When NFL coaches and executives trekked to college football’s hinterlands three years ago for a firsthand look at a quarterback with fabled arm strength, Wyoming coach Craig Bohl gave them less hype and more of a warning about Josh Allen.
“I said over and over again that he’s far from a finished product,” Bohl says.
Bohl told them Allen would continue to grow into his rare abilities—and that’s where some decision makers opted out. There is a camp of football traditionalists who stand by one of the game’s oldest axioms: Nothing is more important than a quarterback’s accuracy, and accuracy can’t be taught. They looked at a quarterback who completed just 56% of his passes at Wyoming and shook their heads at the notion he could do any better against far superior competition.
The Buffalo Bills disagreed and made him the No. 7 pick in the 2018 draft. Three seasons later, Allen is offering a crash course in how that old wisdom is more outmoded than telex machines. He’s growing into one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks.
The Bills are 6-2 this year and poised to make a playoff run, and the reason is that Allen has learned to throw the football with phenomenal accuracy. He’s completing 67.1% of his passes—more than eight percentage points higher than just a season ago, a meteoric transformation that has flown in the face of traditional football logic.