Josh Allen shows high ceiling, collapsing walls in Bills’ wild-card loss

Bills quarterback Josh Allen has amazing athletic potential. But his inexperience showed too often in the wild-card round.

Remember when we discussed the potential fatal flaw for every wild-card team? Quarterback Josh Allen’s ceiling was Buffalo’s fatal flaw, and boy, did that show up in the last few minutes of Buffalo’s 22-19 overtime loss to the Texans on Saturday evening.

Here’s the situation: Buffalo had the ball on the Houston 28-yard line with two minutes left in the game, down 19-16 after blowing a 16-0 lead. Texans edge-rusher Whitney Mercilus broke through to pressure Allen, who promptly hurled the ball in the general direction of offensive guard Jon Feliciano. That caused an illegal touching call on Feliciano (which the Texans declined) and an intentional grounding call on Allen, which was accepted. That pushed the ball back to the Houston 42-yard line, which would make the game-tying field goal for kicker Stephen Hauschka far more difficult.

Allen wasn’t done, though — on fourth-and-27, he took a sack on the next play from linebacker Jacob Martin, which is the one thing you can’t do in that situation. Now, the Bills had to give the ball back to the Texans, with time slipping away.

The Texans gave the ball back to the Bills on a four-and-out, but not before making head coach Sean McDermott waste all three of his timeouts. On the first play with the ball back in his hand, Allen scrambled to the right, got caught at the 50-yard line, and tried to hurl the ball to tight end Dawson Knox. As was the case with so many of Allen’s attempts on the day, this was waaaaay off.

The Bills did get down to the Houston 29-yard line on that drive despite Allen’s six incompletions, and Hauschka kicked a 47-yard field goal with 10 seconds left in regulation to send the game to overtime.

Both teams got a shot at scoring before Deshaun Watson’s amazing scramble to complete a 34-yard pass to running back Taiwan Jones, which set up Ka’imi Fairbairn’s 28-yard game-winning field goal with 3:23 left in the first overtime period.

Despite the fact that he was sacked seven times, pressured mercilessly, and set up to fail at times by the playcalling from his coaches (on their first two possessions, the Texans punted from the Buffalo 42-yard line and the Buffalo 46-yard line), Watson had the wherewithal to take the game on his shoulders and make the incredible play when it was most needed.

At the end of his second NFL season, Allen just isn’t there yet. The book on Allen when he came out of Wyoming was that he was a big guy with a big arm who would make things happen — for both teams. That’s still his modus operandi. As inconsistent as he was, completing 24 of 46 passes for 246 yards, no touchdowns and no interceptions, Allen also scored Buffalo’s only touchdown of the day on a 16-yard trick play reception from receiver John Brown, and he led his team with 92 rushing yards on nine carries.

Allen has learned a lot in two seasons. When he runs a short-to-intermediate passing game and saves the deep shots for the right times, he can be very effective. And he clearly knows how to save his best for key situations, at least most of the time. Coming into this game, he had completed 58 of 100 passes for 782 yards, eight touchdowns, no interceptions, and a quarterback rating of 109.7 in the fourth quarter. He had engineered four fourth-quarter comebacks this season, and five game-winning drives. The problem is that at this point in his career, there’s far too much randomness in his game, and too many stretches where the efficiency doesn’t show up.

This long throw to fullback Patrick DiMarco into double coverage with 12:45 left in overtime was perhaps the most glaring example, and it makes you wonder if Allen will ever drop the “hero gene” that makes some quarterbacks try stupefyingly weird throws against all manner of common sense.

This isn’t to throw dirt on Allen’s potential after such a short time. Watson suffered a horrible loss in the wild-card round at the end of his second season last year, when the Colts beat the Texans, 21-7, and Watson completed 29 of 49 passes for 235 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. Perhaps it was the crucible of that game that allowed Watson to bring his team back from the brink this time around. And perhaps it will be Allen’s turn next year.

If he’s able to harness his obvious athletic gifts and add a level of sense to his play-to-play mentality, he could be the key cog on a Bills team that is clearly ready to compete at every opportunity. But now, all Allen and the Bills can do is wait until next time, and wonder what might have been.