Rating Josh Allen Goes Over
There are just not enough thoughts shared about Josh Allen. Get in a couple extra takes before kickoff. A player who’s the focus of not just the Buffalo Bills but the league has become so ubiquitous that thorough social media searches encounter fanciful notions about the nature of his awesomeness. Unreal play leads to unreal takes on both sides. It’s not just the messiah-style praise offered by congregants: hearing how he’s overrated is commonplace enough to be tiresome. Haters use each other as sources.
Imagine him at full strength. Fans have to think all the way back to 2021, which is a challenge if you’re struggling to recall what was for dinner two nights ago. Our most recent football mental images feature Superman with kryptonite duct-taped to his elbow. Playing hurt is a testament to toughness on top of an invaluable skill set.
Learning what a UCL is was one of last season’s 87 million low points. Watching a football hero cope with a restricted throwing motion is not a fun way to discover what’s going on under skin.
It’s easy to avoid failure by never pursuing anything chancy. Get nothing done to minimize low points. Sure, there won’t be any high ones, either, but level living bores those who need the thrill of mentions filled with justified vitriol. As for real risk-takers, they experience the widest range of emotions by daring to wager. The greatest successes necessarily involve exposure to hazard. Ranking Allen below Tua doesn’t count.
The balance between dashing and foolhardy is tough to maintain during the fraction of a second it takes to determine if an attempt is worthwhile. Allen perhaps pushed the needle a bit too much into the reckless zone last year. Boxing judges award rounds for effective aggression. Charging boldly into an uppercut meets only one of the two criteria.
But the downside of the wrong player fielding occasional passes is worth accepting from someone who singlehandedly changed a franchise’s fortune. The difference between Buffalo’s seemingly endless drought and current bounty is exactly one player. We’re already accustomed to how comfortable it is to know Allen is there. The Bills are already past the point where they presume he’ll keep them in games and seasons.
Allen must adjust to losing not only occasional games but also privacy. Complaining about paparazzi caring about what he’s doing off the field disregards how he’s a public figure even outside of Bills Country. Buffalo’s most prominent citizen should know the time to worry is when nobody cares what you do.
There are more productive ways to spend a monotonous offseason than constructing daft theories about superstars who aren’t. Alternate reality enthusiasts manipulate statistics in a way that’d make Capitol staffers blush. Delusions that should get one banished from polite football society are promoted by the similarly deluded who insist there are four feet in a yard. Insulation from human contact while interacting with humans is one of the delights of online living.
A more accurate but similarly imbecilic scenario involves noting there may be one human better at this job. Rankings can be harmless fun as long as there’s no implication that a silver medal is pathetic.
Measuring ourselves against others is a sure way to feel unsatisfied. I suppose that’s what sports are. Nevertheless, Allen is a fantastic success by his own standard. He’s achieved a tremendous amount at age 27 even if he obviously has unfulfilled goals. The fact that needs to be stated reflects the mute button’s value.
The only thing worse than trolling is the unintentional version. You can get upset at Twitter crackpots explaining why Allen is ranked near the bottom of the AFC East’s quarterbacks, much less those in the entire NFL. Or you can laugh and wait for more results to prove how far deviants strayed from truth.
Allen didn’t get to be this prominent. Didn’t you heed naysayers? Pretending inaccuracy’s a fundamental problem that can’t be remedied with better receivers is another example of why you should never listen to Troy Aikman under any circumstances.
A winning record only begins to reflect impact. Tracking statistics instead of watching games isn’t merely a myopic deficiency for fantasy football zealots who only want an accumulation of numbers. Enjoying the sport is based around observing not many people can do. There are at most a few individuals on Earth better than Allen at his job.
The preferred hobby of the miserable is fun for everyone else when nothing they bitch about comes true. The good news is narratives don’t affect games. Proclaiming how life is with self-satisfaction is its own punishment when reality plods on with indifference. The little matter of whether or not opinions conform to actuality is left out of standings.
Let the endless prattle of preposterous framing continue. Football will drown out jibber jabber in a few days. Hearing why Allen’s allegedly a reckless turnover machine has provided comfort during the offseason to backers of teams not blessed to have him on their rosters.
The best and worst thing about the internet is unedited content. Not having someone offer perspective with a quick scan of a tweet or Facebook post leads to unfiltered content. Readers assess who should be ignored just like quarterbacks calculate the appropriateness of any try to advance the football. Allen’s success rate far exceeds those of his harshest critic. Some opinion generators could use recalibration. Um, that doesn’t apply to this column.
