transplantbillsfan

And Brady would have stayed on the bench if Bledsoe wasn't knocked out in a Jets game. Even Tier 1 guys need the circumstances, like I said. Just not as many. Taylor wasn't seeing the field over Flacco because the team was successful with Flacco for several years. They were going to the playoffs and AFC Championships and then won a Super Bowl. Circumstances really aligned for Flacco in the first 5 years of his career, so much so that he bet on himself, won a Super Bowl and GOT PAID. Then the team couldn't afford more talent because all that money was going to Flacco and look what happened. You legitimately think Eli and Flacco are so much better than Taylor right now? Totally disagree. In fact, I bet if Taylor were the QB of the Giants right now the Giants would be a better team and have more than 1 win. Lots of stars need to align to be a long term NFL starter at the most important position in sports, no matter how much talent he has

I don't think it's about contract, it's about ability. Tier 2 needs more stars to align than tier 1. There are a lot of QBs throughout history who are tier 2 guys, but the stars didn't align and they fell off the face of the earth. David Carr is the first example that pops in my head. He wasn't a bad QB. he was just in an absolutely atrocious situation. I'd say the same thing for RG3. The tier 2 guys need help in different ways. David Carr needed an OL. RG3 was a bit of a head case, so I think his issues had more to do with guidance in terms of leadership. It's almost revisionist history, don't you think? Remember all the conversation in the 2012 draft? RG3 was viewed by many as one of the best prospects to come out in years, and if it weren't for luck coming out in the same year, he was the clear-cut number one draft choice. Some QBs were just destined for tier 3 or below. I think EJ was always one of those guys, sadly. He just never had it upstairs. And I'm not talking about intelligence, I'm talking about IT. Tier 2 guys are never solidly in tear one or solidly in tear three. There will be years where we'll talk about them as elite guys like we did with Ryan last year or Tannehill and his second or third year (I can't remember which) or Kaepernick as he began his career or the other way around like Goff last year. Once you know you have a tier 2 guy, I think you need to make a very abrupt choice: keep shooting for a tier one guy and probably miss or build your team and system to suit the tier 2 guy's strengths. You can keep looking for a tear one guy. But once you start adopting your system and bringing in players for the tier 2 guy, you're probably going to be bringing in some W-2s, which would mean you'd have to somehow luck out in getting your tier one guy. But then again, all the teams that have tier one guys lucked out, one way or another. It was inevitable once he saw the field. I agree seeing the field wasn't inevitable, though.

Eli's tier 2. Plenty of tier 2 guys have been to and won Super Bowls. Cam Newton, Joe Flacco, Eli, Russell Wilson are all tier 2 guys, but guys who also prove you can win with those guys in the right circumstances. I think the blurred line between tier 1 and 2 are Big Ben and Kurt Warner. Both of those guys have played at such high levels, but have also been the beneficiaries of some unbelievable talent with Big Ben having Leveon Bell and Mike Wallace and Antonio Brown over the years and Kurt Warner having Marshall Falk and Torrey Holt and Isaac Bruce with Mike Martz calling the plays and then Fitz in Atlanta. Another? Been here since the beginning of March. I've started 14 threads since I've been here, 10 about Taylor. I'm barely averaging 1 thread a month. Plenty of posters on here are much, much worse. No need to enter them if you don't want to discuss, ya know

Nononono... You misunderstand what I meant. Matty Ice is a Franchise QB now, but it's thanks to all those circumstances I mentioned. Him being a franchise QB wasn't inevitable in the same way those Tier 1 guys were.

My oh my... looks like Taylor was 5/5 with a TD in the intermediate middle portion of the field... one of the biggest areas of criticism folks have had towards Taylor

