With the week the Buffalo Bills just had, Sunday’s 32-6 win over the New York Jets serves as a collective sigh of relief.
The team dropped three of their last four, including two to opponents with losing records. Pressure was mounting. The team seemed tightly wound. The offense wasn’t performing, so they fired Ken Dorsey. And as rudimentary as it is, the offense didn’t seem to be having fun. Bills head coach Sean McDermott admitted how important it is for his team, and his franchise quarterback, to get back to that youthful exuberance.
“I think just getting him back to having that look in his eye, and having some fun out there,” McDermott said Friday. “The guy that we have watched over the years here, but also back at Wyoming, right? Just going out there and having that joy when he’s playing.”
And then early in the third quarter Sunday, even when the Bills were in control but not quite delivering a vintage, over-the-top offensive performance, came the cathartic release of the past six weeks of frustration.
Josh Allen delivered a haymaker of a throw to Khalil Shakir, just past a defender’s arm, perfectly in stride. Shakir did the rest, getting to the sideline before froggering through traffic to work back toward the middle and into the end zone.
But that wasn’t the moment.
It was Allen, who wore a million-mile stare for weeks on end, sprinting the entire length of the field to celebrate with Shakir. In that instant, the old Allen was back.
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