Josh Allen carries the ball, the jokes, and the Buffalo Bills

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  Tim KeownSep 17, 2026, 08:30 AM ET

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  • Senior Writer for ESPN The Magazine
  • Columnist for ESPN.com
  • Author of five books (3 NYT best-sellers)

THEY ALL HOLD their breath when Josh Allen goes rogue. They can always see it coming. He'll be a little laggy at the start of a game, his legs twitchy and his brain unfocused, and that's when they know -- and fear -- what's coming next. He'll stand before them in the huddle and get a certain look in his eye or a tone in his voice. They just shrug inside and think, Oh, well. Here we go.

Maybe he'll call a play and then change the protection at the line to make sure he puts himself one-on-one with a defensive end. Maybe he'll drop back and hold on to the ball a split-second longer than necessary. Maybe he'll run around like a flag in a hurricane and stay in bounds one or two strides beyond comfort, just long enough to take a hit. Whatever form it takes, they'll watch it unfold and think, Uh-oh. Good luck, Josh.

Everyone has their motivations. Some guys like to close their eyes and envision the game unfolding in their mind. Some scream and yell and listen to music that sounds like a bandsaw going through sheet metal. Some, like Allen, simply need to take a hit, to feel alive and engaged, to give the game its shape and life its purpose.

"Does it scare me, his running around?" asks Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins. "Hell yeah. Hell yeah. When we see Josh taking off and hurdling people and running over people, it's a scary thing. He's a big kid, but sometimes that kid stuff doesn't transfer. Yeah, you're a big kid. We get it. But if you fall, we all fall. It's scary as hell, and we can't hit him and say, 'There, you got your hit in.' Because what if we hurt him?"

Even in our quarterback-centric universe, Allen is uniquely tethered to this team, this region, the elusive goal of winning a Super Bowl. "He's everything," Dawkins says, and general manager Brandon Beane says his quarterback "wants to show his teammates he's willing to do anything." The trick is to determine, often in a split-second, the moments when those two concepts collide, when doing anything gets in the way of being everything.

It's a lot of psychic responsibility, all this shouldering of hopes and expectations. "He's here for a reason," Dawkins says, "they want him to hold that trophy up." The anything and everything of it expands every year, a tide threatening to breach the banks. The Bills have a new, Allen-friendly head coach in 36-year-old Joe Brady, a sparkling new $2.1 billion stadium, and the same unshakeable shadow of history pressed against them. Every year is The Year They Finally Win a Super Bowl, until it isn't. This year, however, feels different, like an inflection point, not now-or-never, but close.

Fairly or not, the final judgment will land on one man: Allen. It's the world he has created.

THERE IS DEFINITELY a love-hate thing going on with the Bills and Allen when it comes to his insistence on affirming humanity's reckless potential. Dawkins adopts a low, conspiratorial tone and says, "I got to admit: I love to see it." Whenever Allen gets popped, his linemen sprint to be the first to pick him up, all the while hoping he remains able to be picked up. This is their guy, and if he's going to run over a linebacker rather than step out of bounds, who are they to argue?

"It gets me going," guard Alec Anderson says. "I'm like, Yes! He brings the energy and the rest of us have to say, 'Oh, s---, Josh is into it, so I have to step my game up.' Yes, quarterbacks are supposed to be the trophy of the team, but I like the face of my franchise to have a little dirt on it."

And so he'll take off, eliciting whatever range of emotions occur within each man, running in that upright, draft-horse way. His speed, even nine years into this, retains its ability to surprise. It's a little like watching a fish swim through refracted water, his 6-foot-5, nearly 240-pound body always just a stride or two ahead of where your eyes think it should be -- right up to the point he slams his body into another human.

"It drives us guys up front," center Connor McGovern says. "If you see all the stuff he does, like how fearless and what some people might call him stupid for wanting to take hits. We love it."

