Josh Allen and the Most Harmful Play in NFL History

The story of the Josh Allen fumble that sunk the 2022 Buffalo Bills, and just how historically bad it was.

After a bit of soul searching over whether I wanted to jump on the bandwagon and begin writing about the modern NFL now that the season has started back up, I have decided that I write about NFL stories from the past, and I’m going to stay in that lane. I will write about modern stuff when it’s statistically interesting, but in week one, nothing statistically interesting happened. All I have to give are I told you so’s. To give into this modern desire a little bit (as well as prove my credibility), here are some week one outcomes I predicted:

Here is an article I wrote on April 1, 2023 telling you how great Sam Darnold is

This is an article talking about how Joe Burrow has changed, and how the Bengals will struggle to win with this new playstyle

This is an article about how Jacoby Brissett deserves your respect

This is an article forecasting why every kickoff still ought to end in a touchback

Now that I’m done tooting my own horn to satisfy the modern fans, welcome to my Sports Passion Project, where we (mostly) discuss fun stories from NFL history.

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With the down offence in the first week of the 2024 NFL season, my mind got to thinking about bad plays, which further got me thinking. What is the worst play in NFL history?

Full disclosure, the play I’m about to discuss is actually the 31st worst play in NFL history, but before you get angry and storm off thinking I’ve got you with a clickbait title, here is my methodology:

Most historically bad NFL plays happen in one of two circumstances. They are either a) missed or blocked field goals or b) galling decisions in OT made by coaches who clearly spent no time thinking about or practicing OT decision making.

Eliminating plays in NFL history that fall under either of those two criteria eliminates everything down to the 18th worst play in NFL history, which is a fumble on the opening kickoff of OT on December 24, 2005.

Edell Shepherd. The man this article could’ve been about.

This would’ve singlehandedly lost the Tampa Bay Buccaneers their game to the Atlanta Falcons under the old sudden death overtime rules, and would’ve been the subject of this article, if not for a blocked field goal saving the Bucs’ bacon, so we move along, all the way down to number 31 on the list of worst plays in NFL history, where I finally find something to talk about, and I had a feeling where I was going to end up.

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This story begins with my old friends, the 2022 Minnesota Vikings. I’ve written an article about the 2022 Minnesota Vikings, that I highly recommend you check out, and here’s the reason why.

The 2022 Minnesota Vikings won 13 games despite being top ten in only one of the six crucial NFL performance categories (pass, rush and total offence. Pass, rush, and total defence). For reference, the 2023 Green Bay Packers were top ten in three of them (pass, rush, and total offence) and won just nine times.

How did the Vikings do it?

They did it by going on a 1 in 200000000 (one in two hundred million) stretch of luck in one possession games. That number is literal. I calculated it. You can read the article above for more detail on how I did so, because right now we are going to pivot to one specific moment of luck that even the 2022 Vikings couldn’t have expected to fall their way.

Josh Allen. The man this article is about.

It’s easy to forget now, but prior to week ten of the 2022 NFL season, the Buffalo Bills were cruising along as the heavy favourites to win the 2022 Super Bowl. In the opening two weeks of the season, they defeated the defending Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams 31-10, and they defeated the AFC’s top seed from 2021 (Tennessee Titans) 41-7. There was a 21-19 loss to the upstart Miami Dolphins, but there was also outplaying the Kansas City Chiefs in an easy win in week six.

People like to laugh at the Bills these days because they’ve lost in the playoffs so much, but in 2022 this reputation hadn’t hardened as much as it has today. It was only two years ago they were still being looked at as consensus Super Bowl favourites. Even the (eventual Super Bowl champion) KC Chiefs had nothing for them whatsoever when the two teams played, so how could they have been looked at any differently?

When the Bills were set to play the Minnesota Vikings at home week ten, they were coming in with a 6-2 record. The Vikings were 7-1. Theoretically, this means the Bills should’ve been the underdogs, but they were not. Very far from that. They were seven point home favourites, because everybody already knew not to believe in the 2022 Minnesota Vikings.

