Josh Allen: From gunslinger to grown-up on the verge of the Super Bowl

Josh Allen played his first postseason game five years ago, a wild-card round game at Houston. To watch it again now is to see the playoff-football equivalent of ski cross: all gas, no brakes, and a decent chance of a spectacular crash.

The first thing you notice is the hair. Allen had a tight cut then, with no facial hair, making the Bills quarterback look like an eager recruit in a war movie who's first out of the trenches but immediately blown up by a mortar.

He was similarly reckless against the Texans almost from the jump. Allen caught a touchdown pass on the first drive from wide receiver John Brown, finishing the play with a dive to the end zone in which he was flipped upside down in the air over a tackler. He scampered for long runs in full Golden Retriever mode, including one in which he flipped a lateral - while being tackled - over the head of a completely unsuspecting Dawson Knox, who had to dive to knock the loose ball out of bounds. Allen managed to lose 33 yards on consecutive plays during a fourth-quarter two-minute drill.

And the Michelangelo of all this football-as-art: On his first passing attempt of overtime, he heaved a 40-yard incompletion to fullback Patrick DiMarco while he was covered by two guys.

The Bills lost, but no one could accuse Allen of a lack of effort. Buffalo coach Sean McDermott thought Allen "tried to do too much," which was fair. Had Allen figured out a way to throw a pass to himself, he might have tried that, too.

Five years later, the rough edges of Allen's game haven't just been smoothed over, they've been sandblasted away. Whether it's the continued input of McDermott and three different offensive coordinators, or simply the evolving maturity of Allen himself (probably all of the above), the MVP candidate's gone from a high-wire act to a player who rarely makes big mistakes.

Allen had career lows this season in interceptions, fumbles, and sacks while leading the league in the catch-all QBR statistic and steering a Buffalo offense that scored at least 30 points in 12 of his 16 starts.

But the best example of the Continuing Education of Josh Allen has come in his two playoff starts this season. Against Denver and then Baltimore, each time the opponent came out with a quick-strike touchdown to put the Bills in a seven-point hole at home. But in each game, Allen led a mostly plodding, run-heavy offense that seemed to emphasize risk avoidance. Much of that direction would have come from the coaching staff, but the apple-cheeked Allen of five years ago still would almost certainly have gone off script before the first commercial break.

As it happened, the Ravens, the one AFC team that looked like a particularly bad matchup for the Bills, moved the ball in bigger chunks in their game but also made enough mistakes for the Bills to eke out a two-point win. It was Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson who tried to do too much.

All of which leads to Buffalo's date with its playoff nemesis, the Kansas City Chiefs, and a looming question: Can the Bills knock off the back-to-back champions by deploying these cautious tactics? Or will they need Allen to be a little bit more of the frolicking puppy of his youth?

Since the Bills finished a tough part of their schedule in mid-December with wins over Detroit, San Francisco, and Kansas City and a shootout loss to the Los Angeles Rams, there's an argument to be made they've thrown a tarp over their hot rod and stored it in the garage. Allen's averaged slightly over 185 passing yards in four starts, but the Bills ran for an average of 157 yards in those games and, more importantly, turned the ball over just once. It's how you might imagine a veteran coach trying to grind out wins without a superstar quarterback: stay on schedule, move the chains, protect the football. Mike Tomlin probably goes to sleep most nights thinking of such things.

It's hard to imagine that being enough against Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift, and what has become the NFL's inexorable postseason force, though. It wouldn't have been enough against the Ravens had Jackson and Mark Andrews not collectively given Buffalo the ball back three times.

But if that game against Baltimore had gone differently, if the Bills needed to chase points, perhaps the shroud would have come off the sports car and Allen would have been more aggressive in the passing game. One of the great mysteries of the Bills' season has been the production of trade acquisition Amari Cooper, who had just 20 receptions over eight regular-season games in Buffalo - and only two combined in the two playoff games. Is he struggling to find a role in this versatile offense? Are the Bills keeping him as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency backup plan?

It seems like playing Mahomes and the Chiefs in January would be such an occasion.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.