I want to go back to the 2018 NFL season, when Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson were rookies and nobody really knew what either quarterback was going to become. At the time, I thought Lamar was ahead of Josh, and I certainly wasn’t sold on Allen. The jury was still very much out on him, while Lamar was making plays and helping turn around a Baltimore Ravens team that nobody expected to make the playoffs.
Then came the Ravens’ Wild Card game against the Los Angeles Chargers in January 2019.
Lamar struggled. Badly. Baltimore lost 23-17, and Jackson looked overwhelmed for much of the game. He was a rookie making his first playoff start, so none of this should have been particularly shocking. But I remember being on social media that afternoon and seeing this giant wave of Bills fans absolutely pissing all over his grave.
And I thought it was really fucking weird.
Here was a rookie quarterback who had helped rescue a team’s season, gotten them into the playoffs, and suddenly a portion of Bills Twitter was acting like they had just won the Super Bowl because he played poorly. Why? What exactly had Lamar Jackson done to Buffalo?
What made it even stranger was that Baker Mayfield, another quarterback from that draft class, had just enjoyed a pretty good rookie season, and I didn’t see nearly the same animosity toward him. Even the following year, when Mayfield struggled, I don’t remember Bills fans celebrating his failures with anywhere near the same enthusiasm. Lamar, for whatever reason, seemed to hit a completely different nerve.
And here we are, eight years later, still dealing with this stupid shit.
The Josh Allen vs. Lamar Jackson social media war has become one of the most insufferable things about following the NFL. Every week, it’s the same routine. Somebody posts something complimentary about Allen, Ravens fans get pissed. Somebody praises Lamar, Bills fans get pissed. Then comes the quote-tweeting, the cherry-picked statistics, the old playoff clips, and the endless attempts to prove that one quarterback is somehow a fraud because the other one is great.
God forbid somebody just likes one quarterback more than the other.
I don’t know if this happens to the same extent between other fan bases and their franchise quarterbacks. I’m sure Chiefs fans get into it with Bills fans, and Bengals fans probably have their own version of this nonsense. But there’s something about Allen and Jackson that seems to trigger people in a way that goes beyond normal football arguments.
Both fan bases are incredibly protective of their quarterbacks, which I understand. When you’ve spent years watching your franchise struggle to find a legitimate answer at the most important position in sports, you’re naturally going to defend the guy who finally gives you hope. But there’s a difference between defending your quarterback and making it your entire online personality to shit on somebody else’s.
And yes, I do think race plays a part in some of this.
I want to be careful here because I don’t think every person who criticizes Lamar Jackson is racist, and I certainly don’t think every person who prefers Josh Allen has some racial motivation. That’s ridiculous. There are legitimate football arguments to be made for either quarterback.
But pretending race has absolutely nothing to do with the way some people discuss these two would also be ridiculous.
Black quarterbacks have historically faced different kinds of scrutiny, particularly when it comes to intelligence, leadership, and whether their style of play can translate into sustained success. We saw that nonsense for decades. Remember Rush Limbaugh’s infamous comments about Donovan McNabb and the media supposedly wanting a Black quarterback to succeed? That was more than 20 years ago, but the attitudes behind those arguments didn’t magically disappear.
At the same time, I think there are people who view praise or criticism of these quarterbacks through a racial lens before they even consider the football argument. Some believe Lamar gets extra credit because of his race, while others are understandably suspicious of criticism that resembles the same tired stereotypes Black quarterbacks have dealt with forever. And sometimes people are so determined to defend one quarterback that they start assigning motives to anyone who prefers the other.
I’m not suggesting those things are all equally justified, or that racism and accusations of racism are interchangeable. They’re not. I’m saying race can influence both the criticism itself and the way people interpret that criticism, and social media does an absolutely terrible job of allowing any nuance into the conversation.
In the current racial and political climate in this country, almost anything can become another stupid culture-war argument. Unfortunately, two phenomenal football players aren’t immune from that.
And that’s the part that drives me nuts because both quarterbacks are fucking stupendous.
I love Josh Allen. He’s the best quarterback I’ve ever watched play for the Buffalo Bills, and I’m not going to apologize for thinking he’s better than Lamar Jackson. But if somebody tells me they would rather have Lamar as their quarterback, I’m not going to bat an eye. Why would I? Lamar is an extraordinary football player who can do things almost nobody else in the history of the position has been able to do.
