Brilliant, battered and unkillable: Josh Allen lurches towards the Super Bowl

Two things about the NFL playoffs are predictable: Josh Allen will play out of his skin ... and Josh Allen will suffer a soul-sucking, stupefying loss. Except, maybe, this year.

We all know about the postseason heartbreaks and shortfalls over the years for Allen and the Buffalo Bills. In each season since 2019, Buffalo’s ride has ended in either the divisional or conference championship round, usually at the hands of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. But with no dominant team coming out of the regular season and no Mahomes this postseason, maybe it’s time for Allen and the Bills to finally capture the franchise’s first Lombardi Trophy.

If the Bills were going to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday in the wildcard round, it would be on Allen to be Superman. This was a uniquely bad matchup for a Bills team that leads with one of the NFL’s best run games, because Jacksonville, under first-year defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile, had the NFL’s best run defense. Meanwhile, Buffalo’s run defense has been among the NFL’s worst all season long, and the Jaguars took advantage at times. Jacksonville had 154 rushing yards on 23 attempts (6.7 yards per carry), while the BIlls managed just 79 yards on 26 carries (3.0 yards per carry).

Of course, the Bills got right with the run game on two massively important plays. With 1:10 left in the game and the score 24-20 in Jacksonville’s favor, the Bills had fourth-and-one at the Jacksonville 11-yard line. The idea was for Allen to run a Tush Push to get the first down, but he did a lot more than that. His run was originally ruled an 11-yard touchdown, reversed on review. No worries for Allen, who took the ball over the line for the 27-24 win on the next play.

Never mind that Bills head coach Sean McDermott wanted to ban the Tush Push before the 2025 season began. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

This was all on Allen, and he did everything he needed to in order for his team to advance. He completed 28 of 25 passes for 273 yards and a touchdown, and he had 33 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 11 carries. With that, Allen became the first quarterback in pro football history to complete at least 80% of his passes, and run for multiple touchdowns, in a playoff game.

Related: NFL playoff predictions: who will seize a wide-open Super Bowl race?

And he did all of this with a foot injury he’s been dealing with since late December, not to mention the blows he suffered in this game. There was the concussion check … and the part when he suffered to his throwing hand … and the part where blood was seen trickling from his ear … and the part when he hobbled to the sideline after a touchdown run in the first half. Despite all of that, he put his team on his shoulders once again, and rallied the Bills past multiple in-game deficits for the win. And it’s games like this that show why Allen is such a brilliant player. Yes, he can hurl a pinpoint pass 50 yards down the field, or hurdle linebackers on one of his super-soldier runs. But the fact that he staggers on, like a footballing El Cid seemingly unkillable, is crucial - it’s terrifying for his opponents and inspiring for his teammates.

“It trickles down from [Allen], the team’s toughness,” McDermott said after the game. “When your quarterback’s that type of warrior, that type of competitor ... from a leadership standpoint, it just goes through the whole team. We’ve got to get him as healthy as we can, though, for next week, and it’s not something we take lightly.”

MVP of the week

Christian McCaffrey, RB, San Francisco 49ers. With 14:52 left in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s San Francisco 49ers-Philadelphia Eagles game, the Niners were down, 16-10, tight end George Kittle was out with a torn achilles tendon that ends his campaign (just the latest in a horrific series of injuries the team has dealt with this season), and Kyle Shanahan’s team had first-and-10 at the Philadelphia 29-yard line.

And that’s when Shanahan decided to get tricky, pulling from the best offensive playbook at any level of football, Brock Purdy handed the ball to Skyy Moore, who flipped it to receiver Jauan Jennings, who threw a dart to McCaffrey for the 29-yard touchdown that gave San Francisco a 17-16 lead that would ultimately hold in a 23-19 win.

Of course, the win might not have happened had Purdy not found McCaffrey for the game-deciding touchdown with 2:57 remaining. Through all the injuries, McCaffrey has been the 49ers’ constant all season long. His 413 touches were the most in a regular season since DeMarco Murray’s 449 for the Dallas Cowboys in 2014, and with McCaffrey’s 15 carries for 48 yards and six catches on eight targets for 66 yards and two touchdowns, this win was yet another example of his value to this organization.

Video of the week

This back-and-forth between Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni and receiver AJ Brown during the first half of Philly’s loss was a fitting encapsulation of all the frustration with an offense that bulldozed through the NFL in the 2024 season under offensive coordinator Kellen Moore.

