While Bills quarterback Josh Allen had a strong game in his team’s season opener against the New York Jets, it was far from perfect. The third-year quarterback did throw for 312 yards, his first time surpassing 300 in a single game, but that came despite two very bad negatives from the quarterback.
Allen had another career-high, 14 rushes in a game, but along with that came two lost fumbles. Fortunately for the Bills, they weren’t costly on this occasion as they defeated the Jets, 27-17. But look no further than the last time the Bills played a game. The Texans took advantage of their extra opportunities against the Bills during the 2019 playoffs. Allen needs to fix this issue before better teams come to town.
Often looking at the big picture, Bills head coach Sean McDermott said his quarterback had a good game, yes, but he cannot turn the ball over like that anymore.
“He’s got to do a better job and I don’t think there’s any other way to skin it. You can’t give the ball away. The ball has an unbelievable ability to become a great equalizer. We were dominating that game in a lot ways, as you saw, and we put the ball on the ground and all of sudden, we’re facing adversity,” McDermott said on Monday via video conference.
Following Sunday’s game, Allen echoed his coach. When asked about surpassing that 300-yard total, Buffalo’s signal caller said that “doesn’t matter” to him. Instead, Allen deflected directly to his fumbles during that same response.
“We’re going to need some better decision making out of me,” Allen said. “Honestly, got to take care of the football. That’s key to this game. One, who can score the most, and who can turn the ball over less. We’ll learn from it. This week [of practice] is probably going to be pretty heavy on ball security… that’s no fault but my own, but it’s something I’ll work on.”
In the end, and with the help of forced turnovers from his own defense, Allen and the Bills held off the Jets. But Buffalo can’t afford such turnovers and while Allen’s arm had a great game, his hands have to follow suit… in a hurry. The Bills sport a much tougher schedule than they did in 2019. Last season, Allen essentially played in 15 games because for most of Buffalo’s season finale, backups played. In those 15 outings, Allen had a whopping 14 fumbles, nearly one per game.
There’s reason to believe Allen can improve, though. From his first season to his second, Allen cut down on interceptions. In fact, despite playing in five more games in 2019 (or four with that season finale in mind), he cut his interceptions from 12 to nine.
Digging deeper, there’s even more reason for optimism.
In 2019, Allen’s nine total interceptions saw a third of them come in one game… an early season contest, Week 4 against the New England Patriots when he was picked off three times. In fact, of that nine, seven of them came in the first five games of last season.
Clearly at some point, Allen answered the wake-up call.
Whatever Allen channeled to improve his early-season interception troubles in 2019, he needs to return to that well and find the solution to his ball-security problems. Hopefully Allen does so this week prior to his team’s Week 2 meeting with the Dolphins en route… instead of waiting for five games to go by, like what happened with the interception issue a year ago.
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