Allen is trying. Lord knows he's trying. It's just ... it's just hard. There's a constant playfulness in his dark brown eyes, like he's aware that he has conquered the world and he's just trying to figure out how far he can take it. Sometimes long-term consequences and deductive reasoning can hold his beer. He's 30 now, a big kid with the face of an older man beginning to push its way through, and he knows NFL  indestructibility is both myth and lie. He's heard it from all of them -- Brady, Beane, most of his less-enthused teammates: Don't risk it. Don't risk us.

"I think I might be past that point of needing to be hit," Allen says, not at all convincingly. "I might just have my linemen push me around a little bit, maybe hit my pads. I'm trying not to get hit as much as possible now. I know it jazzes them up, but yeah -- gotta get up."

But here's the problem: This is who he is. If the things we love tell us what we are, Allen is a guy who happens to love running into linebackers and telling off-color jokes and pulling pranks on everyone in the organization. He's a risk-taker who, remarkably, has not missed a game since 2018, a former league MVP who still plays and acts like he's stuck somewhere between seventh and 10th grade. He's a guy who played through a partial tear of the UCL in his throwing elbow in 2022, a guy who missed two plays with a broken nose last season, a guy McGovern says has played through "stuff" that nobody outside the locker room will ever know. "As long as 17 is out there, I'm going," McGovern says. "Nothing else matters."

Allen's blend of fearlessness and recklessness -- for better, for worse -- is part of what endears him to his team and its fans. There are 53 Buffalo Bills, large men and fast men and men whose athletic talents reside in the top .01% of the roughly 8.3 billion people on the planet, but they are mere extras in a larger drama. Allen is the enduring hope for an entire region, the superstar who carries their hopes and dreams and burdens around as lightly as a child skipping through a park.

"He's the king of Western New York," McGovern says, "and he wears the crown well."

TO UNDERSTAND THE kingdom he has created, it's necessary to understand the kingdoms that created him.

It's jarring to drive around western New York and behold the pervasiveness of Bills paraphernalia, and difficult to convey the level of fame Allen has attained within it. It's not so much a fandom as a cultural force. Flags on cars, flags on houses, flags on businesses. Lawn buffaloes painted in Bills' colors, lawn buffaloes draped with No. 17 jerseys, an untold number of posters hanging on an untold number of walls. A free public practice in mid-August attracted more than 41,000 fans on a Tuesday morning at 8:30, the traffic backing up through and around the residential streets surrounding Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park. It only seemed like 40,999 of the attendees were wearing either a T-shirt or a jersey bearing 17.

It's a heavy load to bear, regardless of how lightly the crown sits, and Allen showed as much last year when he broke down in tears after the AFC divisional overtime loss to the Broncos. The Bills are not simply an activity in Western New York, they are perhaps the area's leading secular institution, and the allegiance to Allen manages to straddle the line between wholesome and cult-like. ("If there was something above king," Brady says, "Josh would be above that.") Allen has become a symbol of Buffalo, a post-industrial city of prideful folks who like it here and really don't care whether you understand why.

They relate to his oft-told backstory, unheralded coming out of high school in Firebaugh, a tiny Central Valley town near Fresno, and then unheralded coming out of Reedley College, where he famously sent an email to every FBS head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and position coach proclaiming himself to be "a great fit in your offensive scheme!" only to have two D1 programs -- Wyoming and Eastern Michigan -- make an offer. And Eastern Michigan ended up rescinding theirs.

"He's such a great fit for this city," says Del Reid, one of the founders of the Bills Mafia fan group. "The city has always had its underdog mentality, feeling like it's overlooked. We always ask: Is it appreciated for what it is? That's Josh's story, too, right?"

