Josh Allen has long been the centerpiece of one of the NFL’s most closely watched offenses, a unit built on his arm strength, mobility, and improvisation. But former Bills QB Ryan Fitzpatrick, who knows the demands of that position in Buffalo, believes something is off. Ahead of the Rams game, his assessment is direct.
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Former Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick started with the numbers.
“Joe Brady and Josh Allen, they’ve had 13 opportunities at two-point conversions,” Fitzpatrick said on the Fitz & Whit podcast. “They’ve converted three. In their last 11 tries, they’ve converted one. We’re talking about probably the greatest short-yardage quarterback in the history of the NFL. Does it make sense? I don’t know. What’s the NFL average? It’s 45.8%. Before Josh and Joe got together, he was 12 for 18 in his career. So something is happening right now. They do a lot of empty with a lot of motions, and you get five guys out, and you’re able to kind of look and dissect. Great.
He then turned to what he sees in Allen’s footwork.
“Like when you watch the Kansas City Chiefs, I feel like every time they run a two-point conversion, it’s an absolute layup. There’s not been one layup where he’s thrown it to his first read besides a fade to Keon Coleman. Because of that, when you watch his footwork, he’s dropping back expecting to have his first, second, third, fourth, scramble around read. There’s no precision in his footwork because he knows that he’s going to have to try to make a play. We’ve got to fix it because at this point, it’s a problem.”
One missed play again came back to bite Buffalo in Week 4. The Bills lost 29-26 to the New England Patriots, and another failed two-point try sat near the center of it.
Allen hit Keon Coleman for a 34-yard touchdown with 4:27 left, putting Buffalo up 26-21. But the two-point try failed when Allen’s pass to Joshua Palmer fell incomplete. New England then scored a touchdown of its own and made its two-point attempt, going ahead 29-26 with under two minutes to play.
Brady addressed it Monday.
“Obviously, not good enough,” head coach Joe Brady said.
Asked if it was a missed opportunity, Brady said Allen likely would have preferred to keep the play alive longer. Rather than forcing the throw, Brady said, Allen could have continued through his progression or used his legs.
“We haven’t been good in the last two years for sure,” Brady said. “You get that two-point yesterday, and you make it where, hey, you put stress on them. If they score, either we get the opportunity, or they can decide if they want to go for two for the win, and you put stress on them. And we obviously didn’t do that.”
The Bills are 0-for-2 on 2-point attempts this season and 2-for-11 since the start of 2025. They tried just two in 2024, converting one, and went 3-of-4 in 2023. Last year they went for 2 more than any team but converted only 22% (2-for-9), the third-worst mark among the 30 teams that tried at least one. The Titans and Rams never tried one.
When the Bills need a single yard, Josh Allen is about as hard to stop as anyone in the NFL. Push him back just one more yard, though, and it’s a different story. He has seven rushing touchdowns this year, and six of them came from very close in: four from the 1-yard line and two from the 2.
Next up is the Rams on Monday night. Buffalo needs to sharpen its two-point plan and its late-down decisions soon, because close games rarely forgive a red zone mistake.