Dolphins coach says Josh Allen is arguably best QB in NFL. He is right.

First-year Miami head coach Mike McDaniel isn’t just now learning about the wonders of Josh Allen as he studies tape of the Buffalo offense heading into Sunday’s AFC East showdown between the unbeaten Bills and Dolphins.

McDaniel saw Allen up close and personal back in 2020 when the Bills defeated the 49ers 34-24 in a Monday night game that had to be played in Arizona due to COVID issues in the San Francisco region.

Back then, McDaniel was the offensive coordinator of the 49ers so he was more concerned with how to attack Buffalo’s superb defense, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of Allen completing 32 of 40 passes for 375 yards and four touchdowns.

“And it goes further than that,” McDaniel said this week as he dove into his first week in the Bills-Dolphins rivalry. “I saw his growth at Wyoming. That’s what was really cool was it was an example of, young in his career, the guy is a giant with a giant arm, but he had kind of like a stigma about accuracy and I think each year in his college career, he drastically improved.

“You learn a lot, not by hearing but by seeing, and what you could see was a guy diligently working at his craft, who’s however old he is. So fast forward to the league and I think we’ve all been witnesses … he’s steadily become one of the best players in the National Football League. (You could) easily argue he’s the best one. And it’s not because he’s God’s gift. It’s because he’s unbelievably talented, but it’s because you can tell more than that. He works at his craft, he’s developing every time he’s on the field. He’s a really, really good player that you’ll never, I don’t think, see him stopped necessarily. It’s about minimizing and containing all together.”

That’s such a true statement because right now, it really is all about just containing the damage Allen can do because he’s playing at such an elite level. And in this game, with the Buffalo defense so banged up, this could be a high-scoring affair and it may come down to which offense will make that one extra play to decide it.

Here are the key Dolphins players to watch

∎ QB Tua Tagovailoa: Well, I didn’t think I’d be typing Tua’s name in this space, but after what he did last week, how could I not? He completed 36 of 50 passes for 469 yards and six TDs and overcame a 35-14 fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Ravens 42-38. Yes, the Ravens choked, and yes, they were banged up in the secondary, but holy cow, I really didn’t think Tua had a game like this in him. This new Miami offense under McDaniel seems to be a great fit for him.

∎ WR Tyreek Hill: As if the Bills haven’t already seen enough of this guy, now they have to face him twice a year in the AFC East. Oh, and he doesn’t seem to miss Patrick Mahomes one bit. He had 11 catches for 190 yards and two TDs against the Ravens, and he looks every bit as dangerous in the Miami offense as he did in Kansas City’s.

∎ WR Jaylen Waddle: He gives the Dolphins one of the best 1-2 WR combos in the league. He had 11 catches for 171 yards and two TDs in Baltimore, meaning in the first two games of the season, Hill and Waddle have combined to catch 34 passes for 524 yards and five TDs. This is going to be a very difficult matchup for the Bills’ banged up secondary, trying to control these two speed burners.

∎ DT Christian Wilkins: The 2019 first-round pick is a beast in the middle of the Dolphins line, a hard to control player in the mold of Tennessee’s Jeffery Simmons who the Bills just faced. Last week in Baltimore Wilkins actually led Miami in tackles which is generally unheard of from a DT. He had eight including two for lost yardage. Last year his 89 tackles tied Pittsburgh’s Cam Heyward for the most by a DT.

∎ DE Melvin Ingram: He’s no longer the pass rushing force that he was during his nine years with the Chargers, and he has now bounced from the Steelers to the Chiefs to the Dolphins this season. Still, he’s someone the Bills will have to account for. In Week 1, he scooped and scored on a Mac Jones fumble that was forced by blitzing safety Brandon Jones.

∎ DE Jaelan Phillips: Miami’s first-round pick in 2021, a teammate of Buffalo’s Greg Rousseau at the University of Miami, can be a tough matchup on the edge because of his athleticism. He had 8.5 sacks last year which set a Dolphins rookie record.

∎ CB Xavien Howard: He’s been one of the best cover corners in the NFL for several years. In five career games against Buffalo he has four interceptions and nine passes defensed. Since he entered the league in 2016, he has the most interceptions in the NFL with 27.

