Bills, Josh Allen believe last year's playoff loss was valuable lesson

The Bills' QB says he learned not to press too hard after Bills blew 16-0 lead over Texans

JAMIE GERMANO/ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE

Maybe the Bills wouldn't be where they are today if they didn't fail when it mattered most a year ago. That's when their 16-0 lead on the road over the Houston Texans in the wild-card round disintegrated into a 22-19 overtime loss.

Quarterback Josh Allen remembers it well. The reads and the throws that he missed, how close they were to attempting a game-winning field goal before rookie Cody Ford was flagged for a perfectly legal hit that was incorrectly ruled a peelback block. All of it.

Enough people have asked about the blindside block that I feel I need to give my opinion. I think the call is incorrect. He doesn't lead with his shoulder or head. He pushes him. It is a bad rule and I will give my suggested rule change on Last Call Monday at 11am PST.

— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) January 5, 2020

"I think the main lesson was not to press," Allen said in his teleconference Tuesday. "I understand the situation we were in. Obviously if I can go back and change things, I would. But I'm glad that they went down the way they went down.

"I was able to learn a lot from it and hopefully I carry that playoff experience into Saturday's game. Indianapolis is a very well-coached team, they have a Hall-of-Fame quarterback [Philip Rivers] on their side, so we've got to do everything in our power to hold onto the ball, to score when we can score and to try to execute the game plan to the best of our ability."

You don't hear the Bills bringing up the egregious call [nor the even more egregious follow-up fine] because they've been conditioned not to dwell on things out of their control. It's the same dynamic that has helped them win every game since falling to Arizona on the Hail Murray play in November.

But they have no fear at looking back on their own shortcomings.

"It still lingers a little bit, knowing the situation of the game and things I could have done differently, reads I could have changed," Allen admitted. "But again, like I said, if I could change it, I obviously would. But I'm glad I can't. I'm glad [for] the lessons I learned throughout that game. ... You don't learn without failure."