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Josh Allen has gone from laughing-stock draft prospect, to serviceable rookie starter, to solid but volatile second-year pro, to MVP vote-getter in three seasons in the NFL, and Bills GM Brandon Beane has done a marvelous job building around his towering quarterback with the rocket arm. 

With the fate of the Bills firmly in Allen's hands, let's explore everything about his environment in Buffalo and what Allen needs to do to for the Bills to win the first Super Bowl in franchise history this season. 

Previous installments in this young QB outlook project: Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert, Kyler Murray, Drew Lock, Daniel Jones, Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson, Sam Darnold

How Allen has improved since he was a prospect

These positive developments in a quarterback's game are noteworthy because they indicate the distinct possibility of future growth. 

Here's a snippet of what I wrote about Allen before the draft, and my pro comparison for him was Jake Locker/Jay Cutler:

Allen is bigger than both of these quarterbacks and probably has a stronger arm than either of the two. Much of what was being written and said in evaluations of Locker when he was entering the NFL in 2011 is the same as what's being mentioned about Allen now. Locker's magnificent athletic talent was on display often at Washington, and he made some of the best throws at the highest-degree of difficulty in college football while a member of the Huskies. The same is true with Allen while at Wyoming. Then again, Locker had clear-cut accuracy issues. So does Allen. At his absolute best, if his ball placement from clean pockets is fine-tuned in the NFL, Allen can be Cutler-esque, a powerful-armed quarterback with high highs but tendencies to overextend plays, force the football, and get antsy under pressure.

In 2019, he finished with the second-highest grade in my season-long evaluation of all the plays of first- and second-year quarterbacks (out of 17 who played). Allen had one "D" grade, two "C-" contests, a pair of "A" performances and 10 outings in the "B" range. 

After his pro day on March 23, 2018, I wrote the following about the perception of Allen:

It does seem as though we've gotten to the point where Allen has become entirely too polarizing, and the criticism of his game has spiraled out of control.

Against Iowa and Oregon in 2017, Allen tried to do way too much too often to compensate for the large discrepancy in talent between both clubs. He looked undraftable in those contests. The rest of his film -- in games against other clubs from the Mountain West and other small-school opponents -- isn't downright brutal. The accuracy issues pop up on occasion, and he wasn't a natural pocket drifter, and did make a few poor decisions. However, Allen did show he was capable of zipping throws with fine ball-placement at all levels of the field in 2017."

He entered the league as one of the most raw but inherently talented quarterbacks we'd seen in quite some time, the latter point being why he still went No. 7 overall in the 2018 draft despite lackluster statistical efficiency in college. 

Allen's accuracy and comfort in the pocket have most improved since his days at Wyoming. He went from a 58.8% completion rate in 2019 to 69.2% in 2020. Unprecedented stuff. And guess who finished with the league's highest adjusted completion percentage from a clean pocket last season among qualifiers? Allen at 85.8%.

He has all but fully erased the "hero ball" element from his game. His turnover-worthy play rate has gone from 5.1% as a rookie to 4.0% to 3.5% in 2020 when he finished second in the MVP voting. 

Supporting cast

The Bills have rapidly reconstructed their skill-position group and now boast one of the league's best and deepest units, especially at receiver. Stefon Diggs is elite. In every way imaginable. Releases off the line, separation at all levels, contested-catch mastery. Downfield juice. 

Gone is John Brown, but Emmanuel Sanders, whom Beane had been targeting for years, was acquired as the immediate No. 2 who specializes in getting open. Cole Beasley, still an elite slot wideout returns, and Gabriel Davis, who pieced together a fine rookie campaign, rounds out the starting four at receiver for one of the NFL's most pass and wideout happy attacks. 

There's quality depth behind those four with Isaiah McKenzie, Duke Williams and sixth-round burner Marquez Stevenson. 

The Bills miraculously return their entire offensive line from a year ago, a sturdy unit at tackle and center that does feature some inconsistencies at guard. Pro Football Focus recently ranked Buffalo's blocking unit as the 13th-best in the league. 

