(Editor’s note: This is excerpted from Mike Sando’s Pick Six of Jan. 20, 2025.)
4. Josh Allen and the Bills are one victory away from the Super Bowl. Lamar Jackson is 17 days away from collecting another MVP trophy (most likely). What does it mean?
Mark Andrews lost a fumble and dropped the tying two-point conversion pass in the fourth quarter to short-circuit a potential classic finish between MVP favorites Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen for a berth in the AFC Championship Game against Kansas City.
If not for the drop, the Ravens’ defense would have had to stop Allen from driving for a go-ahead field goal with 1:33 left and two timeouts, just to force overtime. Getting a stop there was hardly certain.
Neither quarterback was spectacular in the frosty conditions, but both led long fourth-quarter scoring drives before Buffalo escaped with a 27-25 victory. The finish puts Allen, Bills coach Sean McDermott and Buffalo one victory from the Super Bowl and a chance to cement legacies.
What about Jackson?
A two-time MVP already, he’s almost certain to add a third trophy soon, based on recently released All-Pro voting, which favored Jackson over Allen by a wide margin. But his teams are 3-5 in the playoffs, and Jackson, though solid in this postseason, still hasn’t dazzled on the biggest stages.
He threw an interception early against the Bills, lost a fumble and suffered from three dropped passes totaling 23 air yards. He threw what could have been the tying 24-yard touchdown pass to Isaiah Likely with 1:33 remaining, but then watched helplessly as Andrews slid on the slick surface while dropping a soft, catchable conversion toss. This was Jackson’s first game with more than one turnover since he had two in the AFC Championship Game last season. Those four turnovers, though not entirely Jackson’s fault, cost Baltimore 20 EPA in games the Ravens lost by a combined nine points, per TruMedia.
-Jackson blamed himself for failing to look off the safety on his interception, and for trying to make something happen when he fumbled, instead of falling on the ball following a bad snap.
The chart below compares EPA per play in the regular season and playoffs for quarterbacks with at least six postseason starts since 2000. I’ve excluded Brett Favre, Kurt Warner and Steve McNair because they made significant postseason starts before 2000, the earliest season for which data is available through TruMedia (of the three, only Warner was better during playoffs since 2000). The ascending line represents a baseline of equal performance in both the regular season and playoffs.
Nick Foles, Mark Sanchez and Colin Kaepernick reside in the upper left as outliers whose postseason production on a limited number of starts (six each) far exceeded their modest regular-season performances over many more games.
Some quarterbacks with lots of postseason starts — Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees — reside near the line. That suggests performance tends to even out as the postseason sample sizes grow. Peyton Manning never caught up to his regular-season prowess in the playoffs despite making 26 postseason starts since 2000 (he started one playoff game before that and struggled in defeat).
Jackson is trending in the right direction because his playoff production over the past two postseasons has improved (there are two dots for him on the chart, showing the positive shift). He still lags well below his contemporaries, notably Allen, in the playoffs. And because of the way things ended Sunday, he won’t get a chance to change that until next season.
(Photo: Timothy T Ludwig / Getty Images)
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