Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills have been shockingly trending down. In just a few weeks, the Bills went from leading the AFC conference to third place in the AFC East division. The one thing that’s changed for the Bills in the past few weeks has been their turnovers. As Josh Allen has been giving it up at a rapid rate lately.
He’s thrown two interceptions in each of his last three games. He’s up to a league-worst 10 on the season already. Oh, and we can’t forget about his muffed goal line snap which resulted in a loss to the Minnesota Vikings last week.
Luckily, Allen knows that he’s struggling right now and is determined to flip the script on it. He said, “Decision-making is number one, trusting the game plan, trusting the guys around me and trying not to do too much. It’s not hard to try to tweak that mindset of trusting the other guys around me, taking the check-down when it’s there and just making the smart play.”
This is similar to the struggles that Allen had back in Wyoming. Everybody knew that he had a cannon for an arm. He just kept turning it over more than NFL teams would have liked. Now that he’s considered a superstar at the position, people expect more out of him in these big moments.
Josh Allen Can Clean It Up
On top of the poor decision making, he isn’t playing at 100 percent strength either. Allen suffered an elbow injury in the closing moments of their loss to the New York Jets. While it’s not bad enough for him to miss the game, he’s had to put a lot of recovery time into it just to suit up against Minnesota. He’ll likely need to do exactly the same thing this week. That is, if he wants to hit the field against the Cleveland Browns this weekend.
Now, seven out of those 10 interceptions that he’s thrown this season have come against zone coverage. This is the most zone interceptions thrown in the league, well, tied for the league lead. This could be an issue once again this weekend. The Browns run zone coverage on 75 percent of their defensive snaps. Which might just be a poor matchup.
The good news is that Allen leads the league in on the deep ball. He has 21 deep pass completions for a whopping 784 yards while Cleveland allows the third highest passer rating in the league on those deep pass attempts.
Bills fans and coaches alike aren’t giving up on their quarterback yet. After all, there’s no reason too just yet. Head coach Sean McDermott said, “It’s a balance. He makes plays, he makes spectacular plays. I believe in him, and we just got to do a better job of taking care of the football and taking what the defense gives us at times.”
If Allen can get back into the habit of taking what the defense gives them then they could have no problem down the stretch of this season. The situation will arise if he makes another critical error late in the game against Cleveland.