Nobody in the Buffalo Bills camp was prepared for Josh Allen to appear in a new avatar. Allen was seen on the sideline wearing a headset and holding a sheet, and was not in uniform. For fans, the vision might have been frustrating, as the Bills were trailing the Pittsburgh Steelers. Here’s what the head coach had to say about the visual.

“Joe Brady jokes that Josh Allen called the entire 4th quarter,” reported Bills reporter Jenna Cottrell on August 27. “Brady clarifies though Allen did not in fact call any plays tonight.”

More insights came from ESPN’s Alaina Getzenberg.

“After all that, Josh Allen didn’t end up calling any plays, but Bills coach Joe Brady did say that they did have conversations about certain situations, etc.,”

Before the preseason game, Brady revealed that the Bills are opting to rest Allen. 

“He’s obviously the leader of our football team, and he’ll be right there with me (on the sideline). And hopefully I’ll let him call some plays, maybe on Thursday.”

Josh Allen was game too.

“I’d like to think I’m a pretty balanced play caller,” Allen said. “But I feel like as a quarterback, you kinda know the plays that are the plays that you wanna get to. I feel like those would come off the call sheet very early. So, (I’d be) explosive play-caller.

“… If I do get a chance to call plays, those are plays that I’d like to call and kind of go through in my head before the play actually happens.”

Allen in a headset, on the sidelines, not decked in a Bills jersey is definitely a rare scenario. He also cheered with the team when Buffalo scored a touchdown.

Allen also said that Brady had promised him a playcalling opportunity quite some time ago, but it never panned out. The head coach, meanwhile, is well aware of his quarterback’s wish, saying that Allen has been wanting it “all the time.”

It was a tough night for Buffalo fans. They had trailed the Steelers all the way till the fourth quarter, when Ian Wheeler scored a two-yard touchdown with less than two minutes on the clock on a drive led by Buechele. With a two-point conversion, Buffalo edged past the Steelers 28-27 as the clock ran out.

“I think that fourth quarter kind of embodied so much of what we’ve talked about,” Brady said. “Like, I care so much about those guys in the locker room. Like, we’re not going to pick and choose when we want to compete. And there’s a lot out there that wasn’t good enough tonight … And they didn’t blink and made the opportunities.

“There was so much to be proud of for those guys. You know, some of those guys might not even play football again. And I wanted to make sure they did everything they can to play good football.”

Well, before Josh Allen can realize his dreams of calling plays, he has a job to do first: win the Super Bowl. He returns for his 10th season in the league, now well-established among the best in the business. He will return to action in the season opener vs the Houston Texans on September 13.