How significant is Josh Allen’s turnover problem? Digging into the stats of Bills’ star quarterback

While you may be out there finding yourselves on the path to self discovery, I’m on the path to stats discovery as we close in on the beginning of the 2024 season. Every week as we approach the NFL season opener, I’ll take you on a truth-seeking, deep stats dive into a topical, debated NFL storyline.

In case you’ve been living under a rock this summer, Josh Allen has been a lightning rod for debate, mostly centered around a comment from an unnamed veteran NFL executive in ESPN reporter Jeremy Fowler’s annual quarterback rankings.

“One of the more overrated players in the NFL,” a veteran NFL executive said referring to Allen. “Immense talent but he makes a lot of mistakes. He’s underdeveloped at winning at the line of scrimmage, tends to lock on to targets, more of a thrower than precision passer, forces throws into traffic.”

This quote generated a lot of buzz, like Fox Sports’ Nick Wright calling out ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky, who defended Allen. Personally, I don’t think there’s much debate on whether Allen is overrated. He is properly rated. He is fourth among quarterbacks in EPA per play in the last four seasons. He was ranked as the third-best quarterback in Fowler’s survey of executives, coaches and scouts. Plus, our Will Brinson ranks him in his top tier of quarterbacks. His playoff numbers are phenomenal (27 touchdowns, six turnovers, 100.0 passer rating in 10 games), but he keeps running into the buzzsaw that is Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. 

No more digging is necessary to prove he is a top-five quarterback in the NFL. So why is he so polarizing? He has 174 total touchdowns (passing, rushing and receiving) in the past four seasons. That’s 23 more than anyone else since 2020 and the most in a four-year span by any player in NFL history. He also has 75 turnovers in that span, 14 more than anyone else. 

He is an enigma. He’s the first player to lead the NFL in both total touchdowns and turnovers in a four-year span since Brett Favre (1996-99), who was universally known as a gunslinger. Hence the controversy around Allen. He can look like the most talented quarterback in the world one minute, and make a boneheaded mistake the next. Last year was no different. He had nine games with a touchdown pass, touchdown run and turnover, the most in a season in NFL history. I call that stat line the “Josh Allen.” He’s had 17 “Josh Allen’s” in the past four years, most in the league. 

If Allen is ever going to win a Super Bowl and/or an MVP and silence these critics, he has to get past the turnover problem, right? That’s what I want to discover today. Just how significant is his turnover issue? Let’s dig in.

Turnover rate

Josh Allen is a one-man band at times in Buffalo, so maybe the sheer number of touches he gets (NFL-high 2,933 plays since 2020) is inflating his turnover numbers. Volume stats can be misleading, so let’s look at some rates. 

Allen has a turnover on 2.8% of his drop backs in the past four seasons, the second-highest rate among 21 quarterbacks with at least 1,500 drop backs in that time. His contemporaries, Joe Burrow (2.2%) and Patrick Mahomes (1.9%) have among the lowest rates. 

So yes, just in case anyone is in denial here, he does have a turnover problem; it’s just a matter of how big of a problem. 

How costly are these turnovers?

This may seem elementary, but turnovers are especially problematic because they take away a team’s scoring chance and usually put the opponent in a better position to score.

Let’s look at the first aspect of that. How many points are the Bills losing out on because of Allen’s turnovers. Expected points added (EPA) can help measure how a team or player performs compared to their expectation on a play-by-play basis. It uses thousands of plays over the last two decades as a baseline to determine how many points a team should score in any given situation (clock, score, field position, etc…). In other words, a turnover on third-and-30 would not be as costly as an interception on first-and-goal. 

Josh Allen has the worst turnover EPA in the NFL in the last four seasons at -302.9. Next-worst is Derek Carr at -277.5. Patrick Mahomes is seventh-worst (-237.1) and Joe Burrow is ninth-worst (-230.2). That may not seem like a huge gap, but that can cost you games. More on that in a minute. So Buffalo’s offense is losing out on an estimated 300 points in the last four years on Allen turnovers.

It’s a double whammy because Buffalo is losing out on potential points and then allowing more points when its opponent gets the ball off Allen turnovers. This seems to be more true for Allen than the rest of the league. There’s been 226 points scored off Allen’s 75 turnovers since 2020, both the most in the league. 

