A QB We Should All Be Rooting For

Illustration by Peter Townsend

Being a sports fan can sometimes be hard. Sure, it’s easy to support a team and wear the jerseys, but it’s often difficult supporting the people whose names are on the back of them. And while every sport has its bad actors, for some reason (perhaps just because there are so many players), the NFL always seems to have more than its share of athletes behaving badly. Just in the last few months, several players have made headlines for things like assault, reckless driving, and DUI.

By and large, the face of NFL franchises – namely, the quarterbacks – stay off police blotters, but again, they can be tough to root for. They can be obnoxiously arrogant. They can be phony and selfish. They can have trouble with the truth. They can be all of the above. While you do your best to cheer them on, you may feel a little slimy doing it.

This is why it’s nice to know that there’s a QB who is easy to root for, somebody who genuinely seems like not just a nice guy, but a great one: Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills. Case in point: During training camp, Allen befriended Nate Forrestel, a Bills superfan and Special Olympics athlete, and on the last day of camp, Allen surprised him with tickets to the Ryder Cup. (Watch the video; Allen seems just as excited as Nate.)

And sure, anybody might give a fan some golf tickets, right? It’s not uncommon for pro athletes to give away things to fans, albeit they’re often sweaty shoes or jerseys. But would just anybody do things to actually change their lives? Allen would, and he did it by working with ForgiveCo to forgive over $10 million in debt for people in places around the country that mean the most to him.

And sure, QBs are usually good for a photo op to show that they’re upstanding members of the community. But how many would regularly visit a children’s hospital to the extent that they get attached to the kids there? And how many would then decide to start a foundation to honor their late grandmother, raise over a million dollars, and use that money to fund a new wing for that children’s hospital? (When Allen was named league MVP earlier this year, kids from the hospital sent him a congratulations video, which brought the QB to tears.)

Want to see yet another video – and this one might make you cry – which shows Allen’s goodness? Watch him and two kids from that same hospital help him design cleats.

Allen’s good deeds just go on and on. He has donated money for Covid relief and to create housing for homeless people in upstate New York. He recently said that he’d be investing millions in a facility dedicated to caring for and finding forever homes for stray dogs. Could this guy be any better?

Oh, and let’s not forget that while Allen’s doing all of this, he has been consistently great in what’s often described as the most difficult position in all of sports. And everywhere he has played – even going back to high school – current and former teammates love him, not just for his on-field prowess, but because of his leadership, how he conducts himself, how he makes a point to become friends with everyone.

While Allen was born and raised in California and went to college in Wyoming, he has become enmeshed with the city of Buffalo and its rabid football fans, and he knows how much a championship would mean to everyone. Said Bills tight end Dawson Knox, “he bears the weight of this whole city on his shoulders and he does it gracefully and very humbly.”

If you’re not a Buffalo fan and perhaps your team has to regularly face the Bills, you’d probably prefer not to know any of this. After all, it can be difficult celebrating a sack when the flattened QB is a guy who helps sick kids and unwanted dogs, instead of a jerk who does things like, I don’t know, give out apples to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. But if you don’t have a real rooting interest in the NFL and want somebody you can feel good about supporting, Josh Allen makes it easy.