Josh Allen\u202fis uniquely\u202ftethered to the Bills and to Buffalo’s elusive goal of winning a Super Bowl.\u202f\u00a0ESPNTim KeownSep 17, 2026, 08:30 AM ETCloseSenior Writer for ESPN The Magazine Columnist for ESPN.com Author of five books (3 NYT best-sellers)Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsTHEY ALL HOLD their breath when Josh Allen\u202fgoes rogue.\u202fThey\u202fcan always see it coming.\u202fHe’ll be a little laggy at the start of a game, his legs\u202ftwitchy\u202fand his brain unfocused, and\u202fthat’s when they know\u202f– and fear –\u202fwhat’s coming\u202fnext.\u202fHe’ll stand before them in the huddle and get\u202fa certain look in his eye or a tone in his voice. They just\u202fshrug inside and think,\u202fOh, well. Here we go.Maybe he’ll call a play and then change the protection at the line to make sure he puts himself one-on-one with a\u202fdefensive end.\u202fMaybe he’ll\u202fdrop back\u202fand\u202fhold on to the ball a split-second longer than necessary. Maybe\u202fhe’ll run around like a flag in a hurricane and\u202fstay in bounds one or two strides\u202fbeyond comfort, just\u202flong\u202fenough to\u202ftake a hit.<\/p>\n
Whatever form it takes, they’ll\u202fwatch it unfold and think,\u202fUh-oh. Good luck, Josh.Everyone has their motivations.\u202fSome guys like to close their eyes and envision the game unfolding in their mind. Some\u202fscream and yell and listen to music that sounds like a\u202fbandsaw going through sheet metal. Some, like Allen, simply need to take a\u202fhit, to feel alive and engaged, to give the game its shape\u202fand life\u202fits\u202fpurpose.”Does it scare me, his running around?” asks\u202fBills\u202fleft tackle Dion Dawkins.<\/p>\n
“Hell yeah.\u202fHell yeah.\u202fWhen we see Josh taking off and hurdling people and running over people, it’s a scary thing. He’s a big kid, but sometimes that kid stuff doesn’t transfer. Yeah, you’re a big kid. We get it.<\/p>\n
But if you fall, we all fall.\u202fIt’s scary as hell, and we can’t hit him and say, ‘There, you got your hit in.’ Because what if\u202fwe\u202fhurt him?”Even in our\u202fquarterback-centric universe,\u202fAllen\u202fis uniquely\u202ftethered to\u202fthis team, this region, the elusive goal of winning a Super Bowl.\u202f”He’s everything,” Dawkins says, and\u202fgeneral manager Brandon Beane says his quarterback “wants to show his teammates he’s willing to do\u202fanything.”\u202fThe trick is to determine, often in a split-second,\u202fthe moments when\u202fthose two concepts collide, when\u202fdoing\u202fanything gets in the way of being\u202feverything.It’s a lot of\u202fpsychic responsibility, all this shouldering of hopes and expectations.\u202f”He’s here for a reason,” Dawkins says, “they want him to hold that trophy up.”\u202fThe\u202fanything and everything\u202fof it\u202fexpands every year,\u202fa tide threatening to breach the banks. The Bills have a new, Allen-friendly head coach in 36-year-old Joe Brady, a sparkling new $2.1 billion stadium, and the same\u202funshakeable shadow of history pressed against them. Every year is The Year\u202fThey Finally Win a Super Bowl, until it isn’t.\u202fThis year, however, feels\u202fdifferent,\u202flike an inflection point,\u202fnot now-or-never, but close.Fairly or not, the final judgment will land on one man: Allen. It’s the world he has created.THERE IS\u202fDEFINITELY a\u202flove-hate thing going on with the Bills and Allen when it comes to his\u202finsistence on affirming humanity’s reckless potential.\u202fDawkins adopts a low, conspiratorial tone\u202fand says, “I got to\u202fadmit:\u202fI love to see it.”\u202fWhenever Allen gets popped, his linemen\u202fsprint to be the first to pick him up, all the while hoping he remains able to be picked up.\u202fThis is their guy, and if he’s going to run over a linebacker rather than step out of bounds, who are they to argue?”It gets me going,” guard Alec Anderson says.<\/p>\n
