Is Josh Allen the reason for the Bills disappointing season?
Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz and Matt Harmon discuss the Buffalo Bills surprising record despite the quarterback’s gaudy stats this season.
Video Transcript
[CROWD CHEERING]
JASON FITZ: He's Matt Harmon, I'm Jason Fitz, and it's time to debate Josh Allen, because, Matt, you live in the fantasy world, and I've got people that do what you do that are telling me Josh Allen is actually pretty good this year.
MATT HARMON: Yeah, well, look, obviously, from a fantasy perspective, the results are the results. He's the QB1 this season. The interesting discussion, Fitz, is, like, how much do those fantasy numbers lie? Like, is there truth behind that?
I would make the case that, right now, while I realize that Buffalo is not having the season that they want-- they're really in a slog to even make the playoffs-- I think, like, for all of their problems, Josh Allen's not among their five biggest problems.
If you look at any advanced metric, you know, EPA per play, he's the third-ranked quarterback. Success rate, he's the second-ranked quarterback. Completion percentage, over expected. There's a lot of different ways to calculate that, but he's top five in basically any category.
I don't want to sit here and yada-yada turnovers, because, like, you can't turn the ball over. Don't do that. Don't make excuses for it. So I'm not gonna be the guy that's like, well, on every play besides the ones where he turns the ball over, he's actually been really good. But, Fitz, he's kind of been really good, except for when he turns the ball over.
JASON FITZ: Look, he may not be the problem, but great quarterbacks are supposed to be the solution to every problem. Think about what we see from the greatest of the great across the AFC particularly. We see guys that can get out there and find ways to get it done.
The Bills' offensive game plan, as we've talked about many times on our shows together, seems to be just roll the ball out and hope to God that Josh Allen can get something done. But at some point, you've gotta look at it and say, when you are having a failure of a year, and you've got that guy as a quarterback, part of it has to lay at his feet.
At some point, we have become so used to Patrick Mahomes being a life saver for the Chiefs, maybe it's not fair to ask Josh Allen to be a life saver, but fair is where a pig gets a ribbon. It's not real in football. In real football, we've gotta look across the board and say, this year is a failure for the Bills, and if it's a failure for the Bills, it has to be, in part, a failure for Josh Allen.
MATT HARMON: I think, if you took Josh Allen off this Bills team, especially right now, with the defense banged up as it is, and the one thing that sticks in my craw, Fitz, is just, like, we talk about this offense like it's loaded with good players. It's not. Like, Diggs is an elite player. Gabe Davis is a guy. He's, like, a rich man's MVS. What is that gonna do for you? You know, Kincaid's a rookie tight end. The running game, they've never established a run game, like, in the Josh Allen era.
So, I think, if you took Josh Allen off this Bills team, like, especially this version of it, they might win, what, like, two, three games? That's where the value of the quarterback is.
JASON FITZ: You're not wrong, but we want quarterbacks to be saviors. Burrow is the savior for the Bengals. Mahomes is the savior for the Chiefs. Maybe Josh Allen is just in the category of really good, not a savior. We'll see.