Josh Allen just became a dad. He’s entering his age-30 season with a stacked Bills roster. And he’s already thinking about what comes after football.
The difference between Allen and most quarterbacks his age? He’s actually being honest about the parts of the job that bother him.
In an interview with CNBC Sport’s Alex Sherman, Allen said he’d entertain a move to the broadcast booth after his playing career ends — the same path Tom Brady, Tony Romo and Drew Brees took. But Allen isn’t pretending it would be easy.
“When players go from being on the field to journalists and say things they hated hearing about themselves, I think that’s where it gets a little murky for me,” Allen said.
He’s not wrong. The guy who spent years hearing critics pick apart his accuracy and decision-making isn’t eager to become the guy doing the picking.
Hall of Famer Joe Montana has said basically the same thing. Sitting in a booth with no access to the actual play sheet, Montana argued, makes it nearly impossible to fairly judge what a quarterback was supposed to do on a given play. Allen seems to agree.
The Reality Check Waiting in the Booth
Allen’s hesitation makes even more sense when you look at what happened in Buffalo’s last playoff game. Wide receiver Brandin Cooks still insists he caught a pass that officials ruled incomplete — a call that was overturned and led directly to an Allen interception in overtime against the Broncos. That play helped end Buffalo’s season and cost head coach Sean McDermott his job.
Cooks is still publicly defiant about it. He says he caught the football. Millions of people saw the replay and disagreed. Those are exactly the kinds of calls, the split-second judgment calls with massive consequences, that Allen would have to talk about on live television every week.
Most players who make the switch to broadcasting downplay how hard that transition actually is. Allen isn’t doing that. He’s pointing at the thing that bothers him before he even has a contract offer in hand.
For now, though, Allen has other things to focus on. He and wife Hailee Steinfeld just welcomed their first child. He’s got a July 28 report date. And the Bills are coming off a season that ended one controversial call away from a deeper playoff run.
The broadcast thing can wait. But it’s interesting that a 30-year-old franchise quarterback is already thinking this carefully about the part of the job nobody wants to talk about.
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