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The Bills were in the dog days of training camp, back from Rochester, N.Y., but not quite yet to the first preseason game, and their new head coach, Joe Brady, pulled up the clip in his squad meeting. There, for all 90 players to see, was their best player, their MVP, making one of his worst plays of camp, with the defense making him pay for it.
After the interception was played, Brady’s voice boomed.
“Quarterback!” he said. “Can’t have that!”
This is where Brady and Josh Allen’s relationship is after five years, and it’s a unique path the two have walked together. Brady first arrived as Allen’s position coach in 2022. He became interim coordinator midway through the 2023 season, and then got the role full-time in 2024.
This season, at 36 years old, just six and a half years older than Allen, Brady is his head coach, which is surely a different way for a quarterback of his caliber to get a new beginning.
“He’s heard my gripes in the past, right?” said Allen, with a smile. “And a quarterback coach is kind of your confidant in the building. It’s like, What are we doing here? Explain this to me. Help me understand what’s going on here. And to have that relationship with him and to know that he’s been the play-caller, to know that he knows that I don’t like certain things and vice versa, it just helps.
“I understand why he’s calling certain plays. He knows I want him to stay away from certain concepts that I might not love myself. So, yeah, that’s a big, big, beneficial factor for us.”
Here, then, is the baseline for this fresh start: Allen is already the best player in football.
Last week, I sent out my annual post-cutdown poll to the NFL’s quarterback-adjacent folks. I like to run it at the doorstep of the season, because it’s when voters have the most information, have seen the most tape, and have let things develop and marinate over a full training camp. Those voters include GMs, head coaches, personnel executives, pro scouting directors, offensive and pass-game coordinators, and quarterbacks coaches.
It’s anyone who coaches or evaluates the quarterback for a living, and I present all of them with a simple ask: Rank who you think the NFL’s top-five quarterbacks will be at the end of the season. In other words, you’re not just assessing; you’re also projecting.
I started this in 2015 at the NFL Network, then reprised it in 2018, before making it an annual project in 2020. And since that year, Patrick Mahomes has finished first, winning by a massive margin in all but two of those years. One exception was in 2022, when Allen was a very close second, coming off the epic shootout the two had in the 2021 AFC divisional round. Allen came close again last year.
Finally, Allen has broken Mahomes’s vice grip on the top spot.
He’s the clear winner for 2026 and, yes, Mahomes’s knee injury is a part of that. More importantly, Allen keeps getting better and more impactful. The challenge now, for both him and Brady, is to finally put the star-crossed Bills over the top. Which, of course, is precisely why Brady was hired in January.
Brady’s bigger-picture vision
For Brady, that starts with him and his staff trying to squeeze every bit out of the other 52 guys to give Allen the best team he’s had.
The admonishment in the aforementioned team meeting was a key part of that attempt to raise the bar.
“You have to hold one [Allen] to the same level of accountability as you hold, right now, 90,” said Brady, referencing the pre-cutdown roster size. “And even if it pisses them off, you have to do that. If people start to realize I’m getting on this guy for this mistake, but not that guy? That is a problem. So, I like pointing out more so when DJ Moore or James Cook or Bradley Chubb or Josh Allen mess up, because then they’re like, All right, we’re holding these guys to that standard; I have to live up to it.”
And no one knows Brady’s bigger-picture vision better than Allen, because no one in the building knows Brady better than Allen. Period. So here’s the other piece: Though Brady wasan internal hire, the Bills are going to look different, and explaining how that vision could play out may be done best through the story of one of the coach’s mentors.
A generation ago, as a young assistant, Sean Payton had a reputation as an outside-the-box, mad-scientist-type of offensive mind. He called plays for Jim Fassel for three years with the Giants, going to the Super Bowl in his first year, before being stripped of play-calling in his final season in New York. From there, Payton joined Bill Parcells in Dallas, where Parcells nicknamed Payton “Dennis the Menace” for all of his wild ideas.