Devin Singletary and Zack Moss sit atop the running back depth chart. Their collective lack of explosive capabilities have sparked negative narratives about the two young backs, but they've proven to be among the most elusive, hard-to-tackle runners in football. 

Scheme

Allen will have four straight years with the same offensive coordinator from the beginning of his NFL career in Brian Daboll, an almost unheard of dynamic in the modern-day NFL.

Daboll and the rest of Buffalo's front office has made it clear they completely understand passing is king in the NFL and the smartest way to move the football. With the game within one score last season, the Bills had the NFL's second-highest pass rate (64%), and regardless of score, Daboll called the highest percentage of pass plays on first down (62%) during last year, according to Sharp Football Stats. The Bills averaged 8.8 yards on those plays, which tied for the league's second-highest figure. 

Improving his weaknesses

As a draft analyst who watched all of Allen's throws in his final season at Wyoming, it's shocking to write this, but it's a challenge to find a blatant flaw in Allen's game that has developed from frenetic and at times woefully inaccurate to mostly calm with steady ball placement. 

After brutal downfield accuracy in 2019, Allen actually finished with a higher adjusted completion percentage (46%) than league average (42%) on throws 20-plus yards down the field last season. 

While I've outlined that clean-pocket play is more predictive year over year, and Allen excelled when kept clean in 2020, there's still room for improvement in how he throws the football while under pressure. His adjusted completion percentage of 63.5% in those situations ranked 28th out of 39 qualifying passers, and Allen's yards-per-attempt average of 6.6 ranked tied for 13th. 

Quarterbacks thrive when they flourish from an uninterrupted pocket, but if Allen takes a step forward under pressure in 2021 -- there's no telling how ridiculously productive he'll be.  

Last season, Allen was phenomenal inside the pocket, when it was clean, and outside of structure to all levels of the field. Because of that, some level of regression should be expected. It's Allen's job to minimize that regression as much as possible.  

Strengthening his strengths

Where should I start? Allen's 2020 was one of the largest steps a young quarterback has taken in NFL history. Dead serious. Look at his season from any angle -- outside of under-pressure play -- and Allen was really good to sensational.

After emerging as one of the league's best intermediate-level passers in 2019, Allen got more surgical on short throws in 2020. His 88% adjusted completion rate was six percentage points higher than league average, and he tossed 15 touchdowns to just two picks from 0-9 yards down the field. 

Also with Allen comes elite physical tools to run with the football. He's now scored 25 rushing touchdowns in his first three years as a pro. While the number of carries, yards-per-attempt and yards-after-contact-per-rush averages have decreased in each of the past two season from his run-reliant rookie season, Allen did break four tackles in 2020, just one fewer than in 2019. Still having the luxury of picking up critical yards with his legs -- and being a weapon in the red zone -- remains an element that helps to push Allen into the upper echelon of NFL quarterbacks today. 

After 17 rushes of 10-plus yards in his second NFL season, Allen maintained his explosiveness on the ground with 16 more of those rushes in 2020.

He instantly established a rapport with Brown in 2019, rekindling that type of connection with Sanders out of the gate will be crucial to Allen and Buffalo's offense maintaining its ultra-dynamic status this season. 

Season outlook 

Retention was the theme of the offseason for the Bills, and Beane made a necessary move to sign Sanders as the Brown replacement to keep the status quo through the air for Allen and Co. 

While it'll be extremely difficult for Allen to improve from where he was as a passer and dual-threat quarterback this season, the "retention" theme trickles down to him too --  retain the high-level accuracy, mostly deft decision-making, and on-field harmony with Diggs and Beasley. 

I do think we see a minor regression from Allen in clean-pocket scenarios, not because it's expected, simply because the bar right now is set at the moon. However, Allen will improve under pressure in his fourth season in Daboll's system behind a jelled offensive line with a big-time group of receivers who routinely get open. 

Allen was a top 3 quarterback last season. I expect him to stay in the top 5 range in 2021 as the intimidating leader of one of the best and most electric teams in the NFL.