While they had won seven of their first eight games, the Vikings had faced second half deficits against Detroit, New Orleans, Washington, Arizona, and even (eventual first overall pick) Chicago. None of those five teams would make the 2022 playoffs. All were able to play relatively even with Minnesota. Anyone who knows the 2022 Vikings knows they were able to win all these games because the football Gods made it a point to intervene at every chance for the Vikings to lose, and ensure that they’d win.

This made the edict for the Bills coming into this game exceedingly clear. One possession games are what the 2022 Vikings do. They are (in literal terms) the best team in NFL history at this extremely niche skill. Do not fall into a one possession game against them. Pull away, and win by 14 points.

Fortunately, the Bills are built perfectly to be able to do this. With the NFL’s second ranked offence, and its fifth best offence (as of week ten of 2022), both sides of the ball will surely work together to snuff out the overrated Vikings, and easily pull away for a 14+ point win.

Surely.

Not on the first drive, as three Josh Allen passes that are all completed, but don’t go very far forward mean the Bills go three and out on their first drive. The Vikings respond with seven quick points and this is already becoming scary. A shootout will not do. We will lose. If you don’t understand why this prospect is so scary, read the article on the 2022 Vikings. You will understand.

Thankfully, the Bills’ response is just as quick, taking only four plays to get seven points of our own and ensure we don’t fall even further behind, and at this point the teams reveal their identities. Minnesota does nothing. Buffalo marches straight down the field for another TD and a 14-7 lead as the first quarter ends.

To begin the second quarter, Kirk Cousins throws an interception, and we can’t quite stick the dagger in, but we do kick a field goal to take a 17-7 lead, and get out of that one possession danger zone, at least momentarily. This is where the football Gods already begin intervening.

Kirk Cousins exists in this story.

The Vikings have an easy touchdown, first and goal from the two, on their next touch, but they mess it up and end up settling for three and a 17-10 deficit. They make a weird choice when kicking the ball back to the Bills. They kick the ball short and returnable.

There used to be a day when this was not weird at all. All kicks were short and returnable, but in the modern day where most kicks are touchbacks, teams only kick the ball short enough to be returnable if they’re looking for something to happen. The Vikings had already been burned with a 43 yard kickoff return earlier in this game for doing this, but they do it again, and this time it works, as Duke Johnson muffs the catch, and the Bills have to start inside their own ten.

That’s okay. We’re still playing Minnesota, so Josh Allen digs us out of that hole fairly easily. We’re on the verge of scoring again to take a two possession lead back when the football Gods intervene again. Devin Singletary fumbles the ball inside the Minnesota 30, and we come out of this drive with no points.

It’s okay. It’s alright. Our defence is still on top of it. We hold Minnesota to a three and out as the game rolls past the two minute warning, and once our offence gets the ball back, it’s too easy. 25 yard scramble, 14 yard completion, 15 yard completion, six yard completion, and 11 yard completion finally get us back into the end zone for a 24-10 lead as this game goes into half.

It was a funky way of getting there, but in the end the first half has accomplished exactly what we wanted it to. We (mostly) avoided getting sucked into a back and forth one possession style game, and allowed our offence to run away with it. This is exactly what you have to do against a team as good at end of game scenarios as the 2022 Vikings are. Make sure there is no end of game scenario. The way you do that is with a solid first half like this one that sets the Bills up to coast home from here.

A Kirk Cousins interception to open the second half cements this even further, and for all intents and purposes makes this our game to lose. It boosts our estimated Win Probability (according to NFLFastR) to 97 percent. We do go three and out and fail to respond with any more points for an even bigger lead, but as a team with a second half lead the clock keeps ticking, and it’s only good for us.

Our defence (having a fantastic day against a top ten pass offence) forces the Vikings to punt again on their next drive, which means nine minutes have passed with nothing at all happening. As a team with a 14 point second half lead, that’s the perfect thing to hear, and it’s even more perfect when we find a FG near the end of the third quarter to take us up by three possessions, 27-10. This takes our estimated WP up to the 97 percent it was at before, and makes us pretty safe, even from the end of game aces we’re up against.

This game has 17 minutes left for the Vikings to make up a 17 point deficit. That’s nearly impossible. It’s certainly possible to score that many points, but it must be done while holding the other team to zero, and also not running out of time. The only thing that absolutely cannot happen for the Bills is to allow any one minute touchdown drives that would allow the Vikings to shortcut the full 100 yard field.

