Josh Allen is playing the best football of his career and as a result, the Buffalo Bills are one of the NFL's best teams (if not the best team).
It also has him on track to win the first MVP award of his career. He's currently the favorite to take home the trophy and if he does, he'll be the third Bills player in team history to do so. The last time that happened, it was back in 1991 when Thurman Thomas was named league MVP. No Bills quarterback has ever won the award.
But the latest injury news surrounding the Bills' star quarterback makes his bid even more fascinating: Per NFL Network's Ian Rapoport, Allen played with a broken hand for nearly three months after suffering the injury during the team's Week 1 win over the Arizona Cardinals. Rapoport states Allen is fully healthy heading into this week's Patriots matchup, which is a pretty scary thought for the rest of the league.
Sources say Allen has played through most of his MVP-caliber season with a fractured left hand.
Now fully healthy as his team prepares to play the Patriots today, Allen wasn't for much of the 2024 season.
Allen broke his non-throwing hand in the fourth quarter of Week 1's win over the Cardinals, going absolutely airborne for a touchdown run while being shoved by two players and landing on his hand. He immediately got up to celebrate, but looked at and shook his left hand...
... While it was known Allen had a hand injury -- he was on the injury report until after Buffalo's Week 12 bye -- the severity and nature of his injury was not previously known. All it does now is add some context to the ridiculousness of what Allen has done this season. - Ian Rapoport, NFL Network
In the three games since the Bills' Week 12 bye, Allen has completed 66% of his passes for 852 yards, seven touchdowns and zero interceptions. Those numbers rank 10th, third, and fourth, respectively, among 18 qualifying quarterbacks with at least 72 pass attempts from Weeks 13-15. He's one of four QBs without an interception over that span, as well (Jalen Hurts, Matthew Stafford, and Patrick Mahomes are the others).
Allen has also been sacked a grand total of zero times in the last three games and his mark of 11.27 ANY/A easily leads qualifying quarterbacks. In fact, it's a full 2.5-points higher than second-place Stafford, which is very impressive.
He's thrown for 340-yards or more in two of those games and there's no telling what his numbers look like if one of the games wasn't the snowstorm against the San Francisco 49ers. But even then he still balled out by becoming the first player in NFL history to throw for a touchdown, run for a touchdown, and catch a touchdown pass in the same game.
He's also added 168 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns on 24 carries during that span. The six rushing touchdowns lead all ball carriers over the last three weeks and the 168 rushing yards lead all quarterbacks while ranking 12th among all ball carriers.
Allen was already playing really well before his hand healed and he's really taken off since. If anyone was sleeping on him for whatever silly reason before, well, they're certainly wide awake, now.
