You will believe a man can fly.

I promise that even as the local football club, the Buffalo Bills, may possibly be enjoying their best season ever, I will not turn this blog into a place for frequent football-ish commentary. For one thing, I’m not watching the games anymore; for another thing, football opinion often turns out to be dead wrong, and I’m wrong enough without tempting the Wrong Gods.

But…well, the Bills played at Kansas City the other day, and that is a matchup that many see in today’s NFL as being possibly equivalent to Patriots-Colts back in the 2000s, when those two teams always seemed to be squaring off in memorable contests pitting Tom Brady (boooo!) against Peyton Manning. And in the contest the other day, which ended with a 24-20 Bills victory (at Kansas City, which is amazing enough), there was a play toward the end of the game that typifies the Bills now. Quarterback Josh Allen took the ball and ran with it. Allen is quite the running quarterback, and he doesn’t just “take off and slide before he gets hit”; Allen runs the ball. Earlier in the season he stiff-armed a defender, which was amazing to see, but there’s another thing he does that he’s kind of made his calling-card:

Josh Allen hurdles guys.

He literally jumps over defenders, and he does so in such a way that he comes down and keeps running.

On this particular play, Allen took off. He was running toward the sideline, and then he turned upfield. Chiefs safety Justin Reid–wearing number 20–executed perfect technique to bring down a ball-carrier in this situation. Reid got in front of Allen’s lane, squared his shoulders, lowered himself to make the tackle, and brought up both arms. His arms closed–on nothing.

Because as Reid executed his perfect tackling technique, Allen went airborne and flew right over Reid’s head. Allen then landed and kept running, picking up another few yards, while Reid grappled with nothing but air. It was the kind of play that you almost always remember.

No, I’m not going to be a regular football blogger again. But I have to tip my blogging hat once in a while when something like this happens.

Just…wow.

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