I say that, as on the next play a catastrophe occurs and the Bills allow an 81 yard touchdown run to Dalvin Cook. This is horrible, and there’s no way this should’ve been allowed to happen when all the Bills had to do in order to win was force the Vikings to take a while. If not for things that will happen in the fourth quarter, this also could’ve been the subject of an article, but we must move on.

The Bills are still doing what we have to do, slowly walking all the way down to the goal line, taking six full minutes to throw an interception in the end zone. Would it have been better to actually score on this possession? Of course, but this interception is not all that important. It only reduces our estimated WP from 96 to 92 percent. The points would’ve been great, but much more important than the points are the seconds.

The Vikings are able to respond with a touchdown to move the score to 27-23. They take all the way until 4:38 of the fourth quarter to do it, but they have broken the barrier. We are now participating in what we’ve been trying avoid for the entire game, an end of game scenario against the 2022 Minnesota Vikings.

There is only 4:38 left. We can simply hold the ball for that length of time and win, but for just the second time all game we go three and out instead, punting the ball back, and watching our worst fears come true. The Vikings slowly but surely are trudging their way down the field. The three minute mark comes and goes. The two minute warning comes and goes. The one minute mark comes and goes, and in the end it all comes down to a fourth and goal from inside the one yard line.

It’s obvious to all involved that the Vikings are going QB sneak, which means it’s just offensive line vs defensive line. Man vs man all across the line, and there are no gaps. Kirk Cousins cannot find the one yard worth of ground he needs. Minnesota has finally not been bailed out. They fall just short, and with one timeout and 49 seconds on the clock they are not getting the ball back. They’ve officially fallen to 7-2, while the Bills have moved to 7-2 also, and back onto the top of their conference and into the conversation for the first round bye in the AFC.

This is what the announcers are talking about when we finally reach the subject of this article. This is the worst offensive play in NFL history.

In his haste to hurry up and get to blocking, Bills C Mitch Morse cannot get the ball into Josh Allen’s hands to run a QB sneak off his own goal line. The ball ends up on the ground, and recovered by the Vikings for a touchdown and a 30-27 lead. This is bad enough in itself, but let me talk to you about just how bad this play was.

Think about the situation the Minnesota Vikings were in. 44 seconds on the clock. One timeout. Considering 40 seconds can be run off for free, if the ball were anywhere except the goal line, this would be an auto loss. They wouldn’t even call that timeout. Considering the Bills are lined up in their end zone, the timeout is sure to be called to make them try to get out twice, but even then, all the Bills must do to secure a 100% chance of winning is to get the football into the field of play twice.

That is not that difficult of an ask, but it’s not the only likely outcome. Backed up this far, there’s a real possibility of a safety, where a team gets tackled in their own end zone, giving the other team two points plus turning the ball over, but even a safety isn’t going to hurt the Bills that badly.

A safety on the first play of this sequence would mean the Vikings get the ball back at about the 30 with about 30 seconds left, with one timeout, needing a field goal to win, against the fifth best defence in the NFL. I’ll be charitable and give them a 35 percent chance to win from that position. A safety on the second play would leave them in approximately the same position, but without the timeout. That’d be about a 20 percent chance to win. Probably worse.

So as you can see, even a safety wouldn’t have hurt Buffalo especially badly, while getting the ball into the field of play anywhere would’ve virtually assured victory. This is why the Bills’ estimated WP before this play was 95 percent. It was simply very hard to screw it up, and even if they did screw it up they had a solid chance of holding on the defensive end to win by two points instead of four.

The only thing that could’ve possibly happened to mess all this up was an issue on the exchange between QB and Centre. How could this have possibly happened? Somebody on the sideline had to have known all the contingencies I just told you, and assured both Josh Allen and Mitch Morse that the only thing that matters is getting this ball snapped. Make your best attempt to get out of the end zone, but it is not life or death whether you succeed or not. If nobody told the players that exact thing, then it’s a failure on the part of the Bills’ coaching staff.

