And then, there were two. On Friday. ESPN’s Chris Mortensen was the first to report that the Bills and quarterback Josh Allen have agreed to a new six-year contract extension that will keep Allen in Buffalo through the 2028 season. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport confirmed the report.
Adam Schefter, Mortensen’s ESPN teammate, has the details.
Compensation update on Josh Allen new deal that @mortreport reported on: it’s a six-year deal worth $258 million, including $150 million guaranteed, per source. https://t.co/KXcgliKYAI
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) August 6, 2021
The $100 million guaranteed Allen gets at signing is the most any NFL player has ever been given, exceeding the $95 million Dak Prescott received in March.
Selected with the seventh overall pick in the 2018 draft out of Wyoming, Allen went through two season in which he looked a lot like he did as a college quarterback — a player with fabulous physical gifts, and not always the best accuracy and situational awareness. That second season ended with a playoff loss to the Houston Texans (no, really), in which Allen was over his head and out of his element.
Josh Allen shows high ceiling, collapsing walls in Bills’ wild-card loss
Then, in 2020, Allen made The Leap. In 2020, including the postseason, Allen completed 473 passes in 692 attempts (a 68.4% completion rate) for 5,361 yards (7.7 yards per attempt), 42 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions. Allen also ran for 421 yards and eight touchdowns on 102 attempts in the regular season, adding 145 rushing yards and another touchdown on 25 attempts.
It was one of the most remarkable one-year and third-season turnarounds for a quarterback in NFL history. Allen worked on his mechanics in the offseason with performance coach Jordan Palmer, which helped, and offensive coordinator Brian Daboll helped Allen with route concepts that allowed the quarterback to rip man coverage to bits early in the season.
How Stefon Diggs and man coverage turned Josh Allen into a better quarterback
The trade for receiver Stefon Diggs also helped, but this was on Allen to improve, and he did — to a historic degree. Since 1983, per Football Outsiders, no NFL quarterback had a bigger third-year improvement than Allen, who had the biggest bump in DYAR, the second-biggest bumps in DVOA, completion percentage, and yards per attempt. Below Allen on the DYAR improvement list is Carson Palmer (Jordan’s brother), Ken O’Brien, Troy Aikman, Jim Everett, Jay Schroeder, Sam Bradford, Craig Erickson, Brian Griese, and Gus Frerotte.
That list of names tells you that a huge third-year improvement doesn’t automatically guarantee a future Hall of Fame career, but in Allen’s case, we’ll take the Palmer/Aikman/O’Brien over as opposed to the Erickson/Griese/Frerotte caveat emptor.
Why? The extent to which Allen improved with the things that had his struggling earlier in his NFL career. Allen struggled for a bit in the middle of the season when he faced teams that played more zone and disguised coverages against him — after throwing 10 touchdowns and one interception in September, he threw 12 touchdowns and seven picks in October and November combined. Daboll gave Allen more conservative options until he could figure it all out, and in the end, he did — in December and January combined, he was good for 15 touchdowns and just two interceptions. And though the Bills missed the Super Bowl again, Allen wasn’t the postseason liability he had been the year before.
In Weeks 1-10 of the 2020 season against zone coverage, per Sports Info Solutions, Allen completed 129 of 189 passes for 1,543 yards, 999 air yards, five touchdowns, and four interceptions. From Week 11 through the AFC Championship game, against zone coverage, Allen completed 126 of 172 passes for 1,423 yards, 1,016 air yards, seven touchdowns, and three interceptions. That kind of improvement in-season against concepts that used to have you flustered? This is what you want to see from a young franchise quarterback, and Allen confirmed his franchise designation with that improvement.
“I think Josh has a good offseason plan in terms of the things that he’s done since he’s been here,” Daboll said in June. “It’s like a golf swing, right? His mechanics, his follow through, his base, his movement in the pocket. He does those things I would say religiously throughout the offseason and we get him back here along with all the other quarterbacks and [QB coaches] Ken [Dorsey] and Shea [Tierney] are working on those things.
“Each year he’s obviously learned a little bit more about the system, we’ve tried to tailor the system specifically to him. There’s a lot of good give and take between the two of us in terms of things he feels comfortable with and maybe things we can do a better job of. He’s the consummate pro in terms of he’s never satisfied, and none of us really are. Never satisfied with what you did the previous year.”
Next up for these types of contracts? 2018 first-overall pick Baker Mayfield, and 2018 32nd-overall pick Lamar Jackson. Allen has set a (if not the) tone for those negotiations.