Allen's career -- the 2024 MVP, four Pro Bowls, four 4,000-yard passing seasons -- represents the fulfillment of Beane's post-draft prophecy that his quarterback is "the most Buffalo guy we could have drafted." (Perhaps Beane felt compelled to make the case after Bills fans developed a bias against California quarterbacks following the long-ago flameouts of J.P. Losman, a first-round pick of the Bills, and Rob Johnson, whom the Bills acquired in a trade deal for a first-round pick to the Jaguars-a pick that became Fred Taylor.) And somehow, Allen has managed to retain his status as Buffalo's own even after marrying actress-singer Hailee Steinfeld and becoming half of the NFL's second-most famous, yet far less visible, A-list couple.

"Josh stays here, that's why," Dawkins says. "You stay in Buffalo, Buffalo humbles you. He doesn't rush to New York City to sit courtside. He doesn't rush to Vegas to a fight. He stays right here in Western New York, in his kingdom, and just chills."

But wait. What if they win? What if he wins? What if Allen, in the prime of his prime at 30, leads the Bills to their first Super Bowl, washing away decades of disappointment and four straight Super Bowl losses in the 1990s?

"What drives me?" Allen asks, repeating a question. "What drives me now is my family. Doing everything I can to be the best provider, best husband, best role model for my daughter. And number two would be bringing a Lombardi Trophy to Western New York."

The timing could be right. Brady has infused the team with a festive spirit that emphasizes appreciating, and celebrating, every win, no matter how small. Allen, scrupulously careful not to disparage former coach Sean McDermott, says, "I know guys are loose and feel great. They can be themselves -- not that they couldn't with Coach McDermott -- but it's a fresh vibe. There's some electricity here."

There's also James Cook III, the NFL's leading rusher last season, a pass rush that figures to be improved with the addition of Bradley Chubb, and a new favorite target for Allen in wide receiver DJ Moore who was indoctrinated into his new world during a training camp practice, when Allen pulled him aside to introduce him to his grandmother. "DJ, Grammy," Allen said. "Grammy, DJ." Allen has already exorcised one lowercase demon; the 36-31 win over the Texans in Week 1 was his first in Houston after four losses.

Allen and Steinfeld's first child, a girl named Harper Haize, was born in April, an event that Allen says changed everything. His perspective shifted; it's not that he cares less about football, but he cares more about other things. He admits it's a difficult concept to put into words, but he swears focusing less on football and more on his family will create a better quarterback.

"I think it's made everything, not just football but everything in life, feel less important," Allen says. "My wife and daughter are my No. 1 priority. If they're OK, I'm OK. It doesn't matter what else is going on in my life, and that frees me up, 100 percent, to be the best teammate I can be. I just come out here and play football and have fun."

(Asked who is more famous, him or Steinfeld, Allen says, "Anyplace else in the world but here and it's absolutely her. It was obvious when we went to Paris a few years ago. Nobody there knows football very well, but they know movie stars and they know pop stars, and my wife just happens to be both.")

The lack of a Lombardi Trophy, and the quixotic quest to get one, is ingrained in the local psyche, as much a part of the fabric of life as the bitter winters. But it's purely an external force; the players themselves didn't live through any of the heartbreak of the '90s. They carry no ancient burden. Dawkins says, "Nah, no burden," and Allen says, "I didn't grow up a Bills fan, but there is that different history. We respect the history and the people who came before us, but we don't feel the past. We're focused on trying to create the future."

But just because they profess not to be defined by it doesn't mean it's not there. There has never been a more distinct line dividing the past and the future. Across the way from the glossy new stadium, which has been criticized for blocked sightlines and natural grass that thins in spots, excavators plunge into the pile of rubble in the old one. Piles of concrete and steel and 52 years of memories are lifted off the ground, dropped into semis and driven off to be repurposed as something far less dramatic. Everything is changing, so why not fate?

"I would love to lose my identity if that's the case," Reid says with a laugh. "But we don't consider ourselves lovable losers. If the Bills win the Super Bowl, I guarantee nothing would change with our fervor. The moment Josh Allen lifts that Super Bowl trophy, we'll just want another one."