When Moore took the New Orleans Saints’ head coaching job, Sirianni elected to promote Kevin Patullo to offensive coordinator, and nothing has been the same since. Patullo appeared to be in over his head from the start, the Eagles’ formerly brilliantly aligned offense fell apart more often than not, and when Brown dropped two passes he should have caught on two straight plays on Sunday (with a false start on right tackle Fred Johnson in-between for good measure), it all boiled over.

Brown, who dropped yet another pass on the Eagles’ final drive, has expressed frustration throughout the season with his role, but it’s hard to be in his corner when he had so many opportunities and dropped all of them.

At least his head coach is behind him. “I think he knows how I feel about him,” Sirianni said of Brown after the game. “I have a special relationship with him. We’ve probably [gone] through every emotion you can possibly have together. We’ve laughed together. We’ve cried together. We’ve yelled at each other. We’re both emotional. I was trying to get him off the field, and that happens in this game. That happens in this game, but I love him.”

Stat(s) of the week

94%. When Packers quarterback Jordan Love hit receiver Matthew Golden for a 23-yard touchdown pass with 6:43 left against the Chicago Bears, it bumped Green Bay’s win probability to 94%, and the score up to 27-16 in their favor. Of course, things didn’t turn out the way the Packers must have expected. Why? Because the Packers were facing a team who have no idea when they’re supposed to quit. The Bears have won seven games when trailing within the final two minutes this season, which is an NFL record, as you might expect.

Elsewhere around the league

– After all the excitement through the Saturday and early Sunday games, Sunday night’s contest between the Patriots and Chargers was a relatively one-sided affair with a 16-3 result in New England’s favor. Drake Maye struggled a bit in the first half against a Jesse Minter-led defense that threw every kind of coverage at him, but the quarterback returned to his MVP form in the second half. As for the Chargers’ injury-ravaged offensive line, Justin Herbert was sacked six times and pressured ceaselessly, which has been the Chargers’ primary story all season long. Herbert is now 0-3 in his playoff appearances. Next season should be better for him once the Chargers offensive line gets healthy but we’ve yet to see Jim Harbaugh fully exploit one of the league’s best talents.

– Despite the fact that they beat the Los Angeles Rams 31-28 in Week 13, the Carolina Panthers were serious home underdogs (-10.5) on Saturday. The disparity had a lot to do with the fact that the Rams came into the game with a +172 point differential, while the Panthers stood at -69 – by far the worst of all the playoff teams.

Still, the Panthers played like a teenager who took mom’s car out for a joyride … and almost got away with it. When Bryce Young hit Jalen Coker for a touchdown with 2:39 left to put Carolina up 31-27, it seemed that we had an upset on our hands. But on the Rams’ subsequent drive, Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero chose to rush four defenders and drop seven into deep coverage over and over, which allowed Matthew Stafford to feast on easy completions underneath. Stafford’s 19-yard touchdown pass to Colby Parkinson with 49 seconds left, which put the Rams up 34-31 for good, seemed preordained.

– If you were surprised by the topsy-turvy nature of Chicago’s aforementioned win, welcome to the 2025 Bears, the NFL’s Kings of Variance. In the regular season, the Bears led the league in turnover differential (+22), but their defense was just as vulnerable as it was opportunistic. On the offensive side, Caleb Williams had been responsible for a ton of big plays this season under first-year head coach and offensive shot-caller Ben Johnson, but he also came into this game with the NFL’s lowest completion rate (58.3%).

This is a team that has dug itself crater after crater all season long, and then they’ve filled those holes right back up. It’s quite the waste of energy, but it somehow works. The Bears had six fourth-quarter comebacks in the regular season (in the final two minutes of games) to lead the league, and when trailing in the regular season, Williams had completed 178 of 295 passes for 2,174 yards, 18 touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer 97.8. On Saturday, in the fourth quarter, which began with a 21-6 Packers lead, Williams completed 10 of 21 passes for 184 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 110.0. The play that saved the Bears’ season came with 5:37 left in the game. Chicago had fourth-and-eight at their own 43-yard line down 27-13, and Williams made a throw that Bears fans will talk about for ever.

– Monday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Houston Texans features the most obvious mismatch of the wildcard round: Houston’s carnivorous defense against a Pittsburgh offense that is a mystery from week to week. The Texans don’t scheme a lot defensively because they don’t have to; they’ll simply line their guys up against your guys with the advantage in hand.

The Steelers will hope that the return of receiver DK Metcalf, who was suspended for the final two games of the regular season after a confrontation with a Detroit Lions fan, will give their passing offense some much-needed juice. Aaron Rodgers threw 24 touchdown passes this season, but only one with Metcalf out those two games. Pittsburgh don’t have another Rodgers target who can upend a defense; certainly not one who can upend a defense of this caliber.