BATTLE FOR THE BOWL
Chiefs-Bills, Packers-Bucs fight it out today to earn Super trip:
he best quarterback in New York is still playing in the NFL’s Championship Sunday: Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills.
The Giants had the second pick. The Jets had the third pick. The Bills had the seventh pick in 2018. All three teams needed a quarterback.
The Giants didn’t think they did. They took Saquon Barkley. Since, they’ve drafted Daniel Jones, fired a coach, and went 15-33 with no playoff appearances.
The Jets took
Sam Darnold.
Since, they’ve fired a GM and a coach, and went 13-35.
But the Bills took Allen. Since, they are 29-19 with two playoff appearances, and now they’re threatening the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium for a possible berth in Super Bowl LV.
Allen, 24, most importantly, blossomed into an MVP candidate in year three this fall, coinciding with GM Brandon Beane’s aggressive trade for the Vikings’ Stefon Diggs, a true No. 1 receiver.
He jumped from a 58.8 completion percentage in 2019 to 69.2 in 2020. His touchdowns skyrocketed from 20 to 37, but his interceptions stayed nearly even: nine in 2019 and 10 in 2020.
Beane had the Bills in the postseason in his first season as GM in 2017 before Allen got here. But the roster needed more talent and depth, and Buffalo needed its quarterback above all — as any franchise does to take the next step.
Beane got him. The GM and coach Sean McDermott continued to believe in and build around Allen after their 6-10 season in 2018. And look at the Bills’ offensive ranks in Allen’s three years at QB: 30th in scoring in 2018, 24th in 2019, and second in the NFL in 2020.
Just like that.
Allen hasn’t been perfect. He was part of coughing up a 16-0 third quarter lead in a 22-19 overtime Wild Card playoff loss to the Houston Texans just one year ago.
But he has kept getting better, to the point where it would not surprise anyone if he beat Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs on Sunday.
“You try not to make it a bigger deal than it needs to be,” Allen said of how he intends to handle the biggest stage he’s played on yet. “That just comes from the coaching staff here, (offensive coordinator Brian) Daboll and (QB coach Ken) Dorsey, they’ve been in situations like this, and (they’re) just telling me what to expect, how to handle myself. I’ve played in a few big games and as we go on here, every game’s bigger than the last one. But it’s still the same game of football. We don’t need to reinvent anything on our offense. We just gotta go out there and try to be the best versions of ourselves we can be.”
The Bills’ success is directly relevant to the Giants’ and Jets’ situations for several reasons.
Like Allen, the Giants are hoping to see Jones take a massive step forward in his third NFL season, as well. (Although they should be picking up the phone and calling the Houston Texans like everyone else about Deshaun Watson, though Watson has a no-trade clause.)
Co-owner John Mara, who authorized the 2019 trade of Odell Beckham Jr., also has pinpointed adding offensive talent as a priority to help Jones improve.
The rest of the Giants’ roster needs upgrades, too, but everything is riding on Jones’ ability to be a different quarterback than he has been most of his first two seasons.
Jones may never be able to regularly complete the off-schedule, broken plays that Allen can execute. It is the kind of play making that separates many of the best QBs, such as Aaron Rodgers and Mahomes, and what do you know? They are both playing on Championship Sunday, too!
But Jones, 23, needs to be able to regularly score in the red zone and throw more than 11 TDs in a season, as he did in year two. Can the Giants achieve the kind of alignment that the Bills have attained, though?
The culture Beane and McDermott have created in Buffalo, the talent additions of receivers Diggs, Cole Beasley and Gabriel Davis, and the rapport of Daboll and Allen all have combined to form ideal conditions for the quarterback’s development and growth.
The Giants didn’t have that with Jason Garrett running Joe Judge’s offense with Jones at QB in 2020. What will help Jones most: consistency or change? It’s not clear yet how Garrett and the Giants will proceed.
