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Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen is the team’s most important player. That’s just the way things work with quarterbacks in the NFL today.
Pro Football Focus is the leader in football analytics, looking deeper than anyone else.
That was not required in their latest exercise.
PFF named the best contract every NFL team has on their ledger. Dollar figure aside, locking up Allen was their pick:
The Bills are another team with a long list of great deals on their books, earning two spots on our top 32 contract rankings. Buffalo has a host of other deserving candidates, including cornerback Tre’Davious White, linebacker Matt Milano and safeties Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde — though Poyer is reportedly looking for a new contract before the 2022 season kicks off.
It sounds silly now given Allen’s performance the past two seasons, but the Bills took a bit of a gamble when they extended him coming off his breakout 2020 campaign in which his 90.9 grade was a 25-point improvement over his first two seasons. With quarterbacks Jared Goff and Carson Wentz serving as cautionary tales of the early extension, Buffalo believed Allen would continue to play at an exceptionally high level.
That gamble more than paid off, with Allen’s 88 total regular-season touchdowns scored over the past two seasons more than any other player, and his 70 big-time throws ranking fourth. He’s comfortably one of the top quarterbacks in the sport, and getting his extension done early will benefit the Bills for years to come.
Now two years into his breakout as a top-NFL talent at quarterback, some do forget how early the Bills signed Allen to a long-term deal. Down the road he’ll still likely be able to ink another one in Buffalo, but keeping him locked in for nearly the first decade of his NFL career was the most important thing the Bills could’ve done.
The Bills and Buffalo general manager Brandon Beane did that.
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