Buffalo Bills
Josh Allen’s Rookie Year, Revisited
The NFL was a very different place in April 2018. Buffalo just broke their 18-year playoff drought thanks to Tyrod Taylor and Andy Dalton. An emerging (diva) superstar WR just pulled off the ‘Minneapolis Miracle’, sending the Vikings to the NFC Championship game. And the city of Philadelphia was in ruins after Nick Foles led the Eagles to a Super Bowl title. Things seemed to be changing for the better, when the Bills, unsurprisingly, made the wrong pick again. They wasted their first-rounder on Josh Allen, a parody of an NFL Quarterback; a boneheaded move with NFL legend and “complete package” Josh Rosen still on the board. The Bills went down in flames, as yet another QB failed to meet expectations and bottomed out in Buffalo.
Wait a moment, I think I got my paperwork mixed up.
That happens in a different timeline.
Let’s try again, shall we?
It’s April 2018, and everything is going exactly as described, minus one hiccup. The Buffalo Bills trade their 12th overall pick and two second-rounders (#53 and #56) to Tampa Bay for the seventh overall pick. With that pick, they select a young stud out of Wyoming by the name of Josh Allen. His arm strength and mobility are prototypical for an early first round Quarterback. Despite some accuracy concerns, Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane feel confident they found their guy; a player with huge upside and all the tools he needs to develop into one of the best QBs in the NFL.
You see, public consensus had been against Josh from Day One. Every narrative from the second he declared for the draft was negative, for just about any reason that you could think of. Professional draft analysts threw words around that you would expect to hear from pundits and click-baiters. They ranked Allen QB4 in his draft class at best, and never let off the hook for having a fraction of the college snaps that his competition had. In watching him during his rookie season, however, a good number of Bills fans saw what I saw; a young, inexperienced prospect who could do it all if he just put the pieces together.
For Allen’s first two seasons, Bills Mafia endured unrelenting harassment from every other fan base in the league over our QB play. In fact, even after his breakout 2020 season, we’re still getting it. But they didn’t see what we had back then because no one else bothered to look. And if they don’t see it now it’s because they refuse to.
That’s the purpose of this article, dear reader; to show you that we weren’t hallucinating, and Josh Allen really did give us so much reason to hope. To “Billieve”. So buckle in, and prepare for a trip back through time to a team that’s nigh-unrecognizable. To see some plays that you’ll never want to forget.
Preseason – Carolina Panthers and Cleveland Browns
The moment Josh took the field, he went deep, putting the ball right in the basket of legendary WR Robert Foster. It may have been just out of bounds, but that shot was the first real throw we ever