What they’re saying in the locker room

▶ Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa on whether the Bills will be a measuring stick for Miami: “We understand that they’re a really good team; that’s no secret. Everyone knows that. They’re tough defensively, they’re explosive offensively, so I wouldn’t say that we have a measuring stick for how good that these guys are because when you look at it, their opening game, they beat the Super Bowl champions of last year. And they didn’t just beat them; it was by a lot. And the next team they played, a really good team; they beat them by a lot. We’re just looking at playing the way we play and playing the way we’ve played for the past two weeks and we’ll go out there, they’ll get our best and we’ll get theirs.”

▶ Dolphins LB Melvin Ingram on the Bills being considered Super Bowl favorites: “I didn’t even know they were the Super Bowl favorites. I wouldn’t say nothing excites me. They are just another team on our schedule. And when you got another team on your schedule, you got to go in and prepare and get ready to try to win a football game. I wouldn’t say nothing excites me more about playing them.”

▶ Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill on Tagovailoa: “I don’t have to say too much, man; all you got to do is look at his game film. It’s Tua, and who he is and how consistent he is. You know that last drive we had (against Baltimore), it really showed me who he is as a leader. You know, getting everybody inside of the huddle, telling guys, ‘Make sure you run the ball to the official or hand it to Connor (Williams, the center).’ Just small things, you know, to save time to be able for us to go down the field and make a play.”

Extra points

• Since Sean McDermott became Bills coach in 2017, the Bills have allowed just 97 pass plays of 25 yards or more, a cumulative opponent passer rating of 78.4, and 87 passing touchdowns, all of which are the lowest in the NFL.

• Of course, the pass defense is in for quite a test in Miami because last week Hill and Waddle became the first pair of teammates in the Super Bowl era to each have a game where they each had at least 170 yards receiving and two touchdowns.

• Since the start of last season, the Bills have three games in which they have scored 40 points and forced four turnovers. That’s as many as the rest of the NFL combined.

• Allen now has 21 games where he has thrown and rushed for at least one TD, the most in the league since he entered in 2018.

• If the Dolphins win the game, several things will occur. It would give them their first 3-0 start since 2018; it would make McDaniel the second head coach in Dolphins history to win his first three games, joining Jimmy Johnson (1996); it would be their eighth consecutive win at Hard Rock Stadium dating back to Nov. 7, 2021 which would be the longest home win streak since the stadium opened in 1987; and of course it would be their first win against Buffalo since Dec. 2, 2018.

• Last week, the Dolphins set a franchise record by scoring 28 points in the fourth quarter, and it enabled them rally from a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat Baltimore. That was the largest come-from-behind win in a road game in team history. It was also the largest fourth-quarter comeback in franchise history.

• The last time the Dolphins won a game after they trailed by at least 21 points was Dec. 4, 2005 at home against the Bills. That day, the Bills jumped to a 21-0 first-quarter lead on the strength of three J.P. Losman to Lee Evans TD passes, yet ultimately lost 24-23 when Miami scored three fourth-quarter TDs, the last a pass from Sage Rosenfels to Chris Chambers with six seconds left to play.

• Buffalo’s Reid Ferguson and his brother, Miami’s Blake Ferguson, are the only pair of brother long snappers in the history of the NFL. They co-host a weekly podcast entitled “After the Snap.”

Getting to know … S/ST Jaquan Johnson

When you grow up as one of seven children, there are going to be days when you’re going to have to fight for just about everything.

Maybe attention from your parents, maybe a little extra time in the bathroom, maybe the keys to the car, or maybe that last biscuit at the dinner table.

“I come from a family of six, including me it’s seven,” Johnson said recently. “I’m the middle child. My entire life, all I had to do was work and fight for everything that I got.”

And that extended well beyond the home his parents, Walla Jackson and Jarrid Johnson, provided for Jaquan and his siblings. Every day of football practice at Miami Killian High School, and then every day of practice at the University of Miami, Johnson fought for every rep he got.

“I wasn’t the biggest, I wasn’t the fastest, but I had heart and I had talent that God gave me, and I used it,” said Johnson, who will surely have plenty of fans in the stands at Hard Rock Stadium in his return home Sunday.

