Buffalo Rumblings
The Buffalo Bills (12-5) kick off their Super Bowl quest Sunday afternoon on the road against the Jacksonville Jaguars (13-4), and before Buffalo’s Wild Card clash, offensive coordinator Joe Brady gave Allen some homework: rewatch game film from the Bills’ regular season games to see what went right and where the reigning NFL MVP could improve heading into a pivotal postseason.
Today’s edition of Buffalo Rumblinks leads off by hearing what Allen learned during his self-scouting session, and how that self-scouting could help the Bills as they prepare to make a deep playoff run.
During the regular season, Allen completed nearly 70% of his passes, throwing for 3,668 yards with 25 touchdowns compared to 10 interceptions. Add in his rushing stats and Allen accounted for 39 total touchdowns in leading the Bills to the six seed in the AFC and their seventh consecutive playoff berth.
But during his film studies, Allen admits “there’s so much out there that I’ve missed” this year.
“Whether it’s getting a little lazy with my feet, and not taking a checkdown, and maybe instead trying to force something down field, or throwing the ball away and not taking sacks and allowing us to be in field goal range, there’s still so much to improve,” Allen said.
Allen knows he needs to be the best version of himself in the postseason, and that includes limiting turnovers. His interception rate climbed from 1.2% during his MVP campaign to 2.2% this year. After watching game film, Allen, an admitted perfectionist, was able to self-diagnose those areas of his game that need refinement ahead of the Wild Card game, including a need to throw the ball away instead of taking potentially harmful sacks (he was sacked a career-worst 40 times this year), and taking the easy check down throws when they are there instead of forcing the ball into coverage.
“I think maybe throughout the regular season you get into this mold of just like, we have more games, I can try to squeeze this one in and see how it goes. Obviously in the playoffs, those are premium drives, and sometimes the play is throwing it three yards and getting to a 2nd-and-7 instead of a 2nd-and-10,” Allen said.
During Thursday’s walkthrough session, the Bills saw linebacker Matt Milano (illness) and kicker Matt Prater (right quad) return to action as full participants. That’s the good news. The bad news? The Bills were...