“I’m like,\u202fYes!\u202fHe brings the energy and the rest of us have to say, ‘Oh, s—, Josh is into it,\u202fso I have to step my game up.’\u202fYes,\u202fquarterbacks\u202fare\u202fsupposed to be the trophy\u202fof the team, but I like the face of\u202fmy\u202ffranchise to have a little dirt on it.”And\u202fso\u202fhe’ll take off,\u202feliciting whatever range of emotions\u202foccur within each man,\u202frunning in that upright, draft-horse way.\u202fHis speed, even nine years into this, retains its ability to surprise. It’s\u202fa little like watching a fish swim through refracted water,\u202fhis\u202f6-foot-5, nearly 240-pound\u202fbody\u202falways just a\u202fstride or two ahead of\u202fwhere your eyes\u202fthink it should be\u202f– right up to the point he slams his body into another human.”It\u202fdrives us guys up front,” center Connor McGovern says.\u202f”If you see all the stuff he does, like how fearless and what some people might call him stupid for wanting to take hits.\u202fWe love it.”Allen is\u202ftrying. Lord knows he’s trying.\u202fIt’s just … it’s just hard.\u202fThere’s a constant playfulness in his dark brown eyes, like he’s aware that he has conquered the world and he’s just trying to figure out how far he can take it.\u202fSometimes long-term consequences and deductive reasoning can hold his beer.\u202fHe’s 30 now,\u202fa big kid with the face of an older man beginning to push its way through,\u202fand\u202fhe knows\u202fNFL\u202f\u202findestructibility is\u202fboth myth and lie.\u202fHe’s heard it from all of them — Brady, Beane,\u202fmost of his less-enthused teammates: Don’t risk it. Don’t risk\u202fus.”I\u202fthink\u202fI might be past that point\u202fof needing to be hit,” Allen says, not at all\u202fconvincingly.\u202f”I might just have my linemen push me around a little bit, maybe hit my pads.<\/p>\n
I’m trying not to get hit as much as possible now.\u202fI know it jazzes them up, but yeah — gotta\u202fget up.”But here’s the problem: This is who he is.\u202fIf the things we love tell us what we are, Allen is a guy who\u202fhappens to love running into linebackers\u202fand telling off-color jokes and pulling pranks on everyone in the organization.\u202fHe’s a\u202frisk-taker\u202fwho, remarkably, has not missed a game since 2018,\u202fa former league MVP who still plays and acts\u202flike he’s stuck somewhere between seventh\u202fand 10th\u202fgrade. He’s\u202fa guy who played through a partial tear of the UCL in his throwing elbow in 2022, a guy who missed two plays with a broken nose\u202flast season, a guy McGovern says has played through “stuff” that nobody outside the locker room will ever know.\u202f”As long\u202fas\u202f17 is out there, I’m going,”\u202fMcGovern\u202fsays. “Nothing else matters.”Allen’s\u202fblend of fearlessness and recklessness — for better, for worse — is part of what endears\u202fhim to his team and its fans.\u202fThere\u202fare 53\u202fBuffalo Bills, large men and fast men and men whose athletic talents reside in the top .01% of the roughly 8.3 billion\u202fpeople on the planet, but they\u202fare mere extras in a larger drama. Allen is the enduring hope for\u202fan entire region, the superstar who carries their hopes and dreams and burdens around as lightly as a child skipping through a park.”He’s the king of Western New York,” McGovern says, “and he wears the crown well.”TO UNDERSTAND THE kingdom he has created, it’s necessary to understand the kingdoms that created him.It’s jarring to drive around western New York and behold the pervasiveness of Bills paraphernalia,\u202fand\u202fdifficult to convey the level of fame Allen has attained\u202fwithin it.<\/p>\n
It’s not so much a fandom as a cultural force. Flags on cars, flags on houses, flags on businesses. Lawn buffaloes painted in Bills’ colors, lawn buffaloes draped with No. 17 jerseys,\u202fan untold number of posters hanging on an untold number of walls. A free public practice in mid-August attracted more than 41,000 fans on a Tuesday morning at 8:30, the traffic backing up through and around the residential streets surrounding Highmark Stadium\u202fin Orchard Park.<\/p>\n
It only seemed like\u202f40,999\u202fof the attendees were wearing either a T-shirt or a jersey bearing 17.It’s a\u202fheavy\u202fload to bear, regardless of how\u202flightly\u202fthe crown\u202fsits, and Allen showed as much last year\u202fwhen he broke down in tears\u202fafter\u202fthe AFC divisional\u202fovertime\u202floss to the Broncos.\u202fThe Bills are not simply an activity in Western New York,\u202fthey are\u202fperhaps the area’s l<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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