- The Buffalo Bills defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars 27-24 in an AFC wild-card playoff game.
- This victory marked the Bills’ first road playoff win since January 1993.
- Quarterback Josh Allen scored the game-winning touchdown with just over a minute remaining.
- Buffalo will advance to the AFC divisional round to play either the Broncos or Patriots.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – It is a battered, well-traveled and playoff-tested cape that Josh Allen seems to put on when the going gets tough.
And it still works.
Allen, the rugged Buffalo Bills quarterback and reigning NFL MVP, added to his legend to open the AFC playoffs on Sunday at EverBank Stadium.
In a game that included Allen retreating twice to the medical tent on the sideline for injury evaluations – first it was to check a possible concussion, then he had an exam after twisting a knee – he sure stood tall at the end.
Never mind that Allen came into the game nursing a foot injury. Forget that on his biggest completion of the game, just before the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter, it would have never happened if he had flinched.
To connect with the 36-yard strike to Brandin Cooks, who ran a post pattern while Allen was forced to throw the ball off his back foot, the quarterback had to wait, wait and wait to absorb a blow to his midsection.
Next thing you know, Allen was seen barreling 10 yards on the Bills’ version of the “Tush Push” – have you ever seen one of those rugby-styled scrums move a pile so far? – to set up his 1-yard winning score in a 27-24 verdict that just had to break the hearts of the Jacksonville Jaguars and their rabid fans.
This is what you get from the 6-foot-5, 237-pound Allen, especially in the playoffs: An NFL version of The Bionic Man.
“He’s a fricking dog,” Bills tight end Dawson Knox explained from his stall in the visitor’s locker room. “He’s a warrior. I’ve never seen him miss more than a play or two at a time without trying to fight someone to get back on the field. No one probably fully understands what type of pain he’s going through, but he makes it seem like it’s nothing.
“You ask him if he’s fine. ‘Yeah, yeah I’m good.’ But the dude’s a warrior, man. That’s what gets the guys going and makes us want to put everything out there for him as well.”
At one point in the game, Allen threw a pass and smashed his throwing hand off the helmet of one of his linemen. He grimaced, then kept on ticking. For a brief period, some of his passes seemed to lose a little zip. But none of that doomed the Bills.
Allen completed 28 of 35 passes for 273 yards, with a 15-yard TD toss to Dalton Kincaid early in the fourth quarter – a pretty floater to the wide-open tight end in the left corner after he threw off the scent with a pump-fake that baited the defense to react to a screen – and he ran for 33 yards and two other scores. He didn’t commit a turnover, either.
Yet this wasn’t about stats as much as it was about the grit. The Bills (13-5) had to take the wild-card route to the playoffs after the Patriots seized the AFC East crown Buffalo had won for five consecutive seasons. And to get here, they had to take all sorts of body blows and survive through all sorts of adversity. The season started with the near-miracle comeback against the Ravens. They survived a shootout against Tampa. They came back big against the Bengals and at New England. Those could have easily been four losses.
Allen, though, is the perfect leader by example for the Bills – and sure enough it was demonstrated again with the season on the line.
“It trickles down from him, in terms of the team’s toughness,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “When your quarterback is that type of warrior, that type of competitor, from a leadership standpoint it just flows through your whole team.
“We’ve got to get him as healthy as we can next week. So, it’s not something we’ll take lightly. He took some hits today, but there were times we protected him well.”
McDermott brought up a couple relevant stats. Allen was sacked once and hit just three times by a physical Jaguars defense. “Credit to the O-line there,” the coach added.
Typically, Allen was rather nonchalant when meeting the media afterward. He certainly can take a bow for the history that came with the latest effort.
Fittingly, the Bills prevailed in a game that swung wildly in the fourth quarter – keeping with the flow from Saturday’s playoff openers and the topsy-turvy regular season. That the lead changed four times in the fourth quarter tied an NFL postseason record.
Then there was that other bit of history. Allen won a road playoff game for the first time in his career after four previous tries; and the franchise won its first road playoff game in 33 years. Still, a man who has been in the tournament before he obviously has bigger goals.
“Feels good,” he said. “At the same time, it just means we get another game, and we’ve got to find a way to put our best foot forward this week in practice, put together a good game plan and go out there to execute again next Saturday or Sunday, whenever we play.”
Allen knows. The reward for putting the negative road playoff streaks to bed is the opportunity to do it again. The sixth-seeded Bills will play at Denver or New England next weekend.
And with that, Allen may be on the verge of his best chance yet to lead the Bills to the Super Bowl – the prospects perhaps enabled by the fact that postseason nemesis Patrick Mahomes is not in this round of playoffs. Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson are not in the mix, either. Maybe the stars are aligning for something special.
Especially if the Bills employ mantra that Allen says they have adopted this season: Don’t blink.
Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com or follow on X: @JarrettBell.