Beane and Daboll were named GM and assistant coach of the year by the Professional Football Writers’ Association this week, though, and McDermott was our vote for head of the year, an award that went to Cleveland’s Kevin Stefanski.
Beane used to work under Dave Gettleman in Carolina. Now he’s running a program that Gettleman should be looking up to as a blueprint. The Bills did all this, by the way, while ranking tied for 19th in rush yards per carry (4.2) and tied for 17th in rush attempts (411).
The Jets, meanwhile, are on the verge of possibly moving on from Darnold and restarting at quarterback, aiming for a new culture and path to success under new coach Robert Saleh.
Darnold’s third season was a catastrophe in stark contrast to Allen’s. So was the Jets’ entire season as a team, with a bad roster and a pitiful offense in Adam Gase’s final year.
Could Darnold bounce back in year four and be rehabilitated working with new offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur running his own version of Kyle Shanahan’s offense? Sure. But Saleh did not commit to Darnold as his starting QB on Thursday, and the Jets have a major decision to make holding the No. 2 pick with a chance to pick a top QB like Ohio State’s Justin Fields or BYU’s Zach Wilson.
Regardless, most pertinent for the Jets is what the Bills’ success now means for them in their own division.
The AFC East, long mocked as a pushover division for the perennial division champion New England Patriots, suddenly is formidable.
It boasts the Bills, who are in the AFC title game; a resurgent Miami Dolphins team that could be in line to trade for the Texans’ Watson; and Bill Belichick’s Patriots, rebuilding but still there.
This is the uphill climb the Jets face. This is the challenge staring at the Giants. To be a team that one day is looked upon as a standard.
There are no quick fixes. But as the Bills have shown, if you pick the right quarterback and build the right culture and roster around him, it doesn’t have to take forever, either.
FOR WENTZ HE CAME
Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie seems to have tunnel vision on rehabilitating Carson Wentz, 28, rather than viewing his coaching hire through the prism of evaluating Jalen Hurts, 22, off an encouraging rookie year.
Lurie’s primary motivation behind firing Doug Pederson and hiring little-known Colts offensive coordinator Nick Sirianni appeared to be placating and reinstalling Wentz.
The organization invested a ton in Wentz with their trade up to draft him No. 2 overall in 2016, and with the four-year, $128 million contract extension they gave him in June 2019.
Sirianni, 39, comes with a clear recommendation from Colts owner Frank Reich, who knows Wentz and the Eagles’ workings well as Philly’s offensive coordinator during their 2017 Super Bowl run with Nick Foles.
When Wentz expressed displeasure with his benching and threatened a trade demand through leaks in-season, the Colts often came up as an organization that might be a better fit through a trade. So what did Lurie do? He brought the Colts to Wentz.
“It behooves us as a team with a new coach and new coaching staff to be able to really get (Wentz) back to that elite progression he was capable of,” Lurie said after firing Pederson earlier this month.
Lurie then compared Wentz to Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger, saying even the most elite QBs have had tough years.
“There have been many quarterbacks in their fourth or fifth year… that have a single year where it’s just whoa, the touchdown-interception ratio is not what you want,” Lurie said. “And we’re talking some great ones, like Peyton and Ben. So I take sort of a... longer view. This was not the best season for our offense. It was a poor season. We also had a poor season from Carson in terms of what he’s been able to show in the past. Very fixable. And I fully expect him to realize his potential.”
Choosing Sirianni over Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, a candidate Lurie liked during the interview process, seems to be about preserving the Eagles’ organizational structure.
GM Howie Roseman’s power, and Lurie’s involvement, are less threatened by a young unproven coach with no expectations for controlling his program compared to the more experienced McDaniels, a six-time Super Bowl winning OC in New England.
Lurie has identified young or unproven offensive coaches before who went on to win, such as Andy Reid and Pederson. So maybe he’s smarter than everyone else.
Or maybe, by hiring a guy who has never called plays and who wasn’t on any other teams’ radar for interviews this cycle, Lurie went too far out of his way to satisfy his disgruntled franchise quarterback.