ONE WAY TO counteract the weight of an entire region's history is to create a one-man microclimate of goofiness and good cheer. McGovern describes  Allen's sense of humor like this: "If you gave a 12-year-old unlimited money, he would have the same middle-school humor as Josh." That sounded like an insult until I asked Allen himself, and he said, "The comedy is stuck in a 12-year-old's mindset and will be forever."

Before his daughter was born, Allen conducted a running gag with a friend over FaceTime. Three separate times Allen called and asked his friend if he was sitting down. I've got big news, Allen said, and each time the friend got excited about potential baby news only to hear Allen laugh and say, "Gotcha." After the third call, the friend said, "Forget it. You're the boy who cried wolf. I'm not falling for it anymore."

After the baby was born, Allen FaceTimed his friend while holding a swaddle across his chest.

"Dude, it's real this time."

Allen bounced his arms and looked down at the swaddle with a look of genuine pride.

"You want to see her?" Allen asked, and proceeded to gradually fold back the swaddle to reveal the face of his dog.

"I kept pulling the rug out on him, so even though the baby was born, I figured I'd do it one more time," Allen says. "That was a good one. And then I showed him our baby, obviously."

Rookies are particularly fertile ground for Allen's tween humor. Last season a rookie who shall not be named came into the huddle for the first time during training camp. Like most rookies, he was a bit starstruck, and so Allen decided to have fun. He said, "OK, everybody -- on two!" and broke the huddle without calling a play. The rookie dutifully clapped his hands and ran from the huddle while the other 10 guys, all familiar with their quarterback's schtick, burst into laughter.

"When a rookie goes into the huddle for the first time with Josh, you can see him losing brain cells," receiver Joshua Palmer says. "They get a little nervous."

Allen's gags do not acknowledge hierarchy. Brady was minding his own business, thinking about football stuff, as he walked into his makeshift office in a downtown Cleveland hotel before the Bills' second preseason game. He turned on the light and closed the door. He was about to sit at the desk when he was wrapped in a bear hug.

Allen.

"I got him good," Allen says. "Scared the piss out of him." Brady, ever the coach, spun it as a positive, calling it "a little scare -- he's got great timing, and he just knows how to keep you on your toes."

The problem: Nobody is ever completely sure when he's serious. There's a level of self-preservation involved in communicating with Allen. If he asks a question, nobody wants to answer it, fearing a setup. If he offers his opinion or advice, nobody wants to take it.

"I've come to grips with the fact that I made this bed and I have to sleep in it," he says. "Usually I have to swear on a bible or my family to be taken seriously. They usually respect that. I wouldn't lie on those."

HOW DEEP DOES the devotion run? From backyards to bedroom walls to the back seat of Lou and Stacie McNett's car, where their 13-year-old daughter, Abbie, hugs one of her ever-present Joshy Bears. The McNetts are driving home from a late August doctor's appointment in a good mood. They've experienced too many rolling emotions over the past few years, and they've learned to appreciate the small victories.

Abbie has Down syndrome and a rare form of cancer called  alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. Her parents bought her first Joshy Bear -- "for inspiration," Stacey says -- when Abbie spent three months in a New York City hospital in early 2022. After Abbie left the hospital and returned to Buffalo, she met Allen, gave him an "Abbie Bear" and had him sign her Joshy Bear. There are now three of each, with one Abbie Bear waiting at home with the McNetts, waiting to be delivered to Allen. Abbie has called Allen her best friend ever since their first meeting.

"The bears," Stacie says. "It's their thing. He goes everywhere with her."

Abbie has lived through several rounds of remission and recurrence. Allen has helped celebrate the remissions -- he met with her last year when she reached a one-year milestone -- and comfort her when the cancer has been found to return. "He's real," Stacie says. "That's the one thing I keep saying about him. She is not very verbal, and he is always patient while he waits for her to talk. When he is with her, it's not about us. It's all about Abbie."

