Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills’ passing game are stuck in the mud

Over the last few weeks, Allen isn’t playing like himself. He did sustain an elbow injury in Week 9 in Buffalo’s first matchup against the Jets. But if that injury was holding him back, he wouldn’t have thrown for 330 yards on 29 passes the very next week against the Minnesota Vikings.

With the double teams on Diggs, the Bills seem like they’ve had no answers. Over the last three weeks, Allen isn’t getting the ball out as quick as he needs to, and its leading to forced throws. These are his numbers according to PFF:

• Less than 2.5 seconds: 15 touchdowns and 2 interceptions
• More than 2.5 seconds: 17 touchdowns and 11 interceptions

Defenses are playing press-man coverage (which forces the play to take more time to develop when executed correctly), and then they are doubling Diggs. Allen is just forcing it to whoever else is deep thinking they are one-on-one.

But one way defenses have adjusted to give themselves more help over the top is use more Cover-3 looks. Last week, against the Bears, Allen threw an interception targeting a receiver in the endzone, not realizing there was another defensive back dropping into the deep-third part of the field.

Without a receiver to the right side, cornerback Kyler Gordon had a chance to play the ball.

This is what Allen had to say about Diggs getting two catches for 26 yards against the Bears:

“Obviously, I wanna get No. 14 more involved. The last thing I want to do is force it to someone when it’s not there.”

Unfortunately, on the interception, that is exactly what he did. He forced it.

Over the last three weeks, Allen has faced the third most Cover-1 and Cover-3 defenses (64 dropbacks) and he has a 52.7% completion percentage leaving him with an -17.14 EPA, which is 28th in the league. He only has one touchdown, two interceptions and four sacks.

When the Bills are down by three or more points, Allen is averaging an 11.9-yard throw depth, which second highest in the league (min 20 att). This tells us that he feels like he needs to make a big play in order to try and move the ball.

This is what happened against the Bears. In the first half, his average throw depth was 13.0 yards, but then in the second half, when the Bills pulled ahead, it dropped to 9.5 yards.