When Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen sat down with Go Long‘s Tyler Dunn last week, he said the Bills winning the Super Bowl will be “the last greatest sports story in all of the world.” He also promised that he’d be the one to make that happen. But not everyone was on board with that.

Former NFL head coach and 3x Super Bowl champ Eric Mangini appeared on First Things First and flipped Allen’s statement around.

“Well, it’s a little bit aggrandizing, isn’t it?” Mangini said, reacting to Allen’s comments. “When you look at the perspective, I mean, the Minnesota Vikings, they’ve lost four Super Bowls. They were incorporated, I think, a year after the Bills. So they have that.”

The Bills were founded in 1959 as part of the AFL, and the Vikings came in 1960 as an expansion team. Since then, they’ve had four Super Bowl appearances: 1969, ‘73, ‘74, and ‘76. But from 1977, they’ve never managed to move past the NFC Championship game. The Bills also have the same number of Super Bowl losses, but Josh Allen has never been able to lead them there after coming to Buffalo in 2018.

The QB has taken the Bills to the playoffs every single year since 2019, but the Lombardi Trophy remains elusive for the 2024 MVP winner. Additionally, Mangini also argues that Allen is ignoring other franchises with worse narratives.

“Well, the Detroit Lions have been around since 1930, they’ve never played in the Super Bowl,” Mangini added. “The Cleveland Browns, 1946, never played in the Super Bowl. Arizona Cardinals, 1920. They lost the Super Bowl.”

Now, Allen’s “greatest sports story” claim might ignore these longer droughts, but his resume backs up his confidence.

Last season, Allen earned the record of most career rushing touchdowns by a quarterback (79). That number will keep going up as long as Allen brings his dual-threat plays to the field. He has also found a true WR1 this offseason with the addition of DJ Moore, giving Allen a dangerous playmaker. Meanwhile, ESPN’s Seth Walder has already named Allen the frontrunner for the MVP race three months before the season even begins.

“He’s the best quarterback in the NFL,” Walder writes, “and if the Bills are the No. 1 seed in the AFC – which is well within the cards – it will be because Allen delivered an MVP-worthy performance.”

Now, Eric Mangini’s criticism is valid, but Josh Allen’s execution and drive simply matter more. This is the same quarterback who – when he lost 33-30 in overtime to the Denver Broncos in the divisional round –  cried in front of reporters and admitted that he let his teammates down. He has had four months to process that grief, and his statement says it all.

“I’m a firm believer in no Plan B because it distracts from Plan A. That was my whole thing,” Allen told Dunn. “I was like, ‘I’m going to figure it out,’ and I’ve always told myself in the NFL that there are two types of players: guys that figure it out and guys that get figured out. So I’ve always wanted to be in the first one there. Figuring it out.”

The question now is whether Josh Allen can deliver. Mangini called it ‘self-aggrandizing” because other cities have worse stories. The Bills have eight playoff wins under Allen without a Super Bowl. Allen says he’ll figure it out, and his statements get the criticism. But the right execution will get him the Lombardi Trophy, and no amount of criticism would match up against that.