Bills GM, Brandon Beane, Offers One Major Criticism of Josh Allen

The Buffalo Bills will be watching the Super Bowl at the bar next to all of us once again this season following a 10-27 letdown to the Cincinnati Bengals in the Divisional Round a couple of weeks ago in a game in which Josh Allen looked incredibly average.

Buffalo Bills GM, Brandon Beane, shared what he believes Josh Allen needs to improve on next season:

“The only thing I’d get on to him is he’s got too many bruises on him. And we’ve got to work on taking less hits. That’s the only reason I’m going to ever criticize Josh is just take less hits.”

Beane isn’t necessarily wrong. Josh Allen was playing with an elbow injury he suffered in the beginning of November. We just watched Brock Purdy have to sit out the NFC Championship with a UCL tear so Allen deserves props for playing through a bum elbow and not using it as an excuse.

But yea, Josh Allen takes a lot of dumb hits over the course of a football game and many of them can be avoided.

Here’s what Josh’s rushing season looked like:

124 carries
762 yards
7 touchdowns
55 first downs
13 fumbles

That last stat is the real problem here. Playoffs included, Josh Allen committed 33 interceptions and fumbles combined. Every single time he tries to scramble and run the ball himself, he is risking a massive turnover because he runs with the ball in one hand like he’s playing at the park with his friends but he’s actually playing against TJ Watt and Chris Jones.

BUT, Brandon Beane is intentionally deflecting blame on Josh Allen when the solution to keeping him healthy isn’t that he runs fewer times a game—it’s that he doesn’t have to.

Josh Allen was sacked 41 times when you combine the regular season and the playoffs including being sacked 7 times in the first round against a Miami Dolphins team that almost beat the Bills with third-stringer, Skylar Thompson.

Here’s how Allen suffered his elbow injury:

#Bills Josh Allen suffered his elbow injury during #Jets game… pic.twitter.com/6bZkwR57oy

— sports CAST 🏈🏀⚽️ (@thesportscast1) November 7, 2022

He wasn’t rushing for a first down. He standing tall in the pocket and got his arm snapped because the offensive line let the pass rush right through.

The Buffalo Bills need to fix the offensive line and even more importantly, they need a running game. Of course your quarterback is going to get crushed when he is solely responsible for both passing AND rushing. If Allen is asked to drop back like, 60 times a game, then of course he’s going to get hurt and bruised up by Week 18.

We just love blaming quarterback injuries on their scrambling. Look at the way people talk about Lamar Jackson. Most QB injuries happen in the pocket where they can’t protect themselves from big hits—not when they escape the pass rush to get extra yards.

It’s such a strange narrative because we watch the games. We see that most of these runs end with the QB sliding or jogging out of bounds. I know Josh Allen likes a little more contact but he’s also the size of a linebacker. He can handle it.

If you’re an NFL GM and you’re concerned about the health of your quarterback, get him an offensive line that will keep him on his feet and/or that can run block so that you simply won’t need to ask your QB to drop back as many times in a game.

But I guess it’s easier for Brandon Beane to blame Josh Allen for running too much instead of calling him out for fumbling and throwing the ball to the other team once a week.