Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs are the two best friends that anyone could have

The Buffalo Bills have gone through a strange few weeks.

First starting quarterback Josh Allen was hurt in the closing seconds of a loss to the New York Jets. That elbow injury fueled a week’s worth of speculation over whether Allen would play in their following game, against the Minnesota Vikings. Despite being limited throughout the week prior to the game, Allen made the start against Minnesota, only for the Bills to lose in dramatic fashion, with Allen throwing an interception in overtime.

Then Buffalo played two games in five days, both of which were in Detroit. The NFL moved the Bills’ game against the Cleveland Browns from Buffalo to Detroit because of weather, and then the Bills returned to the Motor City on Thanksgiving to play the Detroit Lions.

Given this upheaval, it is almost impressive that Buffalo won two of the three games.

Now the Bills are looking towards their stretch drive to the playoffs, which kicks into high gear on Thursday night in a huge divisional game against the New England Patriots. With questions swirling around the Bills, many of them focused on offensive mistakes and turnovers, a moment captured before kickoff against the Lions highlights perhaps the biggest strength of the Buffalo offense.

The relationship between Allen and wide receiver Stefon Diggs:

Allen and Diggs have become perhaps the two best friends in all of football, and while it makes for a fantastic story, it also matters on the field.

We will get into how this plays out between the lines in a moment, but first, a bit on how this relationship was forged. In an edition of Sports Illustrated for Kids from last season, Allen and Diggs were featured on the cover, for the magazine’s “BFF Issue:”

As an aside, my son’s copy of this issue has been sitting on our coffee table for over a year now, and I’ve finally found a reason to write about it. But I digress...

In the article that accompanied the story, Diggs and Allen discussed how they forged their friendship, after the receiver was traded from the Vikings to the Bills. As many friendships are built in this day and age, it came through gaming:

Diggs had never been much of a gamer. But when he found out that Allen was, he went out and bought a headset and started playing with his QB, who was in California while Diggs was in Maryland. “That’s the new-age thing. I feel like if it was 20 years ago, we probably wouldn’t have been as close as we are,” jokes Diggs. “Being on a video game that requires you play as a cohesive unit. That helps.”

There was one problem. “He was terrible,” says Allen. “He’s still bad. But any time he went down, it didn’t matter what I was doing, who I was shooting at, or how much health I had, I was like, I’m going to revive him no matter what. Just to let him know, I’m here for you. If you need me, I got you.”

The gesture was appreciated. “It really worked because in the video game, you don’t have to et somebody up,” says Diggs. “You could just keep going, keep playing. But he was always getting me up, and I kind of felt like, Bro, that’s my quarterback.”

Allen saved Diggs so often that Diggs’s brother, Trevon, a cornerback for the Cowboys, told ESPN he stopped playing with them because, while touching, Allen’s constant desire to rescue Stefon wasn’t an ideal strategy for the rest of the players on the mission. “It was getting ridiculous,” Trevon said.

But the friendship forged online blossomed on the field. Since joining the Bills, Diggs has become one of the top receivers in the NFL, and during that time Allen has joined the circle of the league’s elite passers. Diggs has caught 314 passes for 3,870 yards and 27 touchdowns since the trade, in two-plus seasons.

Those numbers almost match his production over five years in Minnesota.

Certainly both Allen and Diggs are tremendous talents at their respective positions, which can create opportunities for success on the field. But the friendship they built also plays a critical role when the ball is snapped. The chemistry — and trust — between a receiver and a quarterback is huge for an offense. That relationship is an edge that offenses can exploit in the NFL. In his book Joe Montana’s Art and Magic of Quarterbacking, the legendary quarterback addressed that edge:

Practice and playing together is the key for a quarterback and his receivers. After a while, you will be able to just feel things. You can tell by the way a receiver runs, for instance, where he is going to break or how sharp he is goin to be coming out of it. That’s an edge for you. The last thing you should be doing is taking too long to think about what is happening. Obviously, there is a certain amount of information-processing taking place–but with enough patience, it should become second nature.

The bond between Diggs and Allen has led to that “second nature,” so much so that the pair can almost throw the playbook out the window when the ball is snapped. Allen sat down recently with Matt Harmon and Austin Ekeler on an episode of the Ekeler’s Edge podcast, and Allen talked about the trust between the two, and how sometimes Allen just trusts Diggs to get open, regardless of route depth:

What does this trust between receiver and quarterback look like on the field? It looks like this touchdown against the Kansas City Chiefs on a go route, where Allen trusts Diggs to make a play at the catch point:

It looks like this connection between the two in a scramble drill, with both receiver and quarterback displaying tremendous feel for the play and situation:

And it certainly looks like this play late against the Lions, in a “gotta have it” moment:

That play set the stage for the game-winning field goal from Tyler Bass with just seven seconds left, leading to this from the quarterback and his receiver:

That relationship has been huge for Buffalo this season, much as it has been the last two campaigns. With the Bills now looking ahead to a final stretch of the schedule that will see them play the Patriots twice, the Jets one more time, and the Cincinnati Bengals, how well these two fare will go a long way towards determining whether Buffalo lives up to all the preseason expectations.

Bills fans are hoping this friendship leads to something else.

Super Bowl victory hugs.