I don’t know what the faulty cog in the wheel was. Was it a jumpy Centre or a jumpy QB or a coach who didn’t properly inform his players that they didn’t have to be this jumpy? Maybe all three of these things happened. Regardless, the ball was dropped. The Vikings scored, and I’m left thinking this looks eerily similar to this play, which prior to week ten of the 2022 season was widely recognized as the worst play (exempting FG misses and OT) in NFL history:

These two plays are so similar it’s uncanny. Both feature teams trying to run the clock out of close wins that shouldn’t have been so close. Both feature offences that should (but don’t seem to) know that forward yards are meaningless, and both result in unimaginable touchdowns for the opponent, and unbelievable losses. Both teams had win probabilities of approximately 100% beforehand, but where they differ is their estimated WP afterwards.

The Giants were left with 20 seconds, and all of their timeouts, needing a field goal to win. There is no estimated WP model for 1978, but I can suppose via comparison. In the 2021 AFC Divisional game, when the KC Chiefs were faced with a very similar scenario, but needed a FG to tie, their estimated WP was 14 percent. Considering these Giants could’ve won with a FG, and had a few more seconds than the Chiefs did, their WP would be higher than this. How much higher is the question, but would 20 percent seem too high? I don’t think so.

Either way, it’s not like this play lost the Giants the game on the spot in 1978 like the narrative says it did. The same holds true for these Bills. They were put into the position of having 36 seconds left on the clock, but no timeouts, and a FG would only force OT. Since this game took place in the play tracking era, there is no need for comparison. The Bills’ estimated probability of winning the game from this position is 17 percent.

Look at this Win Probability graph. The blue arrow is how likely the Bills were to win before this play. The red arrow is how likely they were to win afterwards.

From almost certain to win to almost certain to lose. This one play took the Bills from 95 percent likely to win to just 17, costing the them 78 percent of their chance to win the game. It is acceptable to think of it as this play costing Buffalo 0.78 wins in the 2022 season. That’s scarily close to the amount of wins a literal loss costs a team. It’s dramatically more than what ending a game in a tie costs a team.

Like I said, once you include all those kicking and OT scenarios back in, this is only the 31st worst play in history by Win Probability Added, but one can only talk about missed/blocked 25-32 yard field goals for so long. Including only plays with offensive and defensive players on the field, it doesn’t get any worse than this as far as a team hindering their own chances to win.

You may say this play was bad sure, but it’s only one game to a team that are still Super Bowl contenders. How bad can it be?

Let’s talk about how much this one play cost the Bills.

The 2022 Buffalo Bills would not lose again after this, meaning they’d finish with a 13-3 record. However, due to a cancelled game for a freak accident I hope never happens again, the Bills only got to play 16 games of a 17 game season. This caused them to lose the AFC number one seed that was rightfully theirs to the 14-3 Kansas City Chiefs, a team they mopped the floor with all the way back in week six.

If the worst play in NFL history never happens, and the Bills defeat the Minnesota Vikings, that means the Bills finish their season 14-2, with their defeat over Kansas City getting them the number one seed and first round bye despite playing one fewer game than everybody else. This means that instead of playing the Cincinnati Bengals in the second round, the Bills get to welcome the warm weather Jacksonville Jaguars to cold snowy Buffalo.

The Jacksonville Jaguars are not known for their prowess playing in the snow. Surely the Bills win this, and do it fairly easily, which nets them a matchup with the Kansas City Chiefs who would have just been through a war with the Cincinnati Bengals (we saw how that game went in the real 2022 playoffs). Would this extra wear and tear (plus this game happening in Buffalo) be enough to swing this AFC Championship game in the Bills’ favour, and if so could Josh Allen have finally won his Super Bowl championship?

These are hypothetical questions, but they are all real questions with real meaning. This is not like the Miracle in the Meadowlands which took the 1978 Giants from being bad to slightly worse. This one bad play has real retrospective potential to change the 2022 Super Bowl champions. If it hadn’t happened, the Buffalo Bills stand a real chance at being the champions. They certainly would’ve been the betting favourites.

Who knows what happens from there, but alas nothing happens in any direction, because this play did happen. We can’t take it off the board. Until somebody beats it (something which may never happen), Josh Allen is going to go down in history as committing the most impactful turnover in NFL history.

How fitting.

Thanks so much for reading.