To me, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen is the best player in the NFL, and has been the best player in the NFL the past four seasons.
“Oh, yeah, a guy covering the Bills thinks Buffalo’s quarterback is the best player in the NFL, of course.” I know that thought is out there. And I’m OK with it. Because, as the owner of that take, I know it’s deeply researched, well thought-out, and genuine.
It’s an honest assessment about a single player as he relates to the entire league, which I’ve covered since
Allen’s rookie season in 2018.
With NFL analysis, there’e still a prevailing problem separating individual player performance and team achievement, though it feels like the collective willingness and capability to isolate the two from each other is improving.
Of course, determining the best player in the NFL is highly subjective. And we all have a unique formula in our heads by which we would make that determination ourselves.
For me, the answer to this question has to be a quarterback.
No disrespect to Myles Garrett, or Justin Jefferson, or Aaron Donald.
Quarterback is the most challenging position in all of sports. And I think now with rushing such a large part of what is asked of those who play quarterback, it’s become even more challenging, the most demanding blend of mental processing, refined talent in the upper and lower body in the game. Oh, and no position is under more scrutiny than the team’s quarterback.
Clearly you can see I factor job difficulty to get to this answer, and no one has been as consistently awesome when it comes to the most high-degree-of-difficult throws than Allen:
And I included 2021 — although my claim begins with the 2022 season — just for a buffer of proof. Essentially to demonstrate Allen was doing this even before I started viewing him as the best player in the NFL.
Now, let’s take apart my claim, year-by-year:
Josh Allen as NFL’s best player in 2022
Patrick Mahomes is the easy answer for NFL’s best player in 2022 — the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, he won MVP and Super Bowl MVP.
But I try not to use awards or team achievement as direct justification in assessments of individual players. Was Mahomes the most accomplished player in 2022? Yes. Indisputably. That doesn’t have to mean he was the best player in the game if we’re looking at individual performance that considers difficulty of the job description.
In 2022, Allen had Stefon Diggs and essentially nothing else of real substance at wide receiver. This was the first season in which the Bills entrusted Gabe Davis to be their WR2, and while he was a spectacular WR4 or WR3 early in his career, playing legitimate second fiddle in a high-caliber passing offense was simply more than he could ever handle.
Diggs caught 108 passes and Davis was second on the team with 48 grabs in the regular season.
(Kelce outpaced Diggs in every category and the Chiefs had two other players with 50-plus catches that year.)
Diggs could separate. No one else could on a regular basis, particularly Davis. OK, maybe Isaiah McKenzie underneath, slightly, but he was hardly a regular threat. In essence, Buffalo had an aging WR1 — who was a Second-Team All-Pro that year — and a secondary receiving corp that didn’t strike fear into opponents whatsoever.
Allen did a lot with a little, throwing for 4,283 yards with 35 touchdowns and 14 interceptions. He also led the NFL in Big-Time Throw Rate (7.6%) and finished second in Success Rate (61.3%) as a runner.
In fact, Allen averaged 6.1 yards per rush in 2022, a slightly better per-tote average than Patrick Mahomes on more than twice the amount of rushes as the Chiefs quarterback.
And here are some of Allen’s advanced quarterbacking metrics in 2022:
Average Depth of Target: 2nd
Big-Time Throw Rate: 1st
Pressure-to-Sack Rate: 12th
That year, beyond Mahomes, the Chiefs had three All-Pros (first or second team) on their offense — Travis Kelce, Joe Thuney, and Creed Humphrey — and one on the defensive side of the ball in Chris Jones.
The Bills had Diggs as a second-teamer. That’s it.
Here’s where Mahomes ranked in those same advanced metrics that year:
Average Depth of Target: 32nd
Big-Time Throw Rate: 8th
Pressure-to-Sack Rate: 1st
Mahomes has always had the play-designing/calling Andy Reid on his sidelines, a presence I don’t think can ever be underestimated. In 2022 — the first without Tyreek Hill — he regularly threw it very short, and the Chiefs finished second in the NFL in YAC per reception at 6.6 yards.
That very same year, the Bills finished 31st in YAC per reception at 4.4 yards — a massive difference for the two quarterbacks regarding post-catch productivity from their respective pass catchers.
Mahomes Turnover-Worthy Play Rate (2.1%) was nearly half of Allen’s (4.0), yet Allen’s BTT rate nearly doubled his Kansas City-based counterpart.
To me, Allen had much more on his plate individually, was on-target with challenging throws much more frequently, and was an equally effective runner at double Mahomes’ sample size.
Josh Allen as NFL’s best player in 2023
Mahomes and the Chiefs achievements are the main counterpoint against Allen as the NFL’s best player in 2022, and Allen’s 18 interceptions in 2023 are typically summoned as the main reason for those who don’t believe he was the best player in 2023.
Understandable.
But interception luck is absolutely real, and Pro Football Focus’ Mark Chichester wrote about it this offseason. From his extensive research of the most recent decade of NFL football, he concluded “there is no such thing as a permanently lucky (or unlucky) quarterback,” and regarding Allen from 2023 to 2024 to 2025, “the underlying quarterback remained largely the same across all three seasons. The interception outcomes did not.”
