The Buffalo Bills came into their Week 14 matchup against the surging Cincinnati Bengals knowing that they needed a win to keep their hopes of winning the AFC East alive, and to prevent their goal of reaching the playoffs at all from crumbling. When the dust, or as was the case at Highmark Stadium on Sunday, the snow had cleared, the Bills saw their season come back to life with a thrilling, come-from-behind 39-34 victory.
Quarterback Josh Allen, who for most of the year has not looked like the NFL MVP he was in 2024, showed exactly why he won that award and remains one of the NFL’s most exciting quarterbacks. With a season-defining game against the New England Patriots coming up in Week 15, Allen had the best possible news that he could take into that crucial contest.
If Allen checked his passer rating for the Bengals game, he saw that his final number was 139.7, making his performance against Cincinnati Allen’s best game of the season, and it came when his team needed it most.
Allen Records Best Performance since Week 3, 2024
Passer rating is a metric that uses a mathematical formula to combine pass attempts, completions, yardage, touchdowns and interceptions into a single number. The maximum rating under the formula would be 158.3, which would, in effect, be a perfect game, from a passing perspective.
For Allen, the game was a return to his MVP form of last season. In fact, the 139.7 rating was Allen’s best in the regular season since Week 3 of last season, when the 2018 first-round draft pick posted a 142.1 rating against the Jacksonville Jaguars, throwing for 263 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions.
Allen threw for three TDs with 251 yards on Sunday, without an interception.
Fourth-Highest Rating of Allen’s Career
Sunday’s outing, measured by passer rating, was the fourth-best game Allen has ever had, since entering the NFL in 2018. In 2023, Allen recorded the maximum rating of 158.3 when he threw for 320 yards and four touchdowns without an interception in Week 4 against the Miami Dolphins.
In Week 2 of the 2020 season, Allen registered a 146.7 rating, also against the Dolphins, with 415 yards and four TDs with no interceptions.
Also on Sunday, Allen set a Bills record with a 40-yard touchdown run, eclipsing the previous mark of 36 yards set by, of course, Josh Allen.
The win was the Bills’ second in a row, their first back-to-back wins since beating the Carolina Panthers and Kansas City Chiefs in Weeks 8 and 9.
Where Bills Playoff Outlook Stands Now
The win moves the Bills to 9-4 going into their Week 15 game on the road against the New England Patriots, who enjoyed a bye in Week 14, but will now enter the showdown at Gillette Stadium with a two-game lead over Buffalo with four games to play.
Because the Patriots beat the Bills once this season already, the bad news for Buffalo is that a second loss to New England eliminates the Bills from the divisional title race â and clinches the AFC East for the Patriots.
According to Next Gen Stats, the win over the Bengals gives the Bills a 96 percent chance of making the playoffs.
In a statistical formula created by The Athletic, the Bills now increase their playoff odds to better than 99 percent, a virtual lock, but a loss drops those chances to 94 percent.
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