Then, in 2006, everyone got to see the unencumbered version of Payton, no longer having to restrict his call sheet because of someone else’s game plan or clear a strategy or concept with anyone else. Before his arrival, it’d been over a quarter-century since the Saints had last fielded a top-10 offense. In Payton’s first year, New Orleans was No. 1 in total offense for the first time in franchise history, with an innovative, attacking scheme that would land in the top 10 for 14 consecutive years, and finish first five more times.
The real question here is how that might match up with Buffalo now. Brady brought in former NFL safety Jim Leonhard, who learned under aggressive DCs Rex Ryan and Vance Joseph, to build an attacking defense that should match his offense philosophically.
And Allen, for what it’s worth, is already a torchbearer for the idea.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I think when you’re the head coach and the play-caller, in certain situations, you know exactly what the next play is going to be. Like if you’re in third-and-short, you’re not sure sometimes, if you’re an offensive coordinator, if the head coach is allowing you to go for it on fourth down. But now as a head coach and play-caller, you’re obviously trusting your analytics department. You’re trusting your coaching staff. You’re trusting your players. But at the end of the day, it’s your call.
“So, if you feel compelled to do something, do it. And he’s going to learn extremely quickly; that’s what he’s always done. But to say that he’s been a quarterback coach, OC and now the head coach, I think we forget, too, that he was the OC on one of the greatest college teams of all time.”
That example is an intriguing one for Allen to raise: LSU, in 2019, with Brady designing the pass game, was not just intergalactic statistically, but uber-aggressive conceptually. In the College Football Playoff that December, the Tigers scored 49 points in the first half against Oklahoma. Joe Burrow finished that game with seven touchdown passes and nearly 500 yards. That season, LSU set an FBS record for points, and Burrow set a record for touchdown passes.
Allen is trying to raise the bar
Of course, the NFL isn’t the SEC, and it’d be hard to approximate, from a pro football perspective, the advantage of having Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson on a college field at the same time.
But, again, Allen’s trying to raise the bar, and not just from a team standpoint.
One easy thing he can do is look back on his failures, and the most recent one, for him, came in the team’s franchise-shaking divisional playoff loss in Denver. And it’s a single throw in that game that still keeps him up at night—the exact one you’d guess.
“That throw that I missed to Dawson Knox on the two-minute drive in the fourth quarter,” he said. “That last play, I don’t know if I would have changed anything about it. I gave it a good rip, the guy makes a good play and sometimes you’re going to have to live with that. And that’s where, again, you put your best stuff out there and if it doesn’t go your way, you keep your head up, your chin high, and you can live with it.
“And there’s a couple of plays in that game where I felt like I gave my best effort; I just didn’t get the best result. So I’m just trying to do what I can to find a way to get the best result.”
In other words, the gambler in him is leveraging the one-of-one talent he has with the need for control—a balance he’s worked his whole career to strike.
He’s gotten where he is now, coming from being a raw, unrefined and wildly talented prospect to a well-rounded professional quarterback by continuing to chip away at it. And the way he articulates it, the process he’s gone through every year has made him a believer that he can both be happy with where he’s headed and unsatisfied with where he’s at.
“Honestly, the last game is not what you want to see,” he said. “But peaking at the end there, felt like I was throwing it really well. Mechanically, I’m still trying to find a good spot to be in. And I feel like I’m throwing it really well right now, but I can still improve on it, being in a better spot when the ball’s coming out of my hands, with a little bit more control. It’s just things you got to clean up.”
There’s already been plenty of progress. He had a career-high 69.3% completion rate last year. The year before, he threw a career-low six interceptions. He had triple-digit passer ratings in back-to-back seasons, which is another career first.
He also knows the change in Buffalo didn’t happen because he wasn’t getting better as a player. It happened because in the most important category, the franchise and Allen himself have come up empty, and he knows he needs to fix that, too.
The best is yet to come
Allen shoulders his share of the blame for Sean McDermott’s firing and for not seeing through the franchise facelift that the coach led for the past nine years. He also knows how hungry the fanbase is for a Lombardi Trophy—he is, too.
