It’s a “dead week” for NFL Thursday as we still have another nine days before the Super Bowl; so we look to the interwebs for writing inspiration! We already have touched the upcoming NFL Championship matchup, so we’re not going there again. However, we are going to look at Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who seems to be “cursed” with the bad timing to play in the same era as Patrick Mahomes. Ouch.

Allen is 83-40 as a starting QB in the NFL, including the postseason. Twice (2021, 2022), he’s topped the NFL in Approximate Value (AV), which is impressive. His 63.3-percent completion rate is low for this era, which keeps his QB rating lower than some of his contemporaries, but Allen’s legs have made up for it: he topped the league in QBR this past season, ESPN’s “enhanced” metric to measure all dynamics of QB play.

In six years as a full-time starter, Allen has finished in the Top 5 MVP vote four times without winning it—assuming he finishes in that echelon again this year and that Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson wins the vote again. He’s had a tremendous career, and he’s far from done, as this was just his age-28 season. Maybe he won’t play into his mid-40s like Cheatin’ Tom Brady, but Allen has many years left to play well.

Here is the only problem with his career: in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024, the Bills have been knocked out the postseason by the Kansas City Chiefs and Mahomes. In 2022, it was the Joe Burrow Agenda that got him. His other postseason loss came in his first full year as a starter (2019) to the Houston Texans. This guy has had some serious bad luck in the playoffs, as evidenced by his 101.7 QB rating in postseason play. Stellar!

That mark is higher than his regular-season QB rating (93.4), and you don’t find that many QBs who elevate their play so much in January. He also has improved his rushing numbers, too, from 37.3 yards per game in the regular season to 51.4 ypg in the playoffs. Allen is the real deal, but he’s been unfortunate to play against Mahomes so many times, it’s becoming painful to watch. This January’s loss to the Chiefs, again, just hurts.

Allen has a 25:4 TD:INT ratio in the playoffs; the Bills aren’t losing because of him. In 2019, Buffalo had 16-0 lead in the third quarter against the Texans on the road before losing in overtime: Allen had 322 total yards in that game, no INTs, and a TD catch. In 2020, the Bills had a 9-0 lead over Kansas City on the road in the first quarter, but a whirlwind of Chiefs scoring overwhelmed them in an eventual 38-24 defeat. So be it.

In 2021, the infamous OT loss to Kansas City perhaps defined Allen’s legacy too soon: the two teams scored a combined 25 points in the final two minutes before the Chiefs won the OT coin toss and ended Buffalo’s season, painfully so. The media lamented how Allen never got to touch the ball after taking the lead with 13 seconds left in the fourth quarter, etc. Well, his defense sure let him down, did it not? Rough loss, for sure.

[Sidebar: never mind that Brady famously won two huge games—the Super Bowl against Atlanta and the AFC Championship against Kansas City in 2018 on the same coin-toss bullshit—because for some reason it was this game that made the NFL change its OT rules. Whatever!]

The next season (2022), the Bills were at home against the Cincinnati Bengals, who somehow came into the former Rich Stadium and did what no team had done all year: beat Buffalo in regulation. We really felt there was an agenda there, as explored earlier. As for Allen, it may have actually been his worst postseason start ever, so he was up against it here in a way that had nothing to do with Mahomes or the Chiefs. No excuses.

In 2023, the Bills finally got Kansas City at home, and Buffalo took the lead in the third quarter before giving up the only score in the fourth quarter and losing, 27-24. Add in this most recent loss, which went down to the wire as well, and it’s been that kind of rough road for Allen in the postseason. He’s proven he belongs in the NFL elite club of all-time QBs already, but somehow, he can’t even get to the Super Bowl.

Sports are unfair; we know this. It’s why a schmuck like Eli Manning has two Super Bowl rings and a legend like Dan Marino does not have a single title. We do hope Allen finds his way to an NFL crown before too long, as his career achievements are piling up—and he deserves it, truly, in effort, heart, and talent. We know not everyone who deserves a ring ends up winning one; that’s life. However, this guy? We root for him.