For quick numbers on this — Chichester’s study found that 49.9% of Turnonver-Worthy Throws result in actual interceptions. In 2023, Allen’s Turnover-Worthy Throws amounted to an interception a whopping 76.5% TWT-to-interception-rate.
In 2023, Allen saw Diggs regress and the team very slowly phased out Davis as rookie Dalton Kincaid caught 73 passes for 673 yards and two scores on 60% of Buffalo’s snaps. Khalil Shakir was given a larger role as the season progressed, and James Cook caught 44 passes while going over 1,100 yards on the ground.
He had two offensive coordinators — as Ken Dorsey’s scheme fell into a serious lull midway through the season before Joe Brady was promoted.
Allen finished 3rd in the NFL in BTT %, 1st in rushing Success Rate (yes, QBs are naturally at a bit of an advantage here over RBs), and 1st in Pressure-to-Sack Rate. He regular sack rate was also the lowest among qualifying quarterbacks in 2023.
He scored 15 touchdowns on the ground, and only three of which came from inside the 2-yard-line.
Allen was a certified G in 2023, and the interception total was a clear outlier relative to how often he put the ball in harm’s way through the air.
As for Mahomes, his BTT rate was only 3.9% — compared to Allen’s 6.2% — and a TWP rate hardly better than Allen’s (2.4% to 3.0%). Allen’s aDOT was 12th. Mahomes’ was 39th. Case closed.
Josh Allen as NFL’s best player in 2024
Allen’s MVP year — but, remember, I’m not basing my claim off awards.
And his interception luck did a 180, but I’m not factoring in those either, particularly because I’m essentially discounting his 18-interception 2023. Allen’s TWP rate decreased from 3.0% in 2023 to 2.6% in 2024, both of which are relatively low numbers given how aggressive Allen was in those seasons as a thrower and runner.
This year, you’ll remember was when the Bills embraced the “Everybody Eats” mentality, which absolutely worked but likely was born out of necessity given the increasing lack of truly supreme talent at wideout and tight end. No pass catcher reached 830 yards receiving, and Allen ultimately was the only All-Pro on the Bills (first or second team).
In 2024, Mahomes individually had taken a clear step backward, and this is when Lamar Jackson emerged as the clear Allen competition for best player in the NFL. After all, Jackson was the First-Team All-Pro quarterback in 2024.
Jackson did outpace Allen on the ground (915 to 531) yet the Bills quarterback averaged 1.9 yards-after-contact-per-attempt as a runner to Jackson’s 1.8.
Jackson’s 2024 represents the best candidacy to unseat Allen as the NFL’s best player, but the final row here is the separator:
*Allen’s 7.1% Big-Time Throw Rate was tops in the league, again.
In the regular season, the Ravens, pretty objectively, had a better collection of talent. Ironically, the Bills finished as the higher seed in the AFC and beat Baltimore in Orchard Park in the divisional round of the playoffs.
While the Ravens quarterback had more volume than Allen — and better elementary stats — I still believe Allen had a more difficult season-long task than Jackson.
Josh Allen as NFL’s best player in 2025
With last season, I have to start with the receiver room. I sincerely believe the Bills had a bottom four to bottom six pass-catching contingent in football. At times, it was probably bottom two. I’m serious.
Shakir starred after the catch in his gadget-y role, Kincaid played under 30% of the snaps, and the Bills had to sign Brandin Cooks and Mecole Hardman (and re-sign Davis) late in the regular season just to round out their wideout room. Heck, the last two throws of the Bills 2025 campaign went to Hardman and Cooks, respectively.
Everything Eats from 2024 morphed into a shell of itself.
And Allen’s BTT rate dropped all the way to 16th, his lowest since 2019. He countered with a 2.4% TWP rate, the lowest of his career and 7th-lowest among qualifiers. His aDOT of 7.8 yards ranked 28th and represented the lowest mark of his career. Allen turned to a more accuracy-based game, as his 78% Adjusted Completion Rate was the 7th-best in the NFL.
Long one of the most difficult quarterbacks to sack, Allen’s sack rate skyrocketed to 8.0%, and his pressure-to-sack rate was 19.7%.
All this was expected given how bad the pass-catching contingent was for the Bills, and Allen’s dialed back aggression speaks directly to why Buffalo ran Cook 309 times during the regular season. It was a ball-control offense.
Allen himself ran for over 570 yards at 5.2 yards per tote with the fourth-best rushing Success Rate in football and scored 14 rushing touchdowns — seven of which were from two yards or closer.
Matthew Stafford won MVP over Drake Maye in the closest race in NFL history. But the Rams quarterback had the luxury of regularly targetting Offensive Player of the Year third-place finisher Puka Nacua, who led all qualifying receivers in yards per route run (3.71).
I wouldn’t categorize Allen as completely falling off in 2025, of course.
He, again, did a ridiculous amount with what he had at his disposal and remained an elite rushing threat at the quarterback position.
Quite simply — there’s no quarterback in the NFL who exceeds Allen’s ability as a big-play creator with his arm and his legs. And no quarterback regularly has stacked high-caliber classic and advanced metrics with more individual responsibilities than Josh Allen.