While he knows “change is hard for anybody,” he also recognizes from his personal life the past couple of years that it can be reinvigorating.
In a way, it parallels how he’d approach making granular mechanical changes.
“When there are live bullets, and you’re out in practice, and sometimes you revert to those old ways, it’s not that it’s wrong, but I got to tell myself and keep reminding myself that this change is going to help me,” he said. “And it’s just like anything else, right? It’s a microcosm of what else is going on in my life, with a new baby, a new wife, a new coach, a new stadium, new everything. So I’m just embracing the change as we move on.”
Along those lines, it’s been exciting for Allen to see his defensive teammates getting to experience Brady’s energy for the first time. How Brady loves football, how he loves his players, how he wants them all to be playmakers in their own way, while giving them the tools to become just that.
“It’s a microcosm of what else is going on in my life, with a new baby, a new wife, a new coach, a new stadium, new everything. So I’m just embracing the change as we move on.”Josh Allen
And conversely, as Brady sees it, the sturdy bond he’s built with Allen can be a template for his relationships with the rest of the team—honest and straightforward, with shared goals.
The standard’s going to be high, but only because both sides set it there.
“The good thing is that we know each other so well,” Brady said. “In my experience—I’m not Sean Payton, he’s not Drew Brees, I understand that—but they knew how each other thought. They knew where we were at certain places in the field, what was going to get called and what each other needed. … I’ve been on the sideline with [Allen], seeing who he was as a quarterback coach and that communication of then calling his plays to now.
“We have such a unique perspective. There’s closeness, but there's accountability and we’ve seen all the different levels to it. To me, there isn’t any bad to it. The bad is if we both decide to change who we are. We hold each other to a level of accountability.”
As such, Allen has adopted, as a dad, husband and player, “this motto I’ve kind of had in my mind for a long time—there’s no bad days; some are just better than others.”
And he’s trusting that, even at a time when the NFL consensus is clear that he’s the league’s best individual player, the best ones have yet to come.
How the poll works
And with that, let’s dive into the ninth annual edition of my quarterback poll.
The exercise, again, was born in 2015—and that first year, it served its purpose as a poll to project, not assess, the position. Aaron Rodgers, the reigning MVP and 32 at the time, was first. The Colts’ young phenom, Andrew Luck, came in second, edging out Tom Brady, who’d just won his fourth Super Bowl.
Obviously, Brady had more staying power than many thought then. But the general idea worked: looking at what a quarterback will be over four months.
This year, I sent out nearly 200 requests for votes, knowing that cut-down week is a busy one, and some people won’t get back to me. This year, we received 104 ballots. All 32 teams had voters in this poll, and 30 of the 32 had multiple voters, so we have a diverse cross-section of the league. Among the voters—GMs, personnel executives, head coaches, offensive and pass-game coordinators and quarterbacks coaches—we received ballots from 20 head coaches and 21 general managers.
Last year, Allen, Mahomes, Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson wound up being the clear top four, with all four on 84 of 88 ballots. This year, it was a completely different story. Of the 104 ballots, Allen landed on 101 (he was on 87 of 88 last year). Every other quarterback was left off at least a dozen ballots, which is pretty wild, and perhaps a product of the number of injuries there were at the position in 2025.
Here’s the rest of the particulars …
1. Josh Allen, Bills
• 427 points
• 49 first-place votes
• Appeared on 101 ballots
• Last year: Second place
Allen’s the most feared player in football because he’s grown into a quarterback who affects the defense on every single level—and this is one of those where NFL coaches and evaluators had little doubt about what he was becoming even when the general public had questions. So it makes sense that now, with more questions arising, there are plenty of NFL folks anticipating he’ll hit another level in Buffalo’s new setup. “He’s still the most dangerous all around,” said one VP of player personnel, “and the offense may be less conservative this year."
2. Matthew Stafford, Rams
• 356 points
• 33 first-place votes
• Appeared on 92 ballots
• Last year: Seventh place
The respect for Stafford has always been there. But the way he played last year left a mark with those in his path. He jumped five spots, breaking the two-year hold that Mahomes, Allen, Jackson and Burrow had on the top four spots. One rival GM called Stafford, “As elite a passer as there is in the league.” Few players are capable of playing and operating from the pocket like Stafford, which is why no one has any problem projecting him at 38 years old to stay near the top.
3. Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs
• 247 points
• 12 first-place votes
• Appeared on 86 ballots
• Last year: First place
I figured he’d fall a little bit, but I didn’t anticipate that he’d be left off 18 ballots. But Allen was already gaining on him after Mahomes won over 90% of the first-place votes in 2020, ’22, ’23 and ’24. Those who’ve stuck to their guns on him this year point to the expected improvement of the run game, with Kenneth Walker III aboard (Josh Simmons’s health will be important in that regard). “The key component is the addition of Walker,” texted an AFC assistant GM. “It feels like they’ll get more balance with him in the offense.” Which should eliminate some of the hits he’s been taking, too.
4. Joe Burrow, Bengals
• 218 points
• 6 first-place votes
• Appeared on 80 ballots
• Last year: Third place
Health is the only question. This is Burrow’s fifth consecutive year ranking in the top five. He finished fifth coming off his Super Bowl sophomore season, then third in 2023, and second the past two years. His weapons are still elite, the line is better than people think, and the defense should be improved, all of which is why he believes he’ll be able to play a different sort of game this year. “He’s as good a pocket passer as there is in the NFL,” said an assistant GM. “It’s just been health.”
5. Lamar Jackson, Ravens
• 96.5 points
• 1 first-place vote
• Appeared on 47 ballots
• Last year: Fourth place
Jackson fluctuates quite a bit in the rankings. From 2020 to ’25, he came in third, seventh, eighth, seventh, fourth and then fourth again last year. So he’s holding relatively steady here, knocked down a spot by Stafford’s surge. But his voting numbers are down significantly from the past two years, probably due to injuries last year. He’s intriguing, too, because 2027 will be a contract year, and he has a new head coach, Jesse Minter, and offensive coordinator, Declan Doyle.
6. Justin Herbert, Chargers
• 50 points
• 1 first-place vote
• Appeared on 24 ballots
• Last year: Sixth place
Herbert’s here every year, a sign of the respect the coaches and evaluators have for how he’s performed over a steady stream of coaching changes and injuries around him—from 2021 to now, he’s come in eighth, fourth, fourth, eighth, sixth last year and now sixth again. It feels to me a little like how NFL folks looked at Stafford when he was in Detroit. But this could be the year he really breaks through. One VP ranked him second and texted, “[Mike] McDaniel will push him to the next level. The team is stacked, and with better injury luck, they’ll go far.”
7. Dak Prescott, Cowboys
• 49 points
• 1 first-place vote
• Appeared on 26 ballots
• Last year: N/A
This is the highest Prescott has ever ranked on the list—he was last on it at 11th in 2024, and his high-water mark and only top-10 finish was ninth in ’20. It’s a tribute to how well he played last year, and how he helped the Cowboys get the most out of uber-talented receiver George Pickens, even without CeeDee Lamb, who missed three games. One quarterbacks coach called him the consummate field general, and an AFC exec added that he expects a big year with a cast around him now that makes Dallas “scary every time they get off the bus.”
8. Drake Maye, Patriots
• 37.5 points
• 0 first-place votes
• Appeared on 22 ballots
• Last year: N/A
Maye, the runner-up to Stafford for MVP, debuts at eighth after leading the Patriots out of a half-decade rut and back to the Super Bowl. He appeared on 22 ballots and got a bunch of mentions as a guy who just missed the list. The biggest questions on him surround center on how much he turned the ball over in January, when faced with more challenging defensive schemes and better opposing personnel. But there’s no question the arrow points up, and the talent is there to climb this list fast in the next few years.
