A sack usually wrecks an NFL drive. It flips the field, kills momentum, and sends the offense into recovery mode.
That logic does not seem to apply when Josh Allen is running the show.
The numbers from his career, and especially from 2020 on, paint a pretty wild picture. On drives in which Allen’s offense has taken a sack, Buffalo has still found the end zone 12.9% of the time across his career. The Bills have added a field goal on 19.6% of those drives, pushing the overall scoring rate to 32.5%.
That’s well above the league baseline. From 2001 through 2025, more than 27,000 drives that included a sack produced a touchdown only 7.6% of the time.
Field goals came on 13.5% of them. In other words, any score at all happened on 21.1% of those drives.
Allen’s offense clears that mark by a comfortable margin.
The comparison gets even sharper when you zoom in on the last several seasons. Since the start of 2020, Buffalo has scored a touchdown on 14.0% of Allen’s sack-included drives. The Bills have kicked a field goal on 20.7% of them, for a combined scoring rate of 34.7%.
That means Allen’s offense has been almost twice as likely as the league average to finish a sack drive with a touchdown. Its field goal rate is more than seven percentage points better than the norm, and the total scoring rate is more than 13 points higher.
Among quarterbacks with at least 100 such drives in their careers entering Week 7, only Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes have produced better scoring rates than Allen. Jackson’s offenses sit at 33.1%, while Mahomes is at 38.4%.
There are a couple other names worth noting too. Brock Purdy is currently at 35.0%, and Drake Maye is at 35.3%, though both have smaller sample sizes, with 80 and 82 such drives respectively.
Even with the sample-size caveat, the broader point is hard to miss: a sack does not seem to derail Allen the way it does most quarterbacks. For Buffalo, it often just means the drive is still alive.
In Other News...
Bills Trade Buzz Puts Secondary Problem Back In Focus
The Bills search for help in the secondary has quickly become a familiar storyline, and the latest name linked to Buffalo is cornerback Alontae Taylor. Reports say the team has interest in a deal with Tennessee as it tries to shore up a back end that has been under pressure, and Taylors situation is notable because he has had a rocky season and was inactive in Week 6.
What makes the idea more intriguing is how much uncertainty still hangs over it. Taylors struggles have put him in a spot where a move could make sense, but the asking price from Tennessee is not clear, leaving Buffalos next step very much up in the air as the trade buzz starts to build. [Read more 🡒]
Christian Benford Tries To Calm Bills Fears About This Defense
Even with a 5-1 start powered by Josh Allen and the offense, the Bills have had to answer some uncomfortable questions about the other side of the ball. Cornerback Christian Benford stepped in to frame those early defensive struggles as part of the transition under first-year coordinator Jim Leonhard, pointing to scheme adjustments and roster turnover as the biggest reasons the unit has not looked settled yet.
The numbers have not been pretty, with Buffalo sitting near the bottom of the league in total yards allowed, but Benfords message was more about patience than panic. He believes the defense will improve as the group gets more snaps together and becomes more comfortable in Leonhards system, which is the kind of internal confidence the Bills will need if they want the early record to hold up through the tougher stretches ahead. [Read more 🡒]
Bills Safety Need Could Put Jessie Bates In Play
The safety market can always get interesting when the trade deadline starts creeping closer, and Jessie Bates has emerged as the kind of name that could force Buffalo to at least pick up the phone. The Falcons veteran has been one of the steadier defensive backs in the league, and his contract status only adds to the appeal for a Bills team that could use help on the back end if it wants to sharpen its defense for the stretch run.
Of course, prying away a player like Bates is never simple, especially for a team that still views him as a cornerstone rather than a luxury piece. The Bills make sense as a fit because of need and ambition, but any real movement would have to line up with Atlantas own calculations, and those are still very much in flux as the deadline draws near. [Read more 🡒]