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Josh Allen takes heat off Dalton Kincaid after tight end's drop on critical 4th-down play vs. Chiefs

jason owens
Staff writer
·4-min read

The day after another heartbreaking playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills were left licking their wounds.

It also left Allen sticking up for his teammate Dalton Kincaid, who's been on the receiving end of online ire after dropping a critical fourth-down pass on Buffalo's final possession.

That final offensive play saw a multitude of things go wrong for the Bills beyond Kincaid's drop. The resulting incomplete pass ensured the end of Buffalo's season short of the Super Bowl.

Kincaid addressed the drop while speaking with reporters after the AFC championship Sunday night.

“Josh got the ball off," Kincaid said, per Syracuse.com. "He was pressured, and it was hanging up there and I just wasn’t able to catch it.

"Right now it obviously hurts a lot, and it’s going to linger for a while, but eventually you’ve got to move on."

When asked about Kincaid on Monday, Allen placed the blame on himself.

“I've gotta be better for him,” Allen said of Kincaid at his Monday news conference. “I didn’t feel like I put him in enough good situations this year, ball-placement-wise. ...

"He can sit there and think about that play over and over, but I've gotta be better for him. That’s what it comes down to, and get him more involved."

A lot went wrong for Josh Allen and the Bills at the end of Sunday's AFC championship game loss to the Chiefs. (Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images)
A lot went wrong for Josh Allen and the Bills at the end of Sunday's AFC championship game loss to the Chiefs. (Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images)

Here's the play in question. Thanks to a disguised blitz drawn up by Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, the play was broken from the start. Allen faced immediate pressure from his right and was forced to scramble before heaving a downfield prayer in Kincaid's direction.

Remarkably, the throw had a chance. Kincaid had to adjust his route, but he turned around and got his hands on the ball. An angle from behind the play shows the ball bouncing off of Kincaid's arms and onto the turf for an incompletion.

The play and the resulting incompletion sparked a slew of postgame analysis breaking down what went wrong for the Bills and questioning what they could have done, if anything, to give themselves a better chance.

The breakdown started pre-snap, where Allen acknowledged Sunday night that the Bills got fooled. Allen believed that a blitz was coming from the left side, when in reality it came from the right.

Allen called for the offensive line protection to slide left, which exposed him further to the pressure from the right.

Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie disguised coverage of running back Ty Johnson, who'd lined up wide right. McDuffie instead blitzed and got a free run as one of three Chiefs pass rushers to converge on Allen before he threw the ball.

"They gave a good look and didn't see anything in my first cadence," Allen said postgame. "We were sliding left, corner came, and yeah."

Had the protection slid right instead, Buffalo's line would have had a chance at picking up the blitz and buying more time for Allen to throw. Here's a look from behind the line of scrimmage, courtesy of Yahoo Sports' Nate Tice.

The Chiefs had a cornerback (McDuffie) and two safeties (Jordan Reid and Jaden Hicks) all lined up to the right, where the Bills had a single receiver in Johnson.

This left Allen with a decision involving some guesswork. He guessed wrong, and Buffalo's protection broke down. And Tice raises the question: why were the Bills in a five-man protection in the first place when facing the likelihood of a fourth-down blitz from an aggressive defensive play-caller?

In the end, Spagnuolo dialed up a well-disguised blitz and successfully ramped up the pressure on Buffalo on the most important defensive play of Kansas City's season. He's succeeded before in similar spots, and he'll likely succeed again.