‘It Was a Wake up Call’: Josh Allen Describes Process of Adjusting Mechanics

Josh Allen

Getty Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen is pursued by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Alex Okafor while making a pass.

Earlier this week Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen made an appearance on the Pat McAfee show and talked about a number of subjects.

He took a shot at the NFC East, he revealed the longest official throw of his football career and he also talked about how he adjusted his mechanics in the offseason, which is one of the biggest contributions to his improvement in his third year as his completion percentage has climbed 16 points since his rookie year from 52.8 to 68.8 percent.

“I did this really cool thing where I got all of my mechanics digitally mapped and it showed what was firing,” Allen said on the Pat McAfee Show. “My hips, then my torso, then my elbow, then my hand are all supposed to fire. My elbow and my hand were firing before my hips were, so I was incorporating any part of my legs into my motion. So being able to add my hips and make that consistent as possible and try to slow everything else up top and use my hand as the leverage for the speed and the accuracy, it changed a lot of things.”

“The accuracy has obviously gone up, but it’s also added some M-P-H to my throwing power too. So it’s been a really good process.”

Throughout this season, Allen has improved in pretty much every aspect of his game. Through the first four games of the year, he was in MVP consideration as he passed for over 285 yards and at least two touchdowns in every game and also threw for 415 yards and four touchdowns against the Miami Dolphins in Week 2.

Allen’s improved accuracy has been the biggest improvement to note this season though as he’s only had three games with a completion percentage below 65%. He also set a career-high completion percentage against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 9 when he completed 31 of 38 passes for an 81.58% completion percentage and threw for 415 yards and three touchdowns.

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‘Yea, You’re Not Doing Any of This’

When Allen got his mechanics digitally mapped, he said that he also did it with a couple of other quarterbacks. So, at the end of the process, all of the quarterbacks talked about their mechanics and Allen wasn’t really in line with the rest of the group.

“I was the last guy to get talked about,” Allen said. “So with everyone else, it was like yea, you’re hips are firing at such a great rate and everything is sequencing right. Then the next quarterback, it was like oh yeah, you’re hips are firing at such a great rate, then they got to me and it was like, yeah dude you’re not doing any of this. So it was a wake-up call to me. Like, maybe I should start incorporating some new clubs into my bag.”

So far through the 2020 season, Allen has done just that as he’s added more touch passes to his game and he’s also still been able to bring out the flamethrower when he’s needed to. Buffalo’s first touchdown against the Los Angeles Chargers this past Sunday was a perfect example as Allen hit tight end Dawson Know with a pass that almost took him out of the back of the end zone.


Using His Golf Swing to Improve

There are a lot of things that quarterbacks can use to improve their accuracy or their mechanics and Allen’s course of action may be the strangest. During his appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, Allen said that he’s actually used his golf swing to improve his throwing accuracy.

“I’ve actually learned a lot of my throwing from my swing in golf,” Allen said. “I did that Top Golf deal with you (McAfee) and I was hitting slice, after slice and I was putting it in the back of the end thing, but I’ve toned it down now and I’m actually able to work the ball a little better in my actual golf swing and I think it’s actually correlated to what I can do on the football field too.”

The stats have backed it up so far as Allen is tied with Patrick Mahomes for the 7th best completion percentage in the league and he has also completed the 8th most passes in the NFL.

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