Tyrod Taylor has been ridiculed by fans and now loses the vote of confidence of the Buffalo Bills’ front office. This move is ridiculous.
This is the first move of the Brandon Beane / Sean McDermott era of which I have not agreed with.
I loved the Sammy Watkins trade because of the flexibility it gave the Buffalo Bills’ front office to work with the roster in any way they please. They doubled down on the cap savings when they dealt Ronald Darby to Philadelphia.
The salary cap forces General Managers to make extremely difficult decisions, and the quarterback situation is always one of them. Look at Cleveland. The Browns have been searching for their quarterback for twenty years. The Jaguars have been stuck with Blake Bortles, and the Texans have been on a Scooby-Doo-esque chase for their guy until they drafted Watson.
Buffalo had it easy. Tyrod Taylor was the guy, and he even restructured his 30 million dollar deal last offseason; chopping it in half to 15 million a year just to stay in Buffalo. Tyrod Taylor was shocked by the news, and so was I.
Bleacher Report wrote an article documenting the two cardinal sins that a front office can make. Here are the two:
"Cardinal Sin One: Coveting the Pocket Passer over the Scrambler.Cardinal Sin Two: Filling the Roster with Your Guys Instead of the Best Guys."
It looks like the Buffalo Bills did just that. The pocket-passer bias is something I wrote about months ago when Bills’ fans were calling for Tyrod Taylor’s head back in August. Said bias is understandable. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have won a majority of Super Bowls the past few years, and this is a copy-cat league. The thing is, there are only three or four of those quarterbacks in a life time.
Filling the roster with ‘your’ guys instead of the best guys is way more agitating. It blows my mind that the front office would make a monumental switch like this when the team is in serious playoff contention.
So Nathan Peterman starts, throws for 250 yards, a pick, and a touchdown in a winning effort this week against the Los Angeles Chargers, but where do we go from there? Are we saying that Tyrod Taylor couldn’t do the same? Letting an asset such as Tyrod Taylor walk is a tough sell.
I wish Peterman the best of luck maneuvering the pocket against Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram while Casey Hayward and Trevor Williams are swallowing Buffalo’s receivers on the back end.
Don’t get me wrong, while Nathan Peterman could be the better long-term option; Buffalo is in a win now mode currently. If I’m Brandon Beane, I would do anything possible to end that 17-year drought and the team is in the position to do so. Why not let Peterman sit until the end of the year?
Next: Peterman gets the nod because Tyrod Taylor was set up to fail
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