Josh Allen is quite good at football, but contrary to popular belief around Western New York and amongst the collective Bills Mafia brain, he can be human from time to time, and we saw glimpses of it that phenomenon in Buffalo’s 24-16 win over the Chargers in Week 3.
Allen was 16-of-26 for 204 yards without a passing TD and two interceptions — of course he scored twice on the ground. His passer rating was a lowly 54 against Los Angeles.
That got me thinking.
How does Allen rebound after what, by his
standards, is a bad performance?
Since the start of 2020, Allen has had nine regular season games with a passer rating of 60.0 or lower. In the nine games immediately following those contests, Allen had:
- four games with a passer rating over 100
- one game with a passer rating between 90 – 99
- two games with a passer rating between 80 – 89
- two games with a passer rating between 70 – 79
That means he increased his passer rating in all nine of those games. His averages across those contests were as follows:
- 24 of 36 (66.9% completion)
- 271 passing yards
- 1.89 passing TDs
- 0.98 INTs
- 97.5 passer rating
If EPA per drop back is your thing — and it is very much en vogue in today’s NFL — I have those figures for you too. I actually like EPA per play more here than just passer rating because it counts every Allen drop back or rush. Of course passer rating does not factor in Allen’s running, which is a big part of his game.
I checked all the games since 2020 in which Allen has finished with a negative EPA. He’s had 16 of them. One occurred in his final (full game) regular-season appearance against the Eagles in Week 17 last year, and he was rested for last year’s regular-season finale, so there were 15 follow-up games to check here.
Allen had a positive EPA in the 14 of 15 follow-up outings. The average EPA per play in those contests was +0.246. How good is +0.246 EPA per play for a quarterback? During Allen’s MVP season of 2024, his EPA per play was +0.260.
The one instance in which his EPA didn’t jump back to the positives after a negative EPA performance did come last season, though. Allen had a negative EPA per play against the Browns in Cleveland then again was in the negatives the following week at home against the Eagles.
But by and large, after a down performance, Allen has regularly bounced back in the next game, not just with a good performance, but one that, by EPA per play, has averaged out to elite-level quarterback play.
Encouraging news for the Bills regarding their superstar quarterback entering Week 4’s contest against the Patriots.