All QBs need some circumstances, but for a small minute handful of QBs there was an inevitability that they'd be Franchise QBs purely based on their physical ability/ mental ability/ intangibles. Tier 1 QBs are the Elite guys (Brady, Brees, and Rodgers are the only 3 absolutes up there with Big Ben probably creeping in, too) who can largely "carry a team," even though with Football being the ultimate team sport, these guys still needed a couple things to fall into place. Brady would never have been Brady without the Hoodie... same for Brees & Payton. I actually think Rodgers might be a slight step above those guys because I just think Rodgers and McCarthy have never jibed as well as the rest, but Rodgers had the circumstance of learning from one of the best in the game on the bench for 4 years and not feeling any pressure. These guys are the generational, rare 1st ballot HOFers that Buffalo was so lucky to have once in Jim Kelly. But they're rare. Incredibly rare. Previous to the 3 (maybe 4...?) guys above we've had maybe 2 other QBs we've seen in that category playing in the NFL since 2000 in Peyton Manning and Brett Favre. Tier 3 QBs are the guys who are often labelled as "journeymen," "fringe starters," or even "bridge QBs." These are the guys defined by Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh McCown and Brian Hoyer over the span of their careers. These are guys you want as your backup, but will suffer through them as your starter because they might pleasantly surprise you on occasion. Tier 2 QBs are the vast majority of guys in the NFL and these are the guys who have the ability/capability to be/of being a Franchise QB, but unlike the tier 1 guys, it's not inevitable, or close to it the way those guys are. This is where Tyrod Taylor sits. There are plenty of guys in this category, some of them are probably the higher end of tier 2 like Ryan, Goff, and Wentz. Some of them might be more in the middle like Cousins, Prescott, and Rivers. And others are on the lower end like Dalton, Flacco and Tannehill. But they're all there in tier 2. The last 2 years for both Matt Ryan and Jared Goff exemplify this tier. They require the right circumstances and, unlike the tier 1 guys, they need a combination of several of these circumstances to be what one might consider a "Franchise QB." These circumstances typically are a combination of weapons in the passing game, a running game, offensive system, offensive play caller, and/or defense. Matt Ryan has always had the weapons over the span of his career (as a rookie he had an explosive running game with Michael Turner and a solid WR corps with one of the league's best WRs at the time in Roddy White and throughout his career he's had Tony Gonzales and Julio Jones and Davonte Freeman and so on) and he's also always had pretty good Offensive Coordinators/playcallers (Mike Mularkey, Dirk Koetter, Kyle Shanahan). Last year Matt Ryan had an MVP season and I remember all the "HE'S ELITE!!!" conversation. Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I predicted that Ryan would take a pretty significant step back this season because I believed Shanahan was largely responsible for Ryan's season. And look what's happened? Ryan still looks like a starter but has come dropping out of any of the "Elite" dialogue anyone was having... it's pretty funny because I bet all those talking heads who were saying that (and there were A LOT!!!) just feel like idiots now. It's not that Ryan is a bad QB. He's not, he's good. He's just not great the way those tier 1 guys are. He still has good weapons there, so he's still gonna be good enough. Jared Goff is like the exact opposite example of this. Yeah, I know he was just a rookie last year, but he absolutely SUCKED last year. Like he just looked really bad and the Rams looked foolish. And keep in mind that this was with one of the better defenses in the league and also with one of the more talented RBs in the league (whose production also, ironically was terrible... consistent with this whole "OC help needed" theme, hmmm? 0:)) Then what happens? The team hires a brilliant young offensive mind as a head coach and goes out and acquires talent at the WR position, much to Buffalo's chagrin. And voila!!! Do you guys honestly think Goff just magically became a different guy or is he seriously the beneficiary of a brilliant young offensive play caller and newly acquired (or differently utilized) Elite talent? Yeah, I think it's the latter. Taylor's in this tier, too. These guys aren't good enough to overcome circumstances, and so far in his career, there have been more circumstances working against Taylor than a lot of the other guys in this tier, which might be the reason we move on from him after this year or, more likely, after next year. But if some circumstances can start shaping up more in Taylor's favor, he's a guy who CAN be our Franchise QB.

Tyrod Taylor as the 3rd string QB???? Sheer lunacy Taylor is better than Fitz, first of all. Second of all, just last week you were saying you had one foot on the Taylor bandwagon? What happened? If you say the Jets game, you lied about ever being open to Taylor and were just waiting for any loss the Bills had to pounce. And the Jets game was not the loss to pounce on Taylor's play since that's one of Taylor's 5 best career games (I'd say) and the team lost in spite of his performance, not because of it.

This is going to get a really warm response, I can tell http://buffalonews.com/2017/11/04/stats-wizard-tyrod-taylor-or-ben-roethlisberger-no-seriously/ Tyrod Taylor or Ben Roethlisberger? No, seriously ...

