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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Had he not been traded to Buffalo two months ago, Bills running back Nyheim Hines knows exactly where he would have been on Monday night.

Hynes would be glued to his TV watching the first of what could be many-more-to-come duels between two of the NFL’s rising star quarterbacks in Buffalo’s Josh Allen and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow.

“Absolutely,” Hines said. “Allen versus Burrow, two great quarterbacks, top five in my league and I could even say higher for either guy, it’s definitely something the world is watching and something that as a football fan like myself is excited to see."

Hynes will not only enjoy a ringside seat for a late-season showdown that will go far in determining who finishes first in the AFC, he also has some inside perspective on both quarterbacks.

“Probably how he was in high school is probably how he is now, very calm,” Hines said of Burrow, whom he played with in the All-American high school game in California in January 2015.

“He was kind of like my head coach, Frank Reich,” he added , referring to his former coach in Indianapolis, who was fired after Hines was dealt to Buffalo. “Very stoic. Cold-blooded. Never panics. I see Joe the same way.”

Hines’ respect for Allen has grown tremendously since joining the Bills.

“By any means necessary. If it’s third-and-10, he’s gonna jump in the air, put his body on the line to get that first down,” he said. “And then one thing that people don’t realize about him is how smart he is. ... I knew of his playmaking ability, but his playmaking ability overshadows his brain.”

Allen has the Bills (12-3) holding the inside track to finishing first in the conference, and having already clinched their third straight AFC East title — their best run since a four-year stretch spanning 1988-91. The fifth-year player ranks fourth in the league with 4,029 yards passing and third with 32 TDs passing entering Week 17.

Burrow has the Bengals (11-4) a win or tie away from clinching their second consecutive AFC North title — something they’ve not done since winning consecutive AFC Central titles in 1981 and ’82. And the third-year player ranks second in the NFL in both yards passing (4,260) and TDs passing (34) entering Week 17.

Together, since the start of the 2021 season, they’re tied for second with 68 touchdown passes, trailing only Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes (’74) entering Week 17.

“I can’t wait to watch,” said Ryan Fitzpatrick, the ex-journeyman quarterback who played for both Buffalo and Cincinnati and now works as an analyst for Amazon Prime on “Thursday Night Football."

“What gets me excited about the Bills is they have found ways to win without solely relying on Josh,” Fitzpatrick said. “But Josh has proven time and again he has broad enough shoulders to carry this team on his back.”

As for Burrow, Fitzpatrick believes the Bengals quarterback could work his way into the NFL MVP conversation should Cincinnati vault both Buffalo and Kansas City (12-3) to win the AFC’s top seed.

No matter the outcome, Fitzpatrick said he foresees “matchups between Burrow, Allen and Mahomes will be deciding the top seed in the AFC for many years to come.”

What’s captivating about Monday night’s game is it being the first between Burrow and Allen. The teams haven’t met since 2019, a year before the Bengals selected Burrow with the No. 1 pick in the draft.

Burrow, meantime, is 3-0 against Mahomes, including a win in the AFC championship game last season. Allen is 2-3 in meetings against Mahomes, including playoff losses in each of the past two years.

Both quarterbacks played down the hype focused on their individual matchup, while acknowledging they’re friends and have a healthy respect for one another.

“Everybody watches Josh. There’s no secrets about why he’s so good,” Burrow said. “He makes throws nobody else can make.”

Allen returned the compliment.

“The dude’s all ball. He loves football. Honestly, he’s a heckuva talent, a heckuva player,” Allen said. “It’s been super impressive to watch and see his whole story, too. Going to Ohio State, transferring out, spending two years at LSU and arguably having one of the greatest seasons in college history.”

Both hail from small towns, Burrow is from The Plains, Ohio, and Allen from Firebaugh, California. And their college trajectory is similar in the challenges they've had to overcome.

While Burrow was overlooked at Ohio State, leading to his move to LSU, Allen was ignored by most every Division I school before landing a scholarship at Wyoming.

“I think adversity hit them both,” said ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck. “There’s humility there with both of these guys. And at the same time, there’s this uber confidence that is so infectious and contagious that your teammates are like, 'Let me just be around you.'"

To Hasselbeck, it’s similar to what he saw during his years backing up Brett Favre. Not only did Favre’s competitiveness provide the Packers confidence, his mere presence influenced opposing teams especially in how they approached the final minutes of a close game.

“There’s something about that style of competitiveness that opposing defenses and opposing coaches say, 'Ah, shoot, we left too much time on the clock,’” Hasselbeck said. “Both these guys have captured that, which is pretty special.”

From his pre-game rituals and the songs that get him most hyped, the Buffalo Bills quarterback chatted with PEOPLE about it all

From the farm to the gridiron, Josh Allen knows his way around a field.

