Through three weeks of the 2024 NFL season, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen has never looked better. As of Tuesday morning, the seventh-year signal-caller has surpassed Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs as the odds-on favorite to win the NFL MVP award.
After a slow start in the first half of Week 1’s comeback win over the Arizona Cardinals, Allen has played dominant, mistake-free football while spreading the ball all over the field to his teammates. The latest was his effort against the Jacksonville Jaguars on ‘Monday Night Football’ in which he threw four first-half touchdowns and posted the highest total QBR (98.3) for a QB since the 2021 season.
His play has him sitting atop the league’s very best:
Josh Allen is the new favorite to win MVP 🏆🦬 pic.twitter.com/c1ZePAXuZW
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) September 24, 2024
A couple of statistics highlight just how excellent he has been. First off, Allen’s EPA per dropback is currently .62, which is far ahead of everyone else in the league and is the highest by any NFL QB through three weeks of the season since 2016. Secondly, Allen’s 92.6 total QBR is the very best the metric has seen through three weeks since it was introduced in 2006.
So far in 2024, Allen has thrown seven touchdowns to zero interceptions while completing 75.0% of his passes. On the ground, he has added two scores and run for nine first downs.
We got glimpses of what the pairing of Allen and offensive coordinator Joe Brady could accomplish in the back half of last year, but what they’re doing to start the season is more than impressive.
It seems it’s all coming together for Allen in his seventh year. He has a running game, he has a good offensive line, and he has a play-caller in Brady who is making the game simple for his quarterback. It has never all clicked like this at once for Allen except for maybe the two playoff games in 2021. But even then, the running game wasn’t a major threat to defenses.
We will have to see if Allen and company can keep it up for the rest of the season. Just last year, after the Bills blowout the Miami Dolphins to move to 3-1, Allen found himself as the MVP favorite. But, this year feels different. With Brady calling the shots, the offense seems less one-dimensional on more sustainable.
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