When it was discovered that Abbie's cancer had returned in April, she received a handwritten get-well card from Allen. "Thinking of you and praying for you," he wrote. "Will be giving Abbie bear a few extra hugs tonight. Love you & keep fighting."

The pediatric recovery wing at the hospital is named after Allen's paternal grandmother, Patricia Allen. After Patricia died during the 2020 season, the Bills Mafia led a fundraising drive that raised more than $1 million for the hospital, most of it in $17 increments. The fund has now reportedly raised more than $17 million. Allen makes periodic and often unannounced visits to the hospital, and Abbie makes sure to pack her No. 17 jersey whenever she is there, just in case.

Allen connects his attitude toward fans, especially kids, to an incident he says took place after a San Francisco Giants game he attended as a kid. He and his brother Jason, both at an age Josh refuses to reveal, were waiting outside the ballpark for a player, whom Josh refuses to reveal, other than to say he was not Barry Bonds or Buster Posey.

This player was the last one to make his way out of the clubhouse and into the players' parking lot, and the Allen brothers were among the last kids waiting to be acknowledged. They wanted something, anything, to validate their fandom, and instead the player pulled his cap down -- in essence, refusing to wear the crown -- and looked the other way as the kids yelled his name.

"He could have at least given a high-five or a wave, a smile, a 'Thank you guys, gotta go,'" Allen says. "I would have been fine with any of that. I'll never forget that as a kid; that guy didn't even look at us. Didn't even look at us. I was like, 'Can't be a fan of that guy anymore.' I felt so heartbroken, and I thought if I ever get to that spot, I will do everything in my power to make sure I don't do something like that to a kid, especially a kid that looks up to me."

Allen remains surprisingly angry, still animated after however many years. The player who spurned Josh and Jason in San Francisco, whoever he is, might have inadvertently helped to create Abbie McNett's best friend. As Abbie calls out from the back seat to thank me for calling, Lou says, "Looking through her eyes, he's just another nice person. She connects on a different level. She just thinks, 'He likes to do the same things I do,' and she doesn't see him as a superstar NFL player. She just sees him as someone she can play with."

AS SOON AS Captain Jerry found out why I was in Buffalo, he had something he needed me to see. Captain Jerry runs the Queen City Bike Ferry, taking travelers across the Buffalo River from the inner harbor to the outer harbor and back, a trip of 600 feet, about five minutes, $2 each way, Memorial Day to Labor Day. I showed up in the late afternoon, the last run of the day, so instead of going from point to point we just roamed the harbor while Captain Jerry told of his life as a rare modern-day polymath -- as a veterinarian on a turtle-saving expedition in the Mediterranean, as a building inspector on Highmark Stadium, as now as a ferry captain piloting around dredgers in the river so people can go for a walk or a bike ride through the parks on the other side.

He pointed out the General Mills factory down the river, where they make Cheerios and Lucky Charms, and the shuttered steel mills that loom in the distance, relics of Buffalo's rich history. Captain Jerry was born here, lived all over the world and eventually came back, his life echoing Del Reid's contention that Buffalo is a city of natives. "If you live here," Reid said, "you were born here. We are not a city of transplants."

The tour was just a lead-up to what Captain Jerry really wanted to show me. He pointed the boat toward a brontosaurus statue in an outer-harbor park and started laughing before he started talking. A "Zubaz" pattern No. 17 jersey is painted onto the creature, and Captain Jerry says, "You should take a picture of that for your article, then everyone will know even the dinosaurs here love him."

A few minutes later, after a photo was dutifully taken, he said, "You know what you should do? You should write something bad about Josh Allen."

He said it like a dare. A good-natured dare, but a dare. It hung there for a minute as he kept his eyes on the river and the ferry pointed directly at the dinosaur.

"Why?" I asked. "Do you know something bad about him?"

Captain Jerry, hands on the wheel, turned and looked at me, shaking his head.