Josh Allen Drafted by Buffalo Bills

by | Apr 26, 2018

Josh Allen’s journey to the NFL is finally over. On Thursday night Allen was drafted by the Buffalo Bills with the seventh pick of the first round. Allen is the highest drafted Wyoming Cowboy in the program’s history, and the second highest Mountain West player ever drafted behind Alex Smith of Utah who went number one overall. The former Wyoming quarterback left school early to enter the NFL draft, and chase his dream of being a professional quarterback. The journey leading up to the draft has been an adventurous one for Allen. He’s been critiqued by everyone from every corner of the sports internet over his accuracy issues, as well as his lack of success against high profile opponents. In the end the Bills weighed Allen’s potential over his past.

On Wednesday night some of Allen’s tweets surfaced from when he was in high school that contained insensitive content. On Thursday morning leading up to the draft the talk of Twitter and Dallas was Allen’s past tweets. The tweets, according to Adam Schefter, were deleted in January by his agent, but had been screencapped by someone looking to smear Allen’s reputation in the hours leading up to the draft. Allen issued a public apology for the tweets, saying he was young and dumb. Coach Craig Bohl also issued a statement saying that’s not who Josh Allen is as a person.

Allen was highly touted coming into the draft in a draft class full of elite quarterbacks. Allen’s main competition for draft spot was Baker Mayfield of Oklahoma (pick 1, Browns), Sam Darnold of USC (pick 3, Jets), Josh Rosen of UCLA (pick 10, Cardinals), and Lamar Jackson of Louisville (pick 32, Ravens). The quarterback class is one of the most talented in many years according to anonymous draft guys across the world.

Allen will go into his freshman season with the Bills with big expectations being a first round draft pick. Allen will be looking to replace Tyrod Taylor as soon as possible. However, the Bills signed AJ McCarron in the offseason. Last year the Bills went 9 and 7 and made the playoffs for the first time since 1999, ending one of the longer playoff droughts in the NFL.

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Here’s some draft day clips of Allen leading up to his selection: