Why Josh Allen is the best player in the NFL

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...