An older crew member leans toward me on set, eyes fixed on Josh Allen. He recently worked on the excavation of the new Highmark Stadium, and this moment has him grinning like a kid. “Can you believe he’s right there?” he asks me. A few feet away, Allen is moving easily through the room, greeting everyone—“Hi, I’m Josh, nice to meet you”—as if anyone in Buffalo could mistake him for anyone else. He’s smiling as he sits down across from me, carrying himself with a warmth that makes it easy to forget he’s the reigning MVP and the quarterback tasked with delivering his city its first Lombardi Trophy.
This combination of affability and ambition is exactly what SoFi was banking on when they tapped him as the face of their new campaign, a multi-year partnership that will air across NBC, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube this season. For Allen, though, the partnership isn’t just about lending his name to a product. “It was the people,” he tells me, matter-of-fact. “The dedication they have towards helping their members achieve their dreams—that’s something I resonate with.”
SoFi Plus, the company’s all-in-one membership that lets users bank, borrow, invest, and earn with more than $1,000 in annual value, fits neatly with the way Allen now thinks about money. He talks about financial literacy candidly, admitting that early in his career, he barely paid attention to it. Now, he’s more deliberate about knowing where his money is and what it’s doing.
In his words, the partnership with Sofi is about “betting on yourself”: a phrase that could just as easily describe the long-shot quarterback sitting before me. Allen enters the 2025–26 season not just as the league’s reigning MVP, but as the quarterback who carried Buffalo through a stretch of unforgettable moments last season. There was his groundbreaking game against San Francisco when he became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw a passing touchdown, catch a receiving touchdown, and rush for a score in the same game. Three weeks later, he followed it with another first: three passing and three rushing touchdowns in a single contest. By year’s end, he had guided the Bills to a 13–4 record, an AFC East title, and another push into Super Bowl contention. Now, with Joey Bosa added to the defense and the team preparing to bid farewell to its old stadium, the city feels perched on the edge of something bigger.
None of that, he insists, changes the job. “I can win 10 more [MVPs] and I’d still trade them all for one Super Bowl,” he says earnestly.
The statistics and accolades mean little compared to the thought of hoisting a silver trophy for Western New York, and the drive that brought Allen here is the stuff of lore: No offers out of high school. A detour through junior college. Wyoming, where he became the prototype for the overlooked kid who bet on himself and won.
“There was no plan B,” he tells me. “It distracts from plan A. I never once thought about what I’d do instead of football. It was always, ‘I’m going to figure it out.’”
Even now, he speaks of those years with a kind of reverence—surely recalling the moments of doubt, the emails to coaches unanswered, the voice in the back of his head telling him to quit. But he didn’t. He trusted timing, kept grinding, and became the player Buffalo has built its hopes around.
If Allen sounds made for this city, that’s because Buffalo met him halfway. His “welcome to Buffalo” moment came the way it should: at the airport, where fans handed him a styrofoam box of wings after rookie minicamp. (“They were great,” he laughs. “Of course I ate them.”) Today, he can recite his wing order with the precision of a two-minute drill: bone-in, flats over drums, spicy barbecue from Bar-Bill, blue cheese only—chunky, not silky—and a Cherry Pepsi on ice to wash it down.
Allen has leaned into the city’s quirks, too. He jokes about the constant chorus of “Go Bills” that punctuates his days (“the limit does not exist”), and he doesn’t deny that someday—after he hoists the Lombardi trophy—he too, will put his body through a folding table. “The first table I see,” he says, “I’m going straight through it.”
When the conversation shifts to how he keeps himself ready week after week, Allen rattles it off casually: sauna, red-light therapy, massages. He figures he spends between $60,000 and $75,000 a year. “Is that high?” he asks me, checking when I gasp. I tell him it sounds modest compared to someone like CeeDee Lamb, who told us he spends $1.5M annually, and Allen just laughs. “Part of me is like, and I’m just a country boy, rub some dirt on it. It’s fine.”
The seriousness drops away when the topic turns to Settlers of Catan, where Allen gets just as animated as when he’s talking ball. What started as a pandemic distraction has become a full-blown locker room league with Dawson Knox, Dalton Kincaid, and Spencer Brown. “I’m a development card guy,” he grins. “Free points, knights, largest army—you can’t beat it.” The winner gets bragging rights, and, as Allen puts it, “as long as Dawson doesn’t win, I’m happy.”
It’s this mix that makes him magnetic: the Catan strategist and the farm-boy who shrugs off pain with a grin. But for all his charm, Allen knows the stakes. This season, Buffalo is sending its old stadium off with retro red helmets and the highest expectations in decades. Allen wears both lightly, but he doesn’t flinch from the weight. “I just want to bring a Lombardi to Western New York so badly,” he says, his voice dropping into something steadier. “The fans here deserve it.”
It’s why the smile matters. It’s not for show. It’s a signal—to his teammates, to his city, maybe even to himself—that no matter the pressure, no matter the stakes, he can carry it. Beneath it, there’s a steel edge.
And somewhere in Buffalo, a table is waiting.