The not-so-sudden success of Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills will spawn many imitators around the N.F.L. But like plagiarists copy-and-pasting their term papers from Wikipedia, the league’s copycats are likely to get the facts right but miss the main idea.
Allen’s ascendence is one of the biggest story lines of the 2020 season. He was practically a caricature of a gifted but bumbling rookie as the Buffalo Bills’ first-round draft pick in 2018 (seventh over all). He improved modestly last season, though he still looked too often like a team mascot on inline skates firing a T-shirt cannon.