Is Allen the best QB the Bills have ever had?

Kelly's crew couldn't get it done in the '90s, but Buffalo's long wait may finally be over

Wide right wouldn't have gone wide right and missed had Josh Allen been the quarterback of the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV.

They may not even have needed Scott Norwood's leg to make that 47-yard field goal to win the NFL championship.

The kick might have been shorter — or for an extra point instead of a field goal. And the Bills, with Allen, who wasn't even born until after the team had lost four straight Super Bowls, might have scored a touchdown.

This is all a great what-if, with Allen and the Bills one win away from going back to the Super Bowl all these decades later. But the more we see of Allen and his array of talents, the more we realize we're watching the greatest quarterback Buffalo has ever had.

Some people in Buffalo don't want to hear that, about how great and unstoppable Allen happens to be — they know that — but about how ordinary the legendary Jim Kelly was in his four Super Bowl starts. In fairness to Kelly, the Hall of Fame quarterback who has come to symbolize the heart and soul of Buffalo and its beloved football team, he was like the Bills themselves: He never had a great championship day.

But that first one, that ended with Norwood's infamous kick missing from 47 yards, that was the game that should have been won. That was the game to change history. It was all there for the Bills in the final minutes. All they had to do was score. In the other three Super Bowls, well, the Bills were there in name only. They lost 37-24 to the Washington Redskins and followed that by losing 52-17 to Dallas and then 30-13 the year after that to the Cowboys.

Jeff Hostetler was the quarterback for the Giants when the Bills lost 20-19 in their first Super Bowl defeat. He's not the worst quarterback to win a Super Bowl, but he's certainly on the list.

All Kelly had to do in the final minute of Super Bowl XXV was get one more first down. Maybe 10 more yards. Manage the clock a little better.

I've always thought it was wrong to hold Norwood responsible for the Bills losing 20-19. Coach Marv Levy and quarterback Kelly and a defence that couldn't stop the run cost Buffalo the Super Bowl it needed to win.

But you look at Allen now, and the way he plays and the way he runs and how difficult he is to bring down at any time — and at age 24 he's doing these things — and you wonder if this is the year.

Or next year, or the year after that.

There will always be Patrick Mahomes in the AFC standing in front of Allen and the Bills. Just as there was Dan Marino and Warren Moon during Kelly's best seasons.

Allen does things Kelly could never do. He's already run for 1,562 yards in three seasons; Kelly rushed for 1,049 in his career.

Allen has run for 25 touchdowns already. Kelly ran for seven in his entire career.

Kelly came to the Bills at age 26, already having played two seasons in the USFL for the Houston Gamblers. Allen was 22 when he became Buffalo's starter, an erratic kid with arms and legs flailing in all directions, in need of coaching and teaching to reach a level that has him in an MVP conversation, not far behind Aaron Rodgers and Mahomes.

Kelly's Buffalo teams were extraordinary, not just for getting to four straight Super Bowls, but also for the collection of talent that couldn't exist in today's salary cap world. He had an all-time great, Thurman Thomas, in the backfield, a Hall of Fame wideout in Andre Reed, and a defence that included Bruce Smith and Cornelius Bennett and Darryl Talley. It was a team that really had everything but a ring.

Allen has an absolute gem of a receiver in Stefon Diggs. There is no Smith on the Bills defensive line, no Bennett at linebacker. No Thomas in the backfield.

But they have Allen, who has already orchestrated a 13-win season, passed and run for more yards than Kelly ever managed, and thrown for more TDS this season than Kelly ever did.

In Super Bowl XXV, the Bills went 1-for-8 in third down conversions against the Giants. That never would have happened if they had Allen at quarterback.