That breaks down to about three points per turnover. To be precise, the Bills are allowing 3.01 points per drive off Allen turnovers. The league average is 2.80 points per drive allowed off turnovers.

Obviously, Buffalo would prefer Allen to take care of the ball. They allow 1.60 points per drive the rest of the time. The league average is 1.90. 

So, the Bills points per drive allowed nearly doubles if Allen commits a turnover, a bigger increase than the league average. 

Total it all up (expected points added on turnovers and points off turnovers) and Allen’s giveaways have cost the Bills over 500 points in the last four years. If I generated a pie chart of the Bills points scored and allowed, that would eat into about 17% of it. 

Not a small number. His turnovers are very costly. 

Bills’ close-game problems

The Bills’ struggles in close games only magnifies this problem. Buffalo is 17-15 in games decided by one score (eight or fewer points) in the last four seasons, but 31-3 in all other games. 

Allen had 43 turnovers in those 32 one-score games. He has the third-highest turnover rate (3.2%) in games decided by one score in that span (minimum 750 drop backs).

I’d like to think Buffalo’s well-documented close-game struggles would be less of an issue if Allen toned down the mistakes.

Bills record by number of Allen turnovers

That got me thinking, how much are the Bills living and dying by the Josh Allen turnover, and how does that compare with the rest of the NFL? The Bills are 39-9 in the last four years when Allen commits fewer than two turnovers. They are 9-9 in that time when he has multiple giveaways.

39-9 vs. 9-9 seems like a massive difference. The dropoff in win percentage is a smaller gap than the league average, though.

Playoff turnovers

Ultimately, all most people care about in legacy debates is rings. That’s why we are doing this exercise in the first place. Allen haters exist because he’s put up video game numbers but still hasn’t even made a Super Bowl, so turnovers are an easy scapegoat.

Let’s look at the last four seasons again, because that’s when the Bills’ Super Bowl window really opened up as Allen took a superstar leap following the Stefon Diggs trade. Allen only has five turnovers in nine playoff games since 2020, and three of them came in a wild card win over the Dolphins. 

His turnover rate has been cut in half from the regular season (2.8%) to the playoffs (1.3%). He actually has the same turnover rate as Mahomes in the last four postseasons. 

If you zero in even further, Allen has two turnovers in four playoff losses in that span:

• 2020 AFC championship: Red-zone interception with Buffalo down 16 in the fourth quarter of a 38-24 loss to the Chiefs
• 2022 divisional round: Interception with 1:13 left in fourth quarter of 27-10 loss to the Bengals

These turnovers hardly cost the Bills in two blowout losses, one of which was in garbage time. 

If you want a reason why the Bills haven’t made a Super Bowl with Allen, you have to look outside of the quarterback. They lost one of the greatest playoff games in league history in 2021 when Buffalo never got the ball in overtime. Allen’s final line in that game was 27-for-37 passing for 329 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions and 68 rushing yards. 

They also missed the chance to force overtime last postseason after a missed field goal in a 27-24 loss to the Chiefs. 

Allen combined for 16 touchdowns, zero turnovers and a 128.2 passer rating in those two postseasons where Buffalo was ultimately eliminated by Kansas City in heartbreaking fashion in the divisional round. 

Verdict

Allen’s turnovers are somewhat significant, but they aren’t the end of the world. Listen, turnovers are awful and nobody commits more, or costs his team more than Allen. It’s magnified by Buffalo’s close losses in recent years. 

But they haven’t been a problem in the playoffs, where his numbers have been out of this world. They’ve probably cost the Bills a few regular-season wins, but it’s hard to argue that mattered much for seeding purposes when Buffalo was eliminated at home by the Chiefs and Bengals in the last two postseasons. 

They could factor into what could be a competitive AFC East race this year with the Jets and Dolphins, but up to this point they’ve made little-to-no playoff impact. If anything, they are slightly hurting Allen’s legacy, as he’s a perennial MVP finalist instead of a MVP winner. 

And the good news is, Allen can weed some turnovers out of his game. He has 43 turnovers when not pressured in the last four years, nine more than anyone else. His turnover rate in those spots is 2.5%, well above the league average (1.9%). 

If he eliminates some unforced errors, this might not be a discussion anymore. Or, if the Bills can finally get over the hump in the playoffs, it wouldn’t be under the microscope as much. 

For now it is, but consider yourself educated on the impact of Allen’s prolific turnover problem.