Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen has spent the past few years chasing running backs up the NFL’s all-time rushing touchdown list. On Sunday, he caught one Bills Mafia knows pretty well.
Allen ran for two touchdowns against the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 3, giving him 85 for his career and tying former Bills running back Marshawn Lynch for 17th place in NFL history.
Allen’s first rushing touchdown of the game, a one-yard run in the second quarter, broke his tie with Pro Football Hall of Fame running
back Jim Taylor, who finished his career with 83. Allen entered the game tied with Taylor after scoring twice against the Detroit Lions in Week 2.
Then came No. 85.
Allen took another one in from the one-yard line in the fourth quarter, pulling him even with Lynch, who scored 85 rushing touchdowns during a 12-year NFL career that began in Buffalo. Lynch spent parts of four seasons with the Bills after Buffalo selected him 12th overall in the 2007 NFL Draft before going on to spend the bulk of his career with the Seattle Seahawks.
And there are some pretty big names suddenly within Allen’s reach.
Priest Holmes is next with 86 rushing touchdowns, followed by Eric Dickerson and Curtis Martin at 90 and Jerome Bettis and Franco Harris at 91. Allen has averaged just under 10 rushing touchdowns per season over his career, but that number has jumped to nearly 14 per season over the past three years.
If Allen keeps anything close to that recent pace, Dickerson, Martin, Bettis, and Harris are all well within reach this season. And with six rushing touchdowns through the first three games, even Barry Sanders’ 99 doesn’t look quite as far away as it did when the season started.
Of course, keeping up a two-rushing-touchdowns-per-game pace would be absurd. But this is Josh Allen, and we have been doing this long enough to know better than to completely rule out absurd.
