When could Josh Allen pass Jim Kelly for most franchise passing yards?
Jim Kelly
Career Passing Yards: 35,467
After Joe Ferguson, Josh Allen will begin chasing Jim Kelly who is the best quarterback in franchise history. He would play 11 seasons with the Bills, earn five Pro Bowl nominations, help Buffalo to four straight Super Bowls, and averaged over 3,220 passing yards every season.
Amazingly, even with this average, he would never lead the league in passing yards but was also very consistent when considering he had only three seasons with fewer than 3,000 passing yards and never threw less than 2,700 passing yards in any one season.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that this will be the biggest challenge for Josh Allen as he currently is over 20,000 passing yards behind Kelly. If Allen keeps the per game average previously mentioned he would surpass Jim Kelly sometime during the 2026 season, which is right about in the middle of the contract extension he signed last year.
After the 2026 season, Allen would have two more years left on his current deal.
There is no question that Josh Allen benefits from playing in a time where the NFL is much more pass-friendly and the NFL’s current regular season game has at least one more game than the other quarterbacks with it being expanded to 17 games last season.
However, even with the advantages Josh Allen has it will still take him a number of years to pass Jim Kelly which just highlights how good Kelly was for this team during his time as their starting quarterback.