Since being drafted seventh overall in the 2018 NFL draft, the 26-year-old California native has made western New York his home as a fifth-year quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.

Allen grew up in the small California town of Firebaugh, where he was raised by a family of third generation farmers. His extended family owns roughly 1,200 acres of farmland in the region and grows cotton, wheat, grapes, melons and pistachios.

His grit and hard work ethic forged on the ranch, combined with the strength gained digging ditches and hacking away weeds in part laid the fundamental foundation for the dream Allen lives out today: playing professional football.

Trading in his boots for his cleats, Allen has helped his new family — one that wears red and blue and calls them his teammates — for the past five NFL seasons. Prior to joining the Bills, he played Division I football at the University of Wyoming where he threw 44 touchdowns and 5,066 passing yards in 27 career games for the Cowboys.

As the All-Pro QB continues his impressive game with the Bills, he chatted with PEOPLE about his game-day rituals, who he idolized growing up and the songs that get him most hyped before hitting the field.

Keep scrolling to get to know the quarterback!

Do you have any game day rituals or superstitions that you must complete before hitting the field?

Josh: Yeah, actually! If it's a one o'clock game, I don't eat. If it's a night game, I'll eat breakfast. There's a playlist that I have to listen to right before we go out. The way I put my pads into my pants and then my socks, how I put my socks on, there's a little bit of superstition there too.

Is there a certain song you listen to before games that gets you pumped up?

Josh: No, it's actually old slow school, so I listen to Frank Sinatra, there's an Elvis track, there's a Sammy Davis Jr. track. And then the last two I listen to are a little bit of a pump up, but not much. That's like, 'Alright, get ready, you're going out there, get ready to go [kind of song].'

Do you have a post game routine?

Josh: Not really. That's a little bit different. Usually post game, I try to find ways where I can hang out with my teammates and find a spot to eat or have guys come over to the house and just hang out.

Do you read what people are saying about you on social media or do you try to avoid it completely?

Josh: I try to avoid it at all costs. Sometimes you'll get someone retweeting something about you here or there, but no, I try not to let that distract me. I try to be the same guy in this building every day. And the only opinions that really mattered to me are my friends, my family and my teammates.

Who was the player that you idolized growing up?

Josh: I think I had a few. Probably early on in my life was more Brett Favre, just the joy that he played the game. Then Tom [Brady] and Aaron [Rodgers]. I've had the pleasure of playing against those two guys and go to do some cool things. I did The Match with them last year, the golfing deal with them, which was really, really special and surreal to me. So I think those three guys are the ones that I've kind of, I wouldn't say modeled my game after, but just learned the love of the game through them and have just tried to act like them and emulate them in ways.

If you weren't playing football, what would your job be?

Josh: Probably working on the farm.

After yet another division crown, Josh Allen will enter the postseason with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

When the Bills drafted Josh Allen seventh overall in 2018, audible chuckles cascaded around him. Who drafts a quarterback that barely completed fifty-six percent of his passes? Additionally, the 44:21 touchdown to interception ratio screams project. Yet, the Bills, unfazed deemed Allen the franchise. Since he’s repaid their faith with four straight playoff appearances. For all of this success, the specter of postseason struggles weighs heavily. Josh Allen needs to lead the Bills to a Super Bowl appearance this year.

Training Wheels Off

For the Buffalo Bills, a team that waited through countless losing seasons, waiting for their cornerstone quarterback must feel like an eternity. As a result, the honeymoon period still exists. Granted, one of the better fanbases in the NFL earned the type of grace that four consecutive Super Bowl losses afford. However, Allen needs to break the mold of a phenomenal regular-season quarterback that cannot get his team over the hump. Five years and seventy-five starts in the regular season mean Allen is not a kid any longer. Instead, he is a grizzled veteran, that earned the praise and now needs the honest critique that accompanies talent. This postseason could start cementing the narrative around Josh Allen.

Expectations Isn’t A Dirty Word

Since the Bills ascended to the AFC East crown, critics began to expect more. First, the Bills enjoyed a playoff win. Then, they stacked two wins in a postseason. Now, simply making the AFC Championship game should not be the next step. In fact, the progression should lead the Bills into the Super Bowl. If you look at the numbers, the facts bear this out. The Bills possess the fourth-highest offense in the NFL. Meanwhile, they also employ the second-stingiest defense, allowing 17.9 points a game. With this in mind, no one can claim that Buffalo is an unbalanced team that relies on one side of the ball to carry it. Under those circumstances, anything short of an appearance in the big game should feel like a disappointment.

