You like Josh Allen after three games. Your friends do, too. Of course, the Bills have to be over the moon themselves.
But what about the guy who left shoes so big to fill that nobody in over two decades has come close to filling them?
Like many, Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly has waited a long time for a quarterback to suit up for the Bills that has reached his tier of play when he was on the team. Now, Allen isn’t there yet… we’re three games into a good start to a season.
But even Kelly can’t help himself already after watching Allen guide the Bills offense through three games of the 2020 season.
“This is the first time I’ve ever really, really been excited about a quarterback on our team. We’ve had some, and it was always, ‘We’ll see. We’ll see. … Yeah, he’s got the potential, but we’ll see.’” Kelly said over the weekend via the LA Times. “With Josh, I think he’s proven to everybody he can play. Now he just has to stay healthy.”
Kelly also made note of something that not every quarterback has. Every career path is different, but another quarterback drafted in 2018 with Allen was Josh Rosen. He’s bounced around the NFL and is already on his third team. In that same time frame, Allen’s been very, very settled by comparison. The Bills quarterback has never been anything else other than… a Bills quarterback in his career. Kelly mentioned how important that is.
“Being in the same system a number of years is going to help,” Kelly added. “I was always blessed, and I know (Dan) Marino was too, and John (Elway), that we had the same system. That’s one of the things I talk to Tom Brady about — I’m very good friends with him — is that consistency, being in the same system all the time, and you don’t have to think when you’re going up to the line. It automatically comes natural.”
Not only has Allen’s start to the season impressed Kelly, it’s even surpassed some of his numbers.
Allen became the first-ever Bill with consecutive four-touchdown games. Furthermore, as of Sunday’s win, he has the most touchdowns of any Bills QB through the first three games of the season, according to the team:
Josh Allen has now accounted for 11 touchdowns this season, marking the most in team history by a Bill through the first three games of a season (surpassing Jim Kelly's 10 TDs in 1991).
— Buffalo Bills PR (@BuffaloBillsPR) September 27, 2020
In addition, Allen is now the only player in NFL history to put up 1,000 pass yards, 10 throwing touchdowns and two rushing scores in the first three games of a season. But in typical Bills fashion since Buffalo’s head coaching duties were taken over by Sean McDermott, Allen still made sure to point out his team was not perfect en route to a 3-0 record. They were very close to being 2-1 and Allen recognized that following his team’s 35-32 win over the Rams in Week 3.
“Going up 28-3 as a team we’ve got to be better, we gotta make sure we’re keeping our foot on the pedal and we got to put that game away,” Allen said during the postgame video conference. “I’m very happy with how resilient this team was, but I’m also a little mad at myself for allowing us to dip like we did.”
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