Nothing has changed during his three seasons with the Bills; the only difference is that Johnson is not a star in Buffalo, he’s a safety stuck in a reserve role playing behind two outstanding players - Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde - who almost never come off the field.

Thus, Johnson has had to carve his niche on special teams, and that’s a role he takes just as seriously. He has excelled in that area for the Bills, but he has not given up on the goal of becoming a full-time player on defense.

Perhaps it will come in Buffalo if the team opts to re-sign him after 2022 when he becomes a free agent. Maybe it will be somewhere else, but he wants you to know, “Jaquan Johnson is somebody who everybody will be looking up to soon whether it’s this year, next year or the year after. I’m never going to stop working. I’m relentless.”

Here are a few things to know about Johnson:

• Family: He and his wife Yanelis have two children, Yailany and Jaquan Jr.

• College degree: Graduated from Miami with an undergrad degree in Human and Social Development.

• He has a foundation: The Johnson Opportunity Foundation is a community-based youth mentoring program designed to encourage and support long-standing relationships between adult role models and children.

• Most famous person in his contact list: Former NFL All-Pro safety Ed Reed, who was briefly a Bills assistant coach during the Rex Ryan tenure in 2016.

• Favorite musical artists: Little Dread and Major 9.

• Proudest athletic achievement outside of football: Winning back-to-back wrestling championships in high school, which you can be sure Sean McDermott took notice of in the draft process.

• Favorite food: Ox tails and rice.

• Biggest pet peeve: Having to repeat yourself.

• Unique talent he possesses: He can juggle.

• Favorite movie: Rudy which makes sense, a football movie about an underdog.

• Favorite cereal: Cinnamon Toast Crunch, yet his favorite night-time snack is Rice Krispies.

• One skill he’d like to have: The ability to play soccer.

• Hobby: Playing cards.

Blast from the past: Bills vs. Dolphins

On Sunday, the Bills and Dolphins will be playing for the 59th time in Miami counting the postseason, and this will be just the 10th where Buffalo’s annual road game in South Florida will be played in soupy September.

The second time this occurred came on Sept. 10, 1989, in Week 1 at what was then called Joe Robbie Stadium, and it wound up being one of the most famous games of the Jim Kelly Era.

The 1989 team would later become known as the Bickering Bills, but there was nothing but smiling faces, congratulatory hugs, and high fives on this day as Kelly scored on a daring two-yard run on the final play for a thrilling 27-24 victory over the Dolphins.

“You’re probably wondering when I first thought we had the game wrapped up,” Marv Levy joked. “The guy (Kelly) is a winner, that’s what he does. Maybe he’s not pretty or doesn’t rack up the big numbers, but he knows how to win.”

Kelly’s dash capped a rally from an 11-point deficit in the final six minutes and after all the misery the Bills had endured at the old Orange Bowl, this win improved the Bills record in Miami’s new stadium to 3-0.

The teams combined for three turnovers on the first five snaps of the fourth quarter before the Dolphins put together a 12-play, 73-yard drive to Dan Marino’s third-down eight-yard TD pass to Andre Brown for 24-13 lead with 5:17 left.

The Bills got that back in just 1:27 as Kelly completed five straight passes for 82 yards including a 26-yard TD to Flip Johnson. Nate Odomes then made his second interception of the game on a third-and-10 play and returned it to the Bills 49 with 1:44 left.

Kelly completed three passes to move the ball to the Miami 30, then hit Thurman Thomas for 11 on third-and-5. He found Andre Reed for 15 to the 4 and quickly grounded the ball with two seconds remaining.

An offsides penalty moved it to the 2, and from there Kelly dropped to pass but decided to run and just beat Miami safety Louis Oliver to the goal line for his first NFL rushing TD in 45 career games.

“I took the snap, took one step back and started running,” said Kelly. “I knew I only had a couple of yards to go and I was hoping I was going to make it because I knew if I didn’t, boy, I’d be hearing about it the rest of my career. Nate Odomes, thanks for the opportunity. It was supposed to be a pass to the fullback in the flat, but I knew it wasn’t going to be open right from what I saw at the beginning.”

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This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Dolphins coach says Josh Allen is arguably best QB in NFL. He is right.