In His Defense

While Allen is the quarterback, he more than likely holds his own in the postseason, Completing sixty-five percent of his passes, and sporting a 14:1 touchdown-interception ratio. Additionally, he averages thirty-eight passes per game. The Bills also ran into the buzzsaw known as the Kansas City Chiefs. In two games, Allen and the Bills lost two shootouts. The Chiefs have a way of forcing the action to tilt into what they love doing: scoring in bunches. Allen can’t cover or tackle, so some of the onus falls upon the defense.

Historical Perspective

Look no further than Dan Marino for an unfortunate comparison. Marino, much like Allen, stood 3-3 in his first six playoff games. The only difference, Marino led the Dolphins to a Super Bowl appearance in his second season. Additionally, after the Dolphins made one more appearance in the AFC Championship game, a 29-10 manhandling was at the hands of Buffalo. If that parallel doesn’t suffice, Philip Rivers compiled a 5-7 postseason record, without sniffing a Super Bowl appearance.

Plain Truth

Few players can boast a rise like Josh Allen, a kid from Firebaugh, California with no scholarship offers. He toiled at Reedley College, a junior college known for having form MLB manager Bobby Cox as its most famous alum. Allen made himself who you see today, through hard work, dedication, and a drive to succeed. That should always be commended. However, he needs to bring the Bills franchise back to the Super Bowl. Not just for the team, but for his legacy. Ask any ringless Hall Of Fame and many would tell you that void cannot be filled with stats and awards.

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The Holiday Season for 2022 is knocking on the door and like always, Tesla is going to let its car owners enjoy it to the fullest. To have more freedom on Thanksgiving holidays this week, Tesla offers free Supercharging in 4 different states of the US this year.

However, there are a select few locations where Tesla is offering free Supercharging in California, Texas, Nevada, and Oklahoma. Tesa owners need to reach a designated Supercharger station during off-peak hours to enjoy this free Supercharging offer by the EV automaker (list of Supercharger stations below).

If your charging session ends before 9 AM in the morning or you plug in your Tesla after 8 PM in the evening at one of the following Superchargers, you will be able to get free Supercharging. This offer by Tesla is valid from Wednesday, November 23 – Sunday, November 27.

Thanksgiving Free Tesla Supercharger Locations (2022)

This Thanksgiving, Tesa has enabled the following 18 Supercharger locations in California that offer free Supercharging. This offer will also enable many Tesla owners to fight the rising Supercharging costs in California at least during Thanksgiving week and the weekend.

With the densest Tesla population in the United States and the entire world, California is the most hungry for charging needs as well. This state also has one of the largest Supercharger stations as well.

In 2020, Tesla built a Supercharger in Firebaugh, CA with 56 V3-level charging stalls. But the 100-stall Supercharger station in Harris Ranch, California beat it by a fair margin.

Kettleman City Supercharcharger is also on this list which has 96 charging stalls, a good opportunity to hit in off-peak hours and get your car charged with a possibility of a vacant spot.

Yes, only 1 location in the Tesla HQ state of Texas.

Tesla recommends that you use the Trip Planner available on Tesla vehicles’ center touchscreen display to easily navigate to the desired Supercharger location and also know how many stalls are free to use as you reach your destination (see video below for guidance).

Related

Iqtidar has been writing about Tesla, Elon Musk, and EVs for more than 3 years on XAutoWorld.com, many of his articles have been republished on CleanTechnica and InsideEVs, maintains a healthy relationship with the Tesla community across the Social Media sphere. You can reach him on Twitter @IqtidarAlii

FIREBAUGH, Calif. —

The earth is dead-level flat here, as unwavering as a Johnny Unitas haircut, an endless quilt of farmland that produces cotton, wheat, grapes, melons and pistachios. In normal times, on a given fall night, you can stand in one tiny town and see the glow of the football field in the next, from Kerman to Tranquillity to Mendota; Firebaugh to Dos Palos to Los Banos.

Ribbons of two-lane roads and generations of bitter rivalries separate the farming communities of the San Joaquin Valley, where local sports border on religion and high school heroics harden into lore. Yet these days, these elbowing towns feel as one, with everyone pulling in the same direction, the Hatfields proudly linking arms with the McCoys.

Because this is Josh Allen country.

Allen, the third-year quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, has his team one victory from the Super Bowl, and two from hoisting the Lombardi trophy for the first time. Standing in the way are the Kansas City Chiefs, defending Super Bowl champions, who play host to the Bills on Sunday in the AFC championship game.

“People say Josh is a special kid,” said Bill Magnusson, his coach at Firebaugh High. “You could say that a million times and it wouldn’t be enough.”

Even onetime adversaries are puffing their chests.

“I’m embracing this run he’s on,” said Beto Mejia, coach of the archrival Mendota Aztecs, who handed Firebaugh its only two losses during Allen’s senior season. “I get to sit back and tell myself, ‘Man, I coached against that kid.’ … And if I take some excitement and pride from it, I can just imagine his coaches from Firebaugh, how excited they are.”