I remember what you think of as my "meltdown" right after the Steelers game, yes. I made very sure to word that entire thread carefully. I was composed, calm and deliberate. The gist of the post was that Taylor wasn't the guy FOR US because of the way our team was being run philosophically with Rex and how our defenses under Rex (who I'd assumed would still be around this season) would need a top 5 QB. And since I thought Rex would be back, I wasn't remotely willing to put up with another inevitable losing season just to keep Taylor. I'm a Bills fan. Once Taylor's not a Bill he's "just another guy" pretty quickly for me. In that thread, I even said in that Taylor would start and probably be successful to some degree with another team, he just wasn't good enough for us. And Taylor still isn't good enough to carry a team with a bad defense to the playoffs. My stance there hasn't changed, though I do think Taylor's gotten better and is making strides this year. Meltdown? Too funny.

You're really talking in circles and losing your own argument. You and xRushx are doing an amazing job destroying whatever credibility the "Tyrod sucks" argument ever had, keep it up

You have an insane definition of Franchise QB.

I have a legitimate series of questions: How are you not banned? Is Crusher actually banned from TBD? If he is, how on earth did you outlast him when you're so much worse than even he was?

The biggest "if" in what I said is probably the playoffs, though. Taylor's a pretty consistent QB throughout his career in the sense that his bad isn't nearly as bad as the worst you've seen from the likes of Bortles, Winston or Cousins. With the addition of Benjamin and Clay coming back, I actually think the first part of that "if" you're so skeptical of is pretty likely. It's the playoffs part that's still the question, but we're still in pretty good position even for that.

We all probably agreed he hadn't proven he was a Franchise QB. I still don't think he has. But I'm pretty sure he's played games since then and has at least 8 more to go this season. If the 2nd half of the season he's worse than he was in the 1st half and we lose a lot and miss the playoffs, we all know he's not and that he'll be replaced. If he almost exactly resembles his first half of the season or is even better with weapons like Benjamin and Clay coming back and we make the playoffs. I think the answer to whether Taylor is our Franchise QB swings towards yes. This is still a conversation for good reason.

We all decided and so it must be? There are 16 games in the season and Taylor still has eight more. Nothing has been decided. I don't agree with the OP, either. The course of the season needs to run out before the coach/GM deciding what he really is, anyway. Our opinions as fans mean absolute squat. i've been listening to what McDermott has been saying and watching team moves like our acquisition of Benjamin along with watching Taylor actually play. Seems pretty clear Taylor's making the most of his opportunity and McDermott likes what he sees out of Taylor as a QB and a leader. I think it's almost inevitable yet again the way I thought last offseason that Taylor's still our starter next year. And that's another 16 games. And more of an opportunity to prove himself. And if he plays well next year on a (we assume) more talented team then you can bet he's likely going to be back for the 5th straight year as the Bills starter. At that point is the conversation really still "is he a franchise QB?" I just think the dominoes have started falling in favor of Taylor's long term prospects in Buffalo.

Ya know what else someone should look up? When was the last time a team won when the QB was part of 90% of the offensive output, cause that's what Taylor did Thursday.

110 passing yards. Does it matter? Did it actually look to you like the Jets D remotely lightened up? Even his "garbage TD" was a contested catch on a beautiful throw. The Jets D was out to embarrass the Bills the entire game.

You can't even do simple math. Anazing.

Hilarious. I'm assuming now you're drastically reducing this all to passing TDs instead of total TDs. Taylor averaged 23.5 TDs in his first 2 years as a starter. Funny. Most people round up when it's 0.5, yet you couldn't even say 19 passing TDs. You had to round down, which no one ever does. Talk about an absolutely pathetic agenda:doh:

Stupid? Who's the friggin dumbass insinuating you need close to 60 TDs to be a Franchise QB? Or that Taylor only gets 15 TDs a year? Still using the word "retard," are we?

Who the HELL is getting 15 TDs per season?! Some posts in here are absolutely moronic!

TBD and borderline but making the case as one so far

What quote of mine are you responding to?

Resorting to name calling now? Go read your own words. the wheels seem to be falling off for the anTy argument

Well reading through this thread it's clear most won't budge. Some previously adamant anTy Taylor guys are demonstrating actual flexibility and objectivity like JaCrispy, which is impressive. Some clearly didn't even watch the game. Some are hanging all over Romo's jock as a commentator, which is pretty funny. This entire discussion is old and stale for many reasons, but some people have a vision of what they need their QB to be and Taylor will never be it, despite the obvious steps forward he's taken in his game. Oh, what's a Franchise QB? Are people seriously just equating Franchise QB with an Elite QB? I remember GoBills808 once defined Franchise QB as a QB who starts for the same team for 5 straight years. That means Dalton and Flacco would be Franchise QBs. Who here would do a straight up trade of Taylor for Flacco/Dalton?