We can argue about passing, rushing, playoff performances, MVPs, supporting casts, and whatever other statistical rabbit hole somebody wants to go down. That’s sports. That’s fun. That’s what being a fan is supposed to be about.
But that’s not what most of these arguments are anymore.
This is engagement farming, plain and simple, and plenty of people in the sports media are just as guilty as the fans.
You have personalities like Ryan Clark who know exactly how much engagement they’re going to generate whenever Allen and Lamar come up. Then you have some mainstream media guy with 75,000 followers quote-tweeting a random fan who says he prefers Lamar over Josh, or vice versa, and adding something like, “Look at this loser.”
Congratulations. You found somebody on the internet with a football opinion you don’t agree with. What a tremendous accomplishment in journalism.
And of course, that gets hundreds of replies, thousands of views, and another round of two fan bases throwing shit at each other. The person who posted it gets the engagement they wanted, the fans get angry, and absolutely nobody learns anything.
And let’s not pretend there aren’t people in the national media who have picked their favorites and will bend over backwards to defend them. Both Allen and Lamar have their own little protection squads, and sometimes the excuses are just fucking ridiculous.
Take Ryan Clark, for example. After the Ravens lost to Buffalo in the playoffs following the 2024 season, Clark argued that Lamar shouldn’t be blamed because Mark Andrews dropped the potential game-tying two-point conversion. Okay, fine. That was a terrible drop. But are we just going to conveniently forget that Lamar threw an interception and lost a fumble in the first half, helping put Baltimore in that position to begin with? Apparently, those plays don’t count when you’re defending your guy.
And this absolutely goes both ways. Look at Josh Allen against Denver in the playoffs following the 2025 season. I love Josh, but the guy turned the ball over four times. Two interceptions and two lost fumbles. You can argue about the overtime interception, the officiating, the lack of weapons, and everything else that went wrong. But you cannot simply pretend Allen’s mistakes didn’t contribute to Buffalo losing that game.
That’s what drives me crazy about this discussion.
Apparently, we have reached a point where admitting your favorite quarterback played poorly is some sort of betrayal. Both guys are great. Both guys have made unbelievable plays. And both guys have fucked up in enormous moments. Why is that so difficult for people to acknowledge?
I don’t need Ryan Clark or some other national media personality acting like a defense attorney for Lamar Jackson, just like I don’t need somebody inventing 15 different excuses for Josh Allen every time the Bills lose. You can appreciate greatness without treating criticism like a personal attack.
Maybe this is what we would have dealt with if social media existed during the Jim Kelly and Dan Marino years. I can only imagine Bills and Dolphins fans arguing every single day about who was better, digging up old interceptions, playoff losses, and whatever else they could find to make the other guy look terrible.
But at least back then, you could have the argument at a bar, call somebody an asshole, and move on with your life. You didn’t have to wake up the next morning and see 47 more people quoting the same argument because some sports-radio host needed impressions.
What really gets me is how personal this has all become. It’s no longer enough to believe your quarterback is better. You have to convince yourself that the other guy is overrated, that his accomplishments are meaningless, and that anybody who disagrees with you is an idiot.
Why?
Lamar Jackson being great doesn’t make Josh Allen any less great. Josh Allen making an unbelievable play doesn’t take anything away from Lamar Jackson. Their careers aren’t connected by some magical scoreboard where every compliment given to one counts as a point against the other.
If anything, we should appreciate the fact that two quarterbacks from the same draft class, who entered the league with enormous questions about whether they could succeed, have become two of the most exciting players in football.
Instead, eight years later, we’re still fighting the same stupid argument that apparently started, at least in my memory, with Bills fans celebrating a rookie quarterback losing a playoff game.
I enjoy a good quarterback debate as much as anybody. Give me some stats, give me some film, and tell me why you think one guy is better. I’ll happily argue with you.
But if your entire argument is built around hoping Lamar Jackson fails so you can feel better about Josh Allen, or hoping Josh Allen fails so you can defend Lamar Jackson, maybe it’s time to find another fucking hobby.
Because at this point, the only people winning the Josh Allen vs. Lamar Jackson debate are the engagement farmers who know exactly how easy it is to get everybody pissed off.
I hate it too. I’ve always liked Lamar and don’t understand the hate. Good synopsis on why it exists tho