Legacy lingers over Bills-Ravens matchup

Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott said what everyone was thinking out loud just moments after his team had defeated the Denver Broncos by a 31-7 score last Sunday.

“This is what everyone has been waiting for,” he said.

This, of course, is Sunday night’s AFC Divisional Playoff game between the Bills and the Baltimore Ravens, as compelling a matchup as the NFL has served up at this time of year in recent memory.

Compelling not just because it’s matchup of the AFC’s two highest-scoring teams, but also the two front-runners for MVP honours in Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson and his counterpart on the Bills, Josh Allen.

Allen tried to quiet the noise around the excitement of that head-to-head matchup during his weekly media session, stating he is yet in his life to play a game against an opposing team’s quarterback, he plays against their defence.  

But that’s exactly how the wider audience is viewing this one, a perspective enhanced by the fact that Allen and Jackson are the same age, bring similar dynamics to the position, and their careers, to this point, have in many ways mirrored one another.

During their first seven seasons in the NFL, Jackson and Allen have not only elevated their respective franchises into yearly contention for the AFC title, they’ve rewritten the record book when it comes to quarterbacks combining rushing and passing.

That will continue Sunday night, with Allen entering the game as the NFL’s all-time leader in playoff rushing yards by a quarterback with 609, seven ahead of Jackson. They very well may pass that torch back and forth all night, just as they did with the MVP debate over the course of the regular season. (Jackson is expected to win for the third time, based on being voted first-team All-Pro for the season while Allen received second-team honours.)

But despite their incredible individual and team success during the regular season, Allen and Jackson share something else – their failure thus far to get their teams to a Super Bowl.

At age 28, with Allen 6-5 all-time as a playoff starter and Jackson just 3-4, each with just one playoff win beyond the divisional round, the clock is ticking.

Coming off a year in which each of them have had MVP-worthy seasons, there are high playoff expectations for both, which were met on the opening week of the playoffs in dominant wins by the Ravens over Pittsburgh and the Bills over Denver.

There are those who will rightly argue that wins and losses aren’t quarterback stats, since they aren’t on the field for two thirds of the game and there are a lot of things that happen on offence they don’t control.

Yet there’s no doubt that Allen and Jackson slot in behind Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes as the greatest quarterback of this era because the Chiefs have played in four Super Bowls, won three, and are gunning for a third consecutive title this season – something no team in NFL history has ever accomplished.

In fact, it was a year ago at this time the Chiefs knocked off the Bills and Ravens in successive weeks – both as the road team – before going on to win the Super Bowl.

All of which raises the stakes for Sunday night that much higher as the winner may be playing for a chance at the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, providing Kansas City takes care of business in the other AFC Divisional Playoff game against Houston on Saturday.

A win Sunday not only brings the Bills or Ravens a step closer to the Super Bowl, it opens the door for Allen or Jackson to go to Arrowhead Stadium next week and shake up the narrative surrounding the game’s best quarterbacks.

Both quarterbacks may have a lot of road left in their careers and there have been other all-time greats who didn’t taste their first Super Bowl moments until their 30s, most notably Peyton Manning.

But there are seasons and even games over the course of a career that can define a player. The next two weeks have that potential for each of Allen and Jackson, especially with the Chiefs appearing beatable this season despite owning the AFC’s best record during the regular season. With the Chiefs having a narrow win over the Ravens and a narrow loss to the Bills during the season, there’s little sense of Kansas City being invincible.

At a certain point in an NFL quarterback’s career, once they’ve earned their millions and proven their greatness, it becomes about legacy and their place in the game, both during the era in which they played and all-time.

Sunday’s game will depend on all kinds of different elements – coaching, the run game, and which defence shows its best side will all come into play.

But by the time it’s over, the narratives around Jackson and Allen will have diverged sharply in different directions.