It isn’t the first time a quarterback finds himself embroiled in a hot debate about whether or not he is going to be a good quarterback in the NFL, but that’s where we are with respect to Josh Allen these days. In fact, “these days” have been going on ever since the Buffalo Bills moved up in the draft to select him with the 7th overall pick in 2018.
This season will mark the sixth year I’ve watched Josh Allen play football. Laramie, or ‘Laradise’ as it’s called by locals is about 300 miles from where I live in Wyoming, so I couldn’t personally attend any games because the weather gets very dicey in this region, even in the early fall months. But oh I watched and listened to every game.
I started paying close attention to Josh Allen because I also follow the University of Wyoming football program. It’s the only university in the state and having lived in Wyoming for nearly 30 years makes it my “home” team for college football. It’s a football program not unlike my alma mater, the University at Buffalo.
Both programs are not well funded programs like colleges in the SEC or ACC. Both occasionally contribute players to the NFL. Both currently have top tier players in Kahlil Mack and Josh Allen repping their respective alma maters in the big league.
My first experience watching Josh Allen play was when he played a couple games before breaking his clavicle at the start of his sophomore year at Wyoming. He looked like a noodle with clown feet and ran around helter-skelter for his life because there wasn’t much in the way of an effective offensive line in front of him.
Josh might have weighed around 200 lbs. soaking wet when he started playing for the Cowboys (he played one year for Reedley College). Since he went out that season early, we didn’t really get much of a good look at him his first year. When Josh showed up for his junior year, you could see he had grown a couple inches. He still looked about 15 years old, despite being way over 6 feet tall.
Allen played like his hair was on fire his junior year at Wyoming (2016). That was when you could begin to see the emergence of a leader on the field. Josh was often seen going up and down on the sidelines imploring his team to victory. He played as if it was the Super Bowl every single game.
The Cowboys finished with an 8-6 record in 2016 (6-2 conference) and Josh was being talked up by Mike Mayock and other national draft analysts. But if you watched Josh play, you could see he was still very raw, especially at the Division I college level. Yet despite the dearth of physical talent around him, Josh would literally will his team to win and give it his all every time he stepped on the field.
However, it was also obvious to this observer that Allen was still physically immature. He was still growing and his body wasn’t always in sync. He was all arms and legs and sometimes those clown feet would make their unwelcome appearance.
So here is this guy considered a ‘backwoods’ quarterback from some unknown place in rural California who couldn’t get one school to offer him a scholarship to play after literally sending out 1,000 letters to colleges across the country. Wyoming lucks into him (story for another post) and Allen wouldn’t waste his opportunity to show the world why they were wrong to ignore his gift.
Fast forward to when the Bills drafted Allen and the controversy was palpable. Most Bills fans wanted the Bills to draft the other Josh and the selection was met with a good bit of resistance by a sizable percentage of the fan base. Nothing Allen hadn’t already experienced, so he just went about his business and continued to study during each off season with Jordan Palmer.
Now he enters his crucial third year and we get to see whether or not the critics were right, or admit they blew it by not looking at the intangibles this young man had going for him in spades. There was a confluence of ignorance failing to pay attention to the finer details of assessing a player’s potential for success.
One of the biggest miscues was simply biological. Anyone who pays attention to adolescent growth and development could easily see Josh Allen is a late bloomer. He now plays at a weight that appears to be at least 20 pounds heavier than what he played in college. The numbers listed on his stats reflect his playing weight when he entered the league. If nothing else, his body configuration in terms of muscle mass has significantly changed since entering the NFL.
Because Josh also had less reps in college than his peers from the 2018 NFL Draft, he is at least one year behind in development. I think Allen will continue to develop his game significantly over the next couple of years.
All of these factors led to very polarizing opinions about Josh Allen. Some think he will continue to be an average to slightly above average NFL quarterback. In fact, that might be all the Bills need from him to be successful because there is a solid team built around him.
However, I would continue to caution against coming to any conclusion about Josh Allen’s ultimate potential at this point. He remains a work in progress. The good news is that from the time he was thrown into the Ravens game as a rookie, he has continued to improve.
Make no mistake, Allen will work as hard as humanly possible to win a championship for the Buffalo Bills. If you’re looking for your QB to be robotic like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, Josh Allen will never be your man.
If you can love a quarterback who will play his heart out, warts and all… saddle up. The Wyoming Cowboy in Josh Allen will never die.
~The Caboose