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EverBank Stadium (Jacksonville) — Sunday’s Bills vs. Jaguars game was the perfect example of a game being decided by a single play or yard. In this case, Buffalo got 10 when it needed it from an unlikely play.
With just over a minute left, the Bills needed to pick up on back-to-back plays. First, when Buffalo was down four in need of a touchdown, facing a fourth-and-1 at Jacksonville’s 11-yard line. The Bills went to a reliable play with the perfect quarterback to run it.
The Bills’ answer to the Eagles‘ famed tush push — with Josh Allen lined up behind a six-man line, a fullback behind him, close to a ton of bodies from each team colliding with a playoff victory on the line — worked. Allen picked up 10 yards on the fourth-and-1 tush push, and then scored when they ran the tush push on the next play en route to a Bills 27-24 win.
“This isn’t a scheme,” right tackle Spencer Brown told me in the locker room. “This is just legit hat on a hat, grown man football. You need one yard. It’s why you do all the extra stuff is for this. I’ve been on the other end of the sneak in Kansas City where we didn’t get it, so it’s pretty cool to push the pile and look up and see Cybo just blocking Josh like a toddler. It was awesome.”
“Cybo” is O’Cyrus Torrence, the Bills’ massive right guard, conservatively listed at 6-foot-5 and 330 pounds. When the Bills needed one yard for a first down to keep the drive alive, O’Torrence literally picked up Allen after the initial push and carried him to the goal line to set up the game-winning score.
“I told myself I wasn’t ready to go home, and I knew if we didn’t get, we were going home,” O’Torrence told me. “Josh was going to the left side, but he got pushed to the right, and he’s right in front of me, so I just grabbed him and kept turning my feet. I didn’t hear a whistle, so I kept telling myself: keep going, keep going, keep going.”
Allen said that the number of people pushing in both directions on a play like that leaves him unsure how it’s unfolding.
“Sometimes, you don’t really know what’s going on,” Allen said at the podium. “My feet are kind of off the ground, and you really can’t do anything, so in that moment, it’s just holding onto the football as tight as I can.”
A year ago, a failed QB sneak contributed to the end of the Bills’ season in the AFC Championship Game. “In a tie game in the fourth quarter at the Chiefs, the Bills went for it on fourth-and-1 and were stopped for no gain, and Kansas City turned around and scored the go-ahead touchdown on the way to eliminating Buffalo.
“I told Cybo, ‘I’m having déjà vu about Kansas City right now,'” Brown told me. “It’s a play you think about, but I wasn’t going to let it happen again. We were not going to get stopped on fourth-and-1 again.”
The first of the sequence of two tush pushes in Sunday’s game was initially ruled a touchdown. But after a review, it was clear Allen was down at the 1-yard line. Jacksonville, out of timeouts, had every incentive to let Allen score on the next play, and multiple defenders did not attempt to stop that run, allowing the Jaguars more time for a last-minute comeback. That lasted only one play, as Trevor Lawrence’s pass was deflected and intercepted to seal the win.
When the call came in from the sidelines for the big fourth-down push — which featured an extra offensive lineman, a fullback there to push Allen from behind — it was the opportunity the Bills’ offensive line was hoping they’d have.
“It’s a beautiful thing when the coordinator trusts the o-line the way that they do and they call that QB sneak,” left tackle Dion Dawkins told me. “We have skinny guys that block, we’ve got fullbacks that block, we’ve got tight ends that block. Everybody on the team understands it’s not just our five, it’s the whole unit. It’s playoff football, man. We were amped. It’s all or nothing.”
The fullback is Reggie Gilliam, a 6-foot, 244-pound fireplug who lines up directly behind Allen, gets low and keeps pushing him forward, though rarely for as far as they did with the game on the line Sunday.
“We have a first surge and a second surge,” Gilliam explained. “The first surge is hitting smack into a wall. It’s the second surge that’s like ‘Bear down, let’s go.’ I got past the first surge, got to the second surge, and we’re still going. Like ‘Whoaaaa!’ I’m like all right, keep pushing. Then I’m laying on my back, Spencer’s on top of me.”
The game would hinge on such physical play built around Allen, who had been beaten up enough that he had two separate visits to the medical tent during Sunday’s game. The first was a check for a concussion. The other came after he hyperextended his knee on an earlier goal-line touchdown run.
“He’s 17. You know he’s coming to play,” center Connor McGovern told me. “There’s a whole new side of him that comes out in the playoffs, too. He wasn’t afraid to get dirty in there. That’s how we want to do it. There’s nothing better than a QB sneak. It’s not fun, or pretty, but when you get that first down, and the touchdown after it, there’s no better feeling.”
But Allen’s offensive linemen know that he can handle the physicality required for a quarterback in a tush push situation.
“He’s one of the toughest guys I’ve ever played with that’s not an offensive lineman,” O’Torrence said. “I’m used to guys being tough on the line, but to see that from a quarterback, somebody you’re trying to protect. He’s tough. He gets hurt, you get nervous, but you’ve always got the feeling that he’s down but he’s not out.”
“The rule of thumb is if he’s moving, he’s probably going to be all right,” Brown added. “If he’s laying there unconscious, it’s probably bad. If he’s just moving a little bit, adjusting himself, I know he’s a tough f—ing guy … He’s a guy you want to play for in the playoffs.”
Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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