Josh Allen Endures An Ass-Kicking And Gets His First Road Playoff Win

Everybody knows Josh Allen’s as tough as a fast-food steak. That’s how Tim McCarver once described a banged-up-but-game George Brett during a baseball broadcast, and that’s what I was thinking all Sunday afternoon as I watched a banged-up-but-game Allen and his like-minded, like-wounded Buffalo Bills overcome both the Jacksonville Jaguars and their own sorry playoff history with a 27-24 wild-card weekend win. Over the course of the game, the reigning NFL MVP spent enough time in the tent to earn a Boy Scout patch. 

This was a brutal affair. Buffalo safety Jordan Poyer left the game with a hamstring injury and didn't return. Allen's teammate Gabe Davis left the game in the fourth quarter when he tried to make a catch across the middle, and had his left leg bent in ways God didn’t intend. The Bills receiver was taken away on a cart. When Allen hit tight end Dalton Kincaid with a touchdown pass to take the lead, instead of celebrating the score, Kincaid needed a little help getting up.

But nobody took more hits than Allen. On a third-down run in the first quarter, Allen took a full-body assault from a posse of Jags defenders. He came to the sideline looking disheveled and disoriented, was evaluated for a concussion, then got sent back out by the medical staff to take more punishment. On two other plays, Allen hit his hand on a teammate's helmet as he threw, and twisted his knee. He also had a lingering foot injury from a previous game.

The hits took a toll. Rather than absorb yet another shot on a third-and-long scramble right after Davis got waylaid, Allen slid just before reaching the line to gain, despite having several yards of green space in front of him. Given the beating he’d taken to that point, who could blame him? 

Yet Allen ignored the boo-boos in the final minutes of this slugfest. On what turned out to be the game-winning drive, the Bills QB disregarded a blitzing Devin Lloyd, and just before taking a shoulder to the gullet launched a 40-yard dime to wideout Brandin Cooks. On a fourth-and-short later in the same climactic drive, he led a caravan of big Bills bodies on a QB sneak from just outside the 10-yard line all the way to just outside the goal line; if anybody’s ever executed a longer or more impressive tush push, it’s not coming to mind. Allen scored a play later to give the Bills a three-point lead with 1:04 left.

In a game that featured four lead changes in the fourth quarter alone, victory seemed anything but assured for the Bills, who came to Jacksonville having not won a road playoff game since 1992. And the Jaguars had not-so-secret weapon Cam Little on their side. Little, a second-year kicker out of Arkansas, already has the two longest field goals in NFL history: a 68-yarder in November and a 67-yarder last week. But Little never got a chance to show off his big leg, and he missed a 54-yard attempt right before halftime.

With everything hanging in the balance, Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White tipped a Trevor Lawrence pass into the arms of teammate and safety Cole Bishop to end Jacksonville’s last-chance drive. White had earlier batted away a Lawrence pass at the goal line late in the third quarter to limit the Jags to a field goal.

Buffalo moves on to the divisional round, and Allen has about a week to rest up. If the next Bills game’s anything like this one, the NFL might request it be played in the medical tent, or Gettysburg.