The Throw Everyone Has Already Forgotten About

 

I was a Dolphins fan for thirty years.

I was born a Dophins fan. Raised a Dolphins fan.

The first son of a boy who grew up watching Zonk and Greese (as he called them), who read every magazine and every newspaper article about Marino, who remembered the Good Ol Days when Jimmy Johnson was winning and the Hell years under Wandstadt like they were the formative years of my boyhood, my personal identity is so tangled up in the Miami Dolphins that if you were to ask my wife and girlfriends – all but all exes, now – they would unanimously tell you that whatever I am, it is inextricable from that team.

But this isn't about the Miami Dolphins.

This is about the Buffalo Bills. More specifically – this is about Josh Allen.

Bills fans are soaking in their team getting a lot of love these days. And why not – all anyone remembers about the Bills is they lost those Super Bowls in the 90s. Even adults who were born long after those games.

In a lot of ways, not unlike how Dolphins fans remember those 70's seasons: Always the underdog, no matter their actual or perceived success.

But my memory of the Bills is different. And I'm sat here, just after 1PM on Week 11 Sunday, wondering whether the Bills aren't going to Bills this season.

Because, you see, my memory of the Bills is starting almost every season off pretty hot – and then crashing all the way back down and deep into the earth after a devastating loss to Miami. I've hung my hat on that for twenty years and haven't been let down once.

The Dolphins have let me down every year since I can remember. But the Bills never have.

Usually that loss comes around this time in the season – that is, when my interest in the Playoff race and Miami's relationship is starting to wane. And, because I'm fair, it's been the Bills who've ended those Playoff hopes every year it seems like my entire life. I still remember Thurman Thomas. And not with some kind of semi-ironic genetic memory, either.

That loss came Week 3, this year.

I tried not to make a big deal about it in my heart. This is still the Josh Allen Buffalo Bills, I reminded myself.

But....

Does the 2022 Josh Allen look like the 2020/21 Josh Allen to you? Because he looks like the 2018/19 Josh Allen to me. He looks like a guy who doesn't trust his mechanics but who does trust his arm.

And, as I asked earlier, why not?

If you're wondering why I'm asking that, you've forgotten maybe the most important play of Josh Allen's 2022 season. And that's okay – everyone else has, too.

Allow me to remind you as entertainingly as I can. (Because I tried to link to a video and the NFL says I can fuck myself. So... I guess I'll just continue to do that until I can figure out how to steal the video from them.)

There's a minute and forty-nine seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

It's 4^th and goal from the 2. They're down 4 points. Buffalo have already converted both of their fourth down attempts in this contest. The play clock is dwindling – 5, 4, 3.... No one in the stadium – not the fans, not the offense, not the Miami Dolphins defense – thinks Josh Allen isn't going to easily score in this situation. He's already attempted 55 passes (by my count) and completed something absurd like 47 of them. The offense have been on the field more than 80 plays – in Miami. Their sideline is three degrees hotter than the surface of the sun.

The ball is snapped.

Josh Allen drops back...

Scans...

Throws...!

And short-hops it near the right pylon to a wide-open receiver.

I didn't think anything of it at the time. There was still plenty of time for Miami to screw this up - they were on their 2 yard line, after all. And lo and behold the Butt Punt was forthcoming. But....

I must have watched that play 100 times after the eventual conclusion – the Butt Punt, the failed Spike....

I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't know what to even think. 2021/22 Josh Allen doesn't miss that throw. 2018/19 Josh Allen throws it through his receiver's stomach plug like the hero in
KungPow: Legend of the Fist. 

Then I noticed something: Josh Allen's right leg double-clutches. It never plants properly and he doesn't push off on it the way he's supposed to.

His legs let him down and he didn't put enough arm on one throwaway pass late in a loss against Miami.

Big whoop, you might be thinking to yourself.

To which I might like to remind you that the Bills have gone on to lose to the Jets and the Vikings. Yes, they beat the Chiefs – and they beat the Titans the week before Miami, when they were still trying to figure themselves out. So I'm not here to tell you that Buffalo's going to miss the Playoffs—

Except, yeah, actually, I am.

The Bills are risking a total team meltdown right now. They're currently trailing the Browns 7 points. That could change at any moment with this Bills team, and I know that. But the Buffalo radio guys don't have the most energy I've ever heard in a losing radio booth. In fact, their energy is decidedly disappointed.

And that's where I want to leave this. I asked why he shouldn't be leaning on old habits.

Those 90 plays in the Miami heat have had their effect on the Miami Dolphins defense. Those losses without Tua had as much to do with the Dolphins playing guys who were exhausted and inexperienced backups as it did the quarterback situation. (The quarterback situation certainly didn't help the defense, that's for sure.)

I don't think it's inconceivable to say those 90 plays had their effect on Josh Allen. Can he recover? Of course he can.

Can the Bills?

I'm not sure.

They're getting pushed around on both lines of scrimmage right now in Buffalo by the Browns. Next, they play, in order: at Detroit, at New England, versus the Jets, versus Miami, at Chicago, at Cincinnati, versus New England. Is it inconceivable that they drop... all those games? Absolutely not!

Not if you've watched the Bills play the last 20 years.

Not if you were watching before that, either.

Some teams are just going to do what they do year after year. Chris Wesseling used to remind us as fans and the Around the NFL as colleagues of every team's tendency to trend toward and regress to the mean. Specifically what I mean about that is that Josh Allen's success, his complete mechanical overhaul, over the course of the last two seasons has been one of the most dramatic outliers in NFL history.

I might caution that he could also take a completely precedented comet's path back to earth.

I'm not rooting for it. But where I'm sitting – and looking at Josh Allen's first half stats (3/5 for 16 yards – none of them to Diggs)... I'm not seeing world-beaters.

I'm seeing a team that expected to sleepwalk their way to the Overtime period of Divisional Round weekend.

Seriously, I hope I'm wrong. Football is better when Josh Allen is playing with his feet and hips engaged in his throws.

But I don't think I am. And that's why I wrote this. Hope you liked it.

Hey – thanks for reading this. That's pretty cool of you.