 – where they were routed by Joe Montana’s San Francisco 49ers.
And just to clarify, ‘greatest passer’ is not to be conflated with GOAT.
Marino never got back to the Super Sunday stage. It might not have mattered given his prime was spent at a time when the NFC – Montana’s Niners, Favre’s Green Bay Packers, Troy Aikman’s Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants and Washington conspired to keep the Lombardi Trophy in the NFC between the 1984 and ’96 seasons.
Is Allen ticketed for a similar fate? He’s not Michael Vick, but Allen does have a case of his own as the greatest dual-threat quarterback in league history – a guy who carried his team to five straight AFC East crowns, only to be blocked by Patrick Mahomes and/or unfortunate luck. Allen won’t be named MVP in back-to-back seasons – not this year anyway – but perhaps no team in the league is currently more reliant on one singular player than the Bills are on him.
But Buffalo doesn’t appear financially positioned to get that additional superstar to put Allen and the rest of this roster over the top – the way Terrell Davis did for Elway’s Broncos or Reggie White did for Favre’s Packers. Worse, the Bills could be headed into a fallow period – young Drake Maye and the New England Patriots resurrected in 2025, already formidable enough to reclaim the divisional throne … similar to the way Kelly’s Bills relegated Marino’s imbalanced Dolphins to afterthoughts for a chunk of the 1990s.
‘Is the (Bills’) window closing?’ asked NFL Network analyst and former league fullback Michael Robinson. ‘They’ve been in this situation so many times.’
This seemed like it was supposed to be Allen’s year. And Buffalo’s. They didn’t need to go through Mahomes and the Chiefs in these playoffs nor Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals. Not even Lamar Jackson or the Baltimore Ravens. Aaron Rodgers notwithstanding, Allen was supposed to be the OG this time, his Mafia poised to rule the NFL block.
But not now. Mr. Brightside will have to hope there’s a yet-to-be revealed bright side to the adversity he’s enduring now.
“I love my teammates, and I’m extremely sorry and I’m disappointed in how this ended,” Allen said Saturday.
Let’s just how hope there’s a better ending awaiting him somewhere in the future.