Three of the NFL’s four remaining quarterbacks are from California — Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady, Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers, and Allen — with the outlier being Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, who grew up in Texas.

In Firebaugh, the excitement is palpable among locals who watched Allen go from a wiry kid — generously listed at 6 feet 2 and 180 pounds — to a 6-5, 237-pound bruiser reminiscent of John Elway with ability to do damage with his arm and legs. At 24, Allen has made a compelling case for most valuable player, shattering Buffalo passing records along the way.

Alex Gutierrez, Josh Allen’s baseball coach and quarterbacks coach at Firebaugh High School, talks about the quarterback’s number being retired by the school.

Alternating red and blue “Allen 17” banners will festoon O Street through the middle of Firebaugh this weekend. Allen’s extended family owns about 1,200 acres of farmland in the region, not counting the land his late grandfather donated for construction of the high school.

“Our community, it’s a pretty special place,” said Allen’s father, Joel. “We kind of take care of each other.”

Joel and LaVonne Allen, who have two sons and two daughters, seldom miss one of Josh’s games. They fly all over the country every fall weekend to see him play. But Joel won’t be at Sunday’s game because he’s recovering from the coronavirus and a bout with pneumonia that landed him in the hospital this month.

Alex Gutierrez, Josh Allen’s baseball coach and quarterbacks coach at Firebaugh High School, talks about how football players utilized wrestling techniques to improve their game.

LaVonne is making the trip, along with a contingent of family and friends from Firebaugh that includes Josh’s uncle, Todd Allen, among his most devoted fans.

“No one works harder at his craft than Josh does,” Todd said, sitting in the office of the family farm, wearing a Bills T-shirt and displaying a bobblehead of his nephew on his desk. “I don’t care what it is — baseball, basketball, football, and he was a swimmer in the summers too. I just can’t say enough about him.”

Allen set Bills records for completions, passing yards, and touchdowns, leading the team to a 13-3 record and its first AFC East title since 1995, the year before he was born. Buffalo has won eight games in a row and has a chance Sunday to avenge a 26-17 home loss to Kansas City in Week 6.

“They showed a couple of different things on defense, stuff we probably weren’t expecting,” Allen said this week of the Chiefs. “I think we’ve gotten a lot better since that game.”

Under the guidance of Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, and transformational tutelage of offseason quarterback coach Jordan Palmer, Allen has made remarkable strides during his three seasons. His completion rate jumped from 52.8% as a rookie to 69.2% this season. That’s the greatest two-year improvement in NFL history.

That’s just a continuation of the astounding trajectory of a player who was snubbed by Fresno State, once his dream school, and took a more circuitous route to the pros via Reedley Community College and then the University of Wyoming.

When the Bills made Allen the No. 7 pick in the 2018 draft, a lot of people thought he was too raw and too inaccurate to get a foothold in the NFL and lead that franchise back to prominence.

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But Allen has the grit and determination forged on the farm, where he and his younger brother, Jason, would hack away weeds, dig ditches, move irrigation pipes, and even pick massive cotton fields behind the wheel of $350,000 tractors. Whereas his family was at one end of the economic spectrum, Allen had plenty of friends and teammates on the other.

“Every summer, you’ve got half the football team that’s working out in the fields, and they do that to buy their school clothes and stuff,” said Alex Gutierrez, who was Allen’s quarterback and baseball coach at Firebaugh. “A lot of them, their parents work hard, but they need help paying the bills. A lot of times there were passing-league tournaments and his teammates would be working, and Josh would be the one driving around and picking them up. He had the pickup, and his truck was always full. He always had three teammates with him.”

In the years since, Allen has taken the whole region on a different kind of ride, a surreal one.

“There’s a picture from Josh’s rookie year when he was shaking Tom Brady’s hand, he was hugging him after the game when they played each other,” Gutierrez said, standing on the dirt track surrounding the Firebaugh football field, where Allen’s retired No. 15 is painted on the press box. “You see that and it’s like, wow, this is really happening right now.”

Brady Jenkins, the former mayor of Firebaugh, Calif., and Allen’s former coach, talks about the impact Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen had on the town while growing up there.

Todd Allen has too many memories of his nephew to count. One in particular stands out. It happened at West Hills Community College in Coalinga, when a bulked-up Josh was at Reedley and just discovering his ability to run over defenders.

“His team was down like 28-7 at halftime, and Josh made such a ferocious comeback they almost won the game,” Todd recalled. “I just remember him starting to run in that game, and I go, ‘Where’s that coming from?’ He was running down the field, and I was running right along with him along the top of the stadium.”

When people asked what he was doing, Todd told them: “I’m running with Josh.”

Years later, the whole Central Valley can say the same.