Josh Allen came into this Super Bowl tournament as the most capable quarterback in the 14-team field.He showed it Sunday.<\/p>\n
Allen made top-tier plays as a passer, rusher and thinker \u2014 none better than on a late-game touchdown drive for the lead, and the Bills held for a 27-24 win against the Jaguars in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n
The NFL is flexing its theatrical muscles in this wild-card round.<\/p>\n
Saturday, league MVP candidate Matthew Stafford drove the Rams to a 34-31 road win after the Panthers, 10 1\/2-point underdogs, took their second fourth-quarter lead. Hours later as the Bears and Packers reprised their century-plus rivalry, QB Caleb Williams\u2019 playmaking fueled a 25-point fourth quarter in Chicago\u2019s 31-27 homefield win.<\/p>\n
Allen\u2019s performance stood as the best, though, and made it six straight years Buffalo (13-5) has won a playoff game.<\/p>\n
Start with his rushing prowess.<\/p>\n
At 6-foot-5, 237 pounds, bullish, quick and agile, the 29-year-old stands as the NFL\u2019s all-time leader in rushing TDs by a quarterback.<\/p>\n
He can\u2019t be stopped short on most sneaks. Pass-rushers detest him, knowing he can break their tackles or get off passes in a blink.<\/p>\n
Keep this in mind: if they charge at him too fast, he\u2019ll sidestep them.<\/p>\n
Allen\u2019s rushing and rushing threat bled out the Jaguars.<\/p>\n
Where the North Florida team couldn\u2019t stop him from bulling for two 1-yard touchdowns and several other other successful sneaks, Bills defenders stopped quarterback Trevor Lawrence\u2019s fourth-and-2 rush at their 8.<\/p>\n
The Jags (13-5) found Allen too adept as a passer, too. He went 28 for 35 for 273 yards without a turnover. He hit former University of San Diego tight end Dalton Kincaid for a 15-yard touchdown \u2014 one of four TDs in the game\u2019s fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
The decisive 66-yard drive Allen that capped with his second rushing TD, putting the Bills ahead by four points with 64 seconds left, featured one of his best career throws, a 36-yard completion to Brandin Cooks.<\/p>\n
A San Diego County product had a good look at Allen on that first-down play.<\/p>\n
Though he got a free run as a blitzer, Chula Vista\u2019s Devin Lloyd had to respect Allen\u2019s evasivenes. The Otay Ranch High School alum raised his arms without jumping, nor could he approach at max speed.<\/p>\n
Though Cooks hadn\u2019t run past the man covering him, Allen chose to throw the ball downfield ahead of him. The QB was able to flick it some 45 yards, despite stepping back from Lloyd and lacking leverage.<\/p>\n
Cooks ran under it and gathered it.<\/p>\n
Nixing the Jaguars\u2019 comeback bid on the first snap, Bills cornerback Tre\u2019Davious White broke up Lawrence\u2019s accurate pass and safety Cole Bishop caught the deflection.<\/p>\n
It was Allen\u2019s seventh win in 13 playoff games.<\/p>\n
For many reasons, he hasn\u2019t reached a Super Bowl. He was frenetic in his first playoff game, a loss at Houston five years ago. He was sensational a year later, only for the Bills to collapse on defense \u2014 the infamous \u201c13 seconds\u201d loss to the Chiefs.<\/p>\n
The great Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs have dealt him four playoff losses, and Joe Burrow and the Bengals got him en route to the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
With Mahomes and Burrow absent from this postseason, it\u2019s tempting to say the door has opened wider for Allen \u2014 but that\u2019s too simplistic. Allen outplayed Mahomes in one playoff loss. The Bengals ran for 172 yards at snowy Buffalo.<\/p>\n
Though this Bills\u2019 defense remains suspect against the run and lost a good safety Sunday in Jordan Poyer, Allen looks close to peak form, notwithstanding medical checks Sunday to his throwing hand, head and a knee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Allen came into this Super Bowl tournament as the most capable quarterback in the 14-team field.He showed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,752,74,76,75,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-129694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}