Best of times for Bills' Josh Allen and Ravens' Lamar Jackson, but only one QB can advance on Sunday
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, left, and Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen. Credit: Getty Images / Al Bello; Getty Images / Timothy T Ludwig
Aside from the many skills Josh Allen possesses as a quarterback — passing, running, timing, strength, speed — he wields a keen sense of humor. Just this week, while preparing for one of the biggest games of his career, he managed to deliver a hysterical insight regarding his counterpart in Sunday’s AFC Divisional playoff game, Lamar Jackson.
“In the history of football,” he said, maintaining a serious face while doing so, “I’ve never really played against another quarterback. I’ve played against their defense.”
Like all comedy, this quip is rooted in reality. Yes, it is true, Allen and Jackson won’t ever be on the field at the same time Sunday — at least not until they trot to the middle of it afterward for a postgame handshake, one of them headed to the AFC Championship Game in Kansas City and the other to another painful offseason.
And no, anything that happens Sunday night won’t have any bearing on the other competition between the two men, the one for the league’s MVP. Those votes already have been cast and tabulated. Somewhere a trophy with one of their names etched into it awaits formal delivery at the NFL Honors program a few weeks from now.
But to try to insist that this game is not one of the rare, epic collisions of quarterback prowess that the league only occasionally delivers to us in the playoffs — with an argument to be made that it stands alone atop those confrontations — is not only wrong, it’s ludicrously funny.
Get this guy a headlining gig at Governor’s!
Not until after we get to see how this football duel turns out, though.
Allen was just trying in vain to downplay this personal postseason clash much the same way others did before him, whether it was Tom Brady against Peyton Manning or Joe Montana against Boomer Esiason or Phil Simms against John Elway or all the way back to Joe Namath against Earl Morrall (with a dash of Johnny Unitas hovering over that matchup for good measure).
The fact is that football is a quarterback-driven sport. It always has been, and lately it’s become more of one. The players who man those positions are in many ways more important to a team’s success than any general manager or head coach. They are the only ones in uniform for whom wins and losses, playoff records and Super Bowl rings — team accomplishments — are used to define greatness.
Running backs, receivers and linebackers, they can play long careers and be first-ballot Hall of Famers without ever having reached so much as a conference championship game. Quarterbacks? If you want to be talked about among the all-timers, you’d better have led your team to the top . . . and more than once if we’re discussing the tippy top of the list.
So of course this game between the Bills and Ravens is being framed as a game between Allen and Jackson.
They’ve been on a trajectory toward it since they came into the league together in 2018 — Allen, the third quarterback selected with the seventh overall pick, and Jackson, the fifth quarterback taken 32nd overall. They developed into premier players, true franchise quarterbacks. Jackson won two MVP awards. Allen went to three Pro Bowls.
Both were at their best this year. Allen, as a passer and runner (and, yes, on one memorable play, as a receiver) accounted for 4,269 total yards and 41 touchdowns, throwing only six interceptions. Jackson became the first player in NFL history to throw for more than 4,000 yards (4,172) and rush for more than 900 (915). He had a hand in 45 touchdowns and threw only four interceptions.
Sunday’s game will be the first playoff matchup in NFL history between two quarterbacks who each had at least 40 touchdowns and 10 or fewer turnovers during the regular season.
“That’s why you play this game,” Allen said, “to be in moments like these.”
And the ones that follow, of course. Allen and Jackson are two of the best quarterbacks of their generation, yet neither has reached a Super Bowl, let alone won one. After Sunday, only one of them still will have a chance to do it this season.
That’s what is on the line for them. One of them will be a victory away from the sport’s biggest legacy-making stage, the other will continue to be a great quarterback who, now at age 28, still “can’t win the big one.”
Even those who are involved in this particular game can appreciate that.
Tre’Davious White will be playing cornerback for the Ravens on Sunday after spending the first seven years of his career with Buffalo.
But if he wasn’t?
“I’d be tuned in with my popcorn, my Fruit Gushers and my ginger ale, that’s for sure,” he told The Athletic this week.
“I can just kind of picture John Facenda coming down from the heavens and narrating the preview to the game,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh added, a reference to the late NFL Films narrator whose voice became part of the sport’s history . . . something Allen and Jackson now are trying to do.
Jackson tried to push all of that nonsense and distraction aside.
“We really don’t care how people feel about it,” he said of the overwhelming interest in the matchup. “We’re trying to go in there and just win.”
Another knee-slapper.
We’ll see which of them still has his sense of humor afterward.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
