Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen play each other for the fifth time in Week 6, and given the way their careers have gone so far, it’s clear this clash will define the NFL for a long time to come.
Few teams understand the power of a great quarterback quite like the Chiefs and the Bills. With both teams spending a long time in the same conference with Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, the results spoke volumes. The Chiefs were 5-19 against Brady and Manning from 1998 to 2017, the Bills 7-36.
In 2018, with Patrick Mahomes’ MVP season, Kansas City felt for the first time that they might have found such an outstanding QB themselves. The Bills drafted Josh Allen in 2018, who struggled initially but inspired similar sentiments in upstate New York in 2020. Since then, the NFL has been unrecognizable: Mahomes and Allen have orchestrated the top two offenses by EPA/Dropback and EPA Success Rate since the beginning of 2020 through Week 5 of 2022, and only Aaron Rodgers has played in a similar league during his double MVP stint you.
As with Brady-Manning, the joint conference meant that Mahomes and Allen played against each other again and again. If you consider how formative the 17 Brady-Manning duels were for the NFL of their time, it’s time to slowly look back at Mahomes and Allen on the first four duels in the outlook for next Sunday.
Mahomes vs. Allen I: Woche 6 2020 at Buffalo
Chiefs 26:17 Bills
The two’s first clash was in the middle of the Covid season with no spectators in the stadium and the game had to be rescheduled from Thursday to Monday due to Bills-Titans being postponed the week before. The Titans-Covid cluster was responsible for those moves, and the Titans also handed the suddenly-terrific Josh Allen their first loss of the season in Week 5. The Bills came to Kansas City with a 4-1 record to play the defending champions against the 4-1 Chiefs.
In a rainy battle, however, the game was dominated by Clyde Edwards-Helaire and penalties. While Edwards-Helaire rushed for 161 yards, Mahomes focused on short passes (6.2 average depth of target) and used Travis Kelce efficiently. Tyreek Hill, the big play wide receiver, had 3 targets for 20 yards. Allen tried – also thanks to the constant deficit – to throw deeper (10.2 aDoT), but found no rhythm in the rain and threw an interception at the end.
Mahomes vs. Allen II: AFC Championship 2020 at Kansas City
Chiefs 38:24 Bills
In the playoff rematch, the Bills learned firsthand how difficult it is to keep Mahomes in check. A questionable field goal in the first quarter (4th and 3 on the KC-33) helped establish a nine-point lead, but all defense dams broke in the second quarter: three KC touchdowns later, it was 21-9 short before halftime when Sean McDermott scored another three points on 4th and goal at the 2-yard line.
You can’t face a superstar QB with such patchwork. The Chiefs pulled away to a 38-24 win that was never in question in the second half. Mahomes kept finding Kelce and Hill on shorter, yards-after-catch routes while Allen continued to risk more, threw another interception and couldn’t find any passes past Stefon Diggs.