Allen Has Best Playoff Game in 5 Years

NFL Wild Card – The Buffalo Bills defeated the New England Patriots 47-17 on Saturday night, and somehow the game was even more of a blowout than the final score would suggest. The Bills reached their point total without a single field goal attempt. They also finished the game with no punts, no turnovers, and no failed fourth-down plays. They took a knee on the game’s final drive to run out the clock, but every time they actually tried to score, they got a touchdown. It was about as close to perfection as an NFL offense can get. So … why aren’t Josh Allen’s advanced numbers more impressive?

The key word there is “more,” because—and let’s be clear about this—Buffalo’s numbers are very impressive. They’re not the best we have ever seen, but they are the best we have seen in years. Aaron Schatz will have more about the Bills’ team numbers in his DVOA analysis column later today, but here we’re going to look at Josh Allen, and I’m going to try to explain why his game against New England was not the most valuable we have ever measured.

Let’s begin with Allen’s raw totals: 21-of-25 passing for 308 yards and five touchdowns, with no interceptions, no sacks, and no fumbles. Oh, and he ran six times for 66 more yards too. This was the 17th time since the merger that a quarterback amassed at least 350 yards of total offense with five touchdowns and no sacks or interceptions. Of those, only three averaged more yards per play (combining runs and passes) than Allen did against New England: Peyton Manning in a 41-10 win over Denver in the 2003 playoffs; Mark Rypien in a 56-17 win over Atlanta in 1991; and Deshaun Watson in a 53-32 win over Atlanta (yes, again) in 2019.

Allen was efficient, and he was explosive, and he was playing against a defense that ranked fourth in defensive DVOA during the regular season. So where did he end up in the list of all-time great playoff games? Very high indeed, but not at the top.

Allen finishes in 12th place in this table with the best game since Tom Brady’s performance in a 41-33 loss to Philadelphia in Super Bowl LII. That’s a half-decade ago, an entire generation in NFL terms, but it still feels like Allen should be higher. After all, what more could he and the Bills have done? Score two-point conversions after every touchdown?

Volume partially explains why Allen ranks so low. He only had 31 total passes, sacks, or runs against New England, the second-lowest total of any player in this table. (Manning had 26 in the aforementioned Indianapolis win over Denver.) If we look at DYAR per play, Allen finishes fifth in this group behind Manning’s win over Denver, a different Manning win over Denver, Joe Montana’s Super Bowl win over Denver (sorry, Broncos fans), and Kurt Warner’s 51-45 wild-card win over Green Bay in the 2009 playoffs, the best postseason game we have ever measured.

Allen also had a few more failed plays than you might expect. In addition to his four incomplete passes, he had four failed completions, and four others that counted as successful plays even though they failed to pick up first downs.

Allen’s “struggles,” such as they were, were mainly limited to first downs. That includes all of his incomplete passes as he went 13-of-17 for 235 yards and two scores. Seven of those plays, however, were incomplete passes or failed completions. That’s a success rate of 59%; both Jimmy Garoppolo (71%) and Tom Brady (60%) had higher success rates on first down this week. For contrast, Allen completed each of his seven second-down passes for 64 yards and two scores. And on third downs, he went 1-of-1 for 9 yards (yes, that’s it). The Bills also picked up at least 3 yards and a first down on all five of their third-down carries, including three by Allen. So no, the Bills were never stopped, but at least New England got them to third down six times.

This is all very nitpicky, but they’re the kind of hairs you have to split when analyzing nearly four full decades of playoff games and explaining why the 12th of those games is worse than the 10th or 11th.

(The following tables do not include the Cardinals-Rams game from Monday night. We will update these tables with any relevant players on Tuesday morning.)