9. Caleb Williams, Bears
• 18 points
• 0 first-place votes
• Appeared on 14 ballots
• Last year: N/A
This pick isn’t just about what he did with Ben Johnson last year, but the direction the Bears were headed as the year ended. And that’s why he made a jump, even with guys that left him out of the top five. “Caleb is an awesome talent,” said one AFC offensive coordinator. “In a year or two, if he stays the course with Ben Johnson, he will be top three. His physical talent is freakish.” Which is to say he’s good now—and should get a lot better.
10. Sam Darnold, Seahawks
• 12 points
• 0 first-place votes
• Appeared on 7 ballots
• Last year: N/A
Darnold has performed at a high level with two different coaching staffs and two different sets of teammates, and has a Super Bowl ring to show for it. There’s a feeling among those in Seattle that, with a team that he can now call his own, he could really take off from here. And, remember, this isn’t some Cinderella story—Darnold’s always had the physical ability, which is why he was drafted with the No. 3 pick in the first place.
T-11. Jared Goff, Lions
• 10 points
• 1 first-place vote
• Appeared on 5 ballots
• Last year: 10th place
Goff has lived on the fringes of this list for years, and it’s easy to conclude that while he’s respected, few view him in the top tier of quarterbacks. Which shouldn’t take away from all he’s accomplished, leading two previously moribund franchises—the Rams and Lions—to conference championship games and Los Angeles to the Super Bowl.
T-11. Jordan Love, Packers
• 10 points
• 0 first-place votes
• Appeared on 5 ballots
• Last year: N/A
Love came in ninth two years ago after the hot finish to his first year as a starter, and then didn’t make the list last year. I’d say that the people who’ve been around him see him a little differently than those who haven’t—maybe because he’s grown so much over his first six years as a pro, and still has upside. It’ll be interesting to see how he progresses this year, with a firmly established top three at receiver (Christian Watson, Matthew Golden, Jayden Reed) and tight end Tucker Kraft returning from an ACL injury.
13. Jayden Daniels, Commanders
• 8 points
• 0 first-place votes
• Appeared on 3 ballots
• Last year: Fifth place
Daniels finished fifth last year, after C.J. Stroud came in fifth the year before, with both behind the aforementioned quartet that held the top four spots the past two years. So voters may have been a bit stung by each taking a step back in Year 2, and they looked at Daniels and his draft class this year. Either way, if Daniels can stay healthy, the Commanders are expecting a big rebound, with David Blough now running the offense.
14. Bo Nix, Broncos
• 6 points
• 0 first-place votes
• Appeared on 3 ballots
• Last year: 11th place
Nix is the only quarterback in the 2024 draft class to make the playoffs in each of his first two seasons, and last year the Broncos advanced two rounds before he sustained a freak injury at the end of the win over Buffalo. He brings a lot to the table that Sean Payton values; he keeps his offense playing efficiently and on time like a 10-year veteran, and he’s a little more talented than people give him credit for. The Broncos are loaded this year, so if he plays well, he’ll get his flowers.
Also receiving votes: Brock Purdy, 49ers (3 points, 2 ballots); C.J. Stroud, Texans (3 points, 1 ballot); Baker Mayfield, Buccaneers (2 points, 1 ballot); Jaxson Dart, Giants (1 point); Jalen Hurts, Eagles (1 point); Trevor Lawrence, Jaguars (1 point); Geno Smith, Jets (1 point).
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ALBERT BREER
Albert Breer is a senior writer covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated, delivering the biggest stories and breaking news from across the league. He has been on the NFL beat since 2005 and joined SI in 2016. Breer began his career covering the New England Patriots for the MetroWest Daily News and the Boston Herald from 2005 to ’07, then covered the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News from 2007 to ’08. He worked for The Sporting News from 2008 to ’09 before returning to Massachusetts as The Boston Globe’s national NFL writer in 2009. From 2010 to 2016, Breer served as a national reporter for NFL Network. In addition to his work at Sports Illustrated, Breer regularly appears on NBC Sports Boston, 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston, FS1 with Colin Cowherd, The Rich Eisen Show and The Dan Patrick Show. A 2002 graduate of Ohio State, Breer lives near Boston with his wife, a cardiac ICU nurse at Boston Children’s Hospital, and their three children.
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