Bills could adjust QB Josh Allen’s contract in the offseason

Bills QB Josh Allen will battle the Ravens QB Lamar Jackson in a highly anticipated divisional round game today. This offseason, Allen could receive a bump that puts his salary more in line with his Baltimore counterpart and his other peers in the league’s top tier of signal callers.

According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network (video link), Buffalo could offer Allen a contractual adjustment in the coming months, which sounds like it would take the form of a raise. The Bills restructured their franchise-passer agreement last March — a standard maneuver that converted salary to signing bonus for cap purposes — though Allen said afterward that he wasn’t looking for a pay raise.

That’s despite the fact that the six-year, $258MM deal Allen signed through 2021 is looking more and more like a team-friendly deal. Not only is Allen under club control through 2028 – he is the only non-Patrick Mahomes fit to be signed for more than five years since the Chiefs icon’s pact ended – but his $43MM AAV currently ranks 14th in the league’s QB hierarchy, behind a number of less accomplished players such as Trevor Lawrence and Jordan loveamong other things. His $100MM in total guarantees is now outside the top-10.

On the other hand, Allen’s ceiling price rises from just over 30 million. USD in 2024 to over 43 million. USD in 2025, and then it rises to a perhaps unsustainable ~ 64 million. USD in 2026. Some kind of reworking could serve the dual purpose of smoothing out those cap ranges while bringing Allen closer to the top of the market.

And he certainly deserved it. While it remains to be seen whether the Wyoming product will land the first MVP award of his career for his efforts in 2024, his consistently outstanding play has transformed the Bills from one of the AFC’s doormats to a conference powerhouse.

Since entering the league in 2018, Allen has piloted Buffalo to a 76-34 regular season record and the team has reached at least the divisional round of the playoffs in each of the past five years. Like Jackson, his fellow 2018 draftee, the only knock on Allen is that his club has yet to secure a conference championship, a deficiency that one of those players will be able to address next week.

In 2024, Allen compiled his lowest passing TDs (28) and passing yards (3,731) since 2020, but he led the league in QBR (77.5) and ranked eighth in traditional quarterback rating (101.4), largely because he was much more careful with the football. He threw just six interceptions — compared to 18 picks in 2023 — and fumbled just five times (the lowest mark of his career). He remained an invaluable asset in the running game, amassing 531 rushing yards (at a 5.2 yards-per-carry average) and 12 rushing scores. That production came despite Allen playing through a broken hand without throwing for most of the season.

As Rapoport notes, Allen has a good relationship with the Bills, and a revised deal to benefit both parties makes good sense.