SCHEER: 'Low positive' Allen? Bring back free-wheelin' Josh!
Oct. 26—Our sports editor Nick Sabato wrote a column this week about Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen's new "low positive" approach.
I still don't get what that means exactly and while I generally read everything Nick writes because I think he's doing an excellent job covering these Bills and more, I couldn't get past this "low-positive" term.
You mean to tell me the Josh I came to know and love, the big smiley kid with the big arm from Wyoming, is now trying to hold on to some Zen state or something?
Wasn't this the same guy who, just last year, would run around and make plays, a few mistakes, smile and get all over-revved up and just play football like he loved it?
We aren't ruining him already, are we? "We" meaning the collective Bills culture or mafia or whatever you want to call it.
We tend to do this around here — overreact and start calling for firings and changes at 4-3 with plenty of football to go.
Some Bills fan out there after Sunday's loss to the Patriots said: "We should have kept Tyrod."
Yes, they barely beat the Giants and lost to New England.
Bad teams often rise up to beat better ones.
Road losses to divisional opponents happen all the time.
For the record, the vaunted Miami Dolphins offense scored just 10 points (they got another seven on defense) in a loss to the Philadelphia Eagles Sunday night.
The San Francisco 49ers, an early Super Bowl contender, have now dropped back-to-back games against the Cleveland Browns and the Justin Jefferson-less Minnesota Vikings.
The only real consistent winner so far is the same it's been in recent years: The Kansas City Chiefs.
And what of them?
They have Taylor Swift in the press box and look like they are having a great time all around.
They're having fun.
They've got real energy.
You can feel it.
Where are we right now?
Back to a fear state, clutching to the idea that these guys — our guys led by Allen — might not really be the ones who get the job done and finally win that Super Bowl?
We're not there yet. Not close. It's week eight.
Only one team wins the Super Bowl each year. Tons of good teams fail at it. The Bills failed at it four times in the 1990s with one of the best teams in NFL history.
Josh Allen was like an antidote to all that's so depressing in Niagara Falls and Buffalo and Western New York.
He came in offering the best thing of all: Hope.
He performed better than many expected and from the get-go, a win in a 2018 road start against the Minnesota Vikings, you could feel that he had a certain something, a spark the team and its diehard followers desperately needed.
Now, his freewheelin' ways land him on the cover of the Madden football game — an achievement in its own right — and he's going all "low positive" on us?
NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
After 17 futile years of an absolutely degrading playoff drought, the Bills finally had a quarterback who brought the air of excitement, the thrill of possibility and, yes, of course, some real fun.
Losses and disappointments later and now it's all doom and gloom, each game an angst-ridden experience that makes us Western New Yorkers all fear what we always fear: The worst.
We know what happened.
Thirteen seconds.
The Bengals loss at home in the playoffs.
So now our quarterback feels like he needs to strive to be something different, something he never was before: Cool, calm and collected.
I don't need it. I don't want it.
Somebody find the real Josh Allen and bring him back to life.
Get him smiling again.
I know Allen threw three interceptions against the Jets in the first game of the season so now logic says he has to sit in the pocket and be patient and not make mistakes.
Forget logic.
Let if fly, Josh.
Run like hell like you always did.
Throw five interceptions if that's how it goes.
Just pull it out in the end, miraculously.
I have really enjoyed the miraculously parts.
I'd hate to think our collective Bills malaise would doom a guy like Allen to the fate of the likes of Marshawn Lynch, a talented player who went on to win a Super Bowl and to become something of an NFL icon.
Bills fandom liked Lynch at first, got all over him about being a problem and distraction and helped run him off to Seattle where the Seahawks rightly let the Skittles-fueled running back do his thing.
It would be a disaster for our Josh Allen to end following a similar route.
He's got the talent. He's got the arm. He can run like Lynch when his sets his mind to it.
Starting with tonight's home game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I'd like to see "high positive" or "positive positive" Josh Allen again.
I fear failure to find that guy will just lead to more of what we already know: fear of loss, actual loss, sadness and gloom.
I'll accept the losses. I'll handle the heartbreak.
I want fun, enthusiastic, hard-to-contain, doing-wild-stuff-all-over-the-field Josh Allen back again.
Let it rip.
Let it go.
Make Bills football fun again.
As a fan, I know I feel like I could use it.
In fact, I'd say for the first time in my life I'm super "low positive" about it.
