SoTier

On White's interception, Alex Smith had Kelce open and waving to him in the EZ ... but you and the numerous others who continually bring up all the plays Taylor "left on the field" always ignore other QBs' mistakes and act as if Taylor is the only QB in the NFL who doesn't make the absolute best decision every single time he throws the ball. The Taylor-haters have even tried to do that with Peterman, making all kinds of excuses and/or pretending those 5 INTs somehow didn't happen. Guess what. Even Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady "miss" plays. Of course, since those two QBs are not only the two best in the NFL but are surrounded by talented players and the recipients of excellent coaching, they usually can make up for those misses. Taylor is not as good as Rodgers and Brady, but he also has the bigger handicap, this year especially, of being surrounded by JAGs, STers, and PS refugees and suffering under crappy offensive coaching.

Among your many inane posts on this MB, this one is so stupid that I have to think that you posted this as a joke. Even you cannot be this ignorant to write this bull manure ... at least hope I would hope so because otherwise it's pretty sad.

Except that Ryan didn't cave. The last game he coached was the 34-31 OT loss to the Carp. Taylor was his QB. Manuel started the last game of the season, another loss, with Anthony Lynn as interim HC. More likely Taylor would get a bonus for starting all sixteen games or some other performance milestone, and the Bills didn't want to pay it. They did that with JP Losman one year. However different some fans think this regime is from previous ones, most of the same manure that went on previously is still going on. My guess is somebody above the level of GM sent down the order to bench Taylor last year ... and likely did the same this year.

Matthews is what he was in Philly: a JAG. Besides, with Benjamin, Jones, and Thompson, they've got at least 1 more NFL caliber WR than they had in September, so be happy.

Yeah, but the Bills love doing it because ... well, it's just worked so well in their strategy to avoid the post-season. Right-o. It's so smart because it's worked so well all over the league: replace all your talent with scrubs and rookies. The only bear the Bills are loading up for is losing for the foreseeable future. Cousins isn't going to sign with a team with no OL and 1NFL caliber starting WR with a bad knee. All those players you mentioned were disposed of by the Bills because they were expensive. So is Shady. Like Glenn, Clay, Incognito, and anybody else on the team making above league minimum, he's likely to get the axe as the Bills continue their quest to out-Cleveland the Browns. Since only about 50% of QBs drafted in the top half of the first round since 2000 turn out to be decent starters at best (Jay Cutler level or better), and even fewer turn out to be "franchise QBs", I guess the Bills' penchant for drafting DBs in the first round is really, really smart, huh?

If the Bills win, it would prove it.

The Giants aren't releasing Manning before the end of the season. They're taking so much heat from the NY and national media over benching him that they simply wouldn't dare even if he was causing problems on the team, which, of course, he's not because that's not how the Mannings roll, especially Eli who probably bleeds Giants blue. This is just another crappy HC looking for a scapegoat.

I suppose if they thought he'd never play again that they wouldn't pick up his option, but I would have thought by March that they might have had a better handle on his recovery.

There are NOT going to be 7 QBs taken in the first round, much less the first 7 picks. There are generally only 10-12 QBs taken in the entire 7 rounds of the draft. Even back in the 1970s when there were 17 or 18 rounds in the draft and sometimes 20+ QBs were taken, most of those came in the later rounds. The best QB draft ever, 1983, had 6 first rounders scattered from #1 to #27 but there is absolutely no indication that 2017 is anything like 1983 in quality or volume ... except in the minds of some TBD posters like the one who made this claim. The last time more than 4 QBs were taken in the first round was in 1999 when 5 were drafted.

Bridgewater is a 2014 first rounder, so Minnesota should have him for 2019 on his rookie contract. I agree with your assessment of Bridgewater pre-injury; he was not spectacular, but as Keenum has shown, the Vikes have the talent and the coaching to win with even a reasonably talented QB with some leadership skills. I think Bradford is definitely the odd man out, and Bridgewater the likely winner if he is truly healed from his injury.

No team is going to trade for Taylor because they know that the Bills will cut him in the off-season. Just like no team would give up a decent pick for Dareus because they figured that the Bills would cut him in the off-season and they could get a top DT in his prime for free with a more team-friendly contract -- until Jax decided they could make the playoffs despite having Bortles as QB if their D was better.

And what, exactly, is that plan? How exactly does a team rebuild by shedding younger, talented players and keeping/acquiring older players who spent their careers as backups or STers?

And I prefer reality to myth. Wade Phillips was here 3 years before he was forced out by Wilson (1998-2000) Gregg Williams was here 3 years and his contract was not renewed (2001-2003) Mike Mularkey was here for 2 years before resigning. (2004-2005) Dick Jauron was fired in his fourth year after having his contract renewed in 2008. (2006-2009) Perry Fewell was the interim HC who took over from Jauron. (2009) Chan Gailey was HC for 3 years. He may have been fired or just didn't have his contract renewed. (2010-2012) Doug Marrone was HC for 2 years. He chose to quit, probably after losing a power struggle with Doug Whaley. (2013-2014) Rex Ryan was the only regular HC who was fired after less than 2 full seasons on the job. Again, see above. The Bills haven't gone around firing their coaching staffs because they didn't make the playoffs. Ryan was fired because he was an incompetent buffoon who made promises he couldn't keep and used the team payroll as a feeding trough for his family and friends. He deserved the boot. In hindsight, perhaps the Bills should have tried harder to keep Marrone and even Mularkey. Both seem to have turned out to be decent NFL HCs. I think you misread/misinterpreted my statement. I meant that no HC had ever tried it before. IMO, it's ludicrous to think an NFL HC woud consider it since it's totally out of character because like players, they're conditioned to always try to win.

My realism says that starting Peterman in a game that the Bills appeared to have a chance to win when the Bills had a winning record and a hold on a playoff spot only makes sense if the purpose was to distract fans from the defensive collapse and the coaching staff's inability to fix it. Sorry, but you own your mistakes, especially when you want the power to make the big decisions, and that applies to first year HCs, too. McDermott made one in starting Peterman. Dennison made more than one in the Peterman fiasco, including not seeing that that kid wasn't ready to start as well as drawing up a game plan that would set up just about any first time NFL starter to fail. If McDermott continues to make serious mistakes down the stretch that call his coaching judgement into question, then yes, maybe he should be replaced. Cry me a river. "It's time to try see if this rookie QB drafted on Day Three is the next Tom Brady," said no NFL HC ever with his team having a winning record and a piece of the playoffs, especially when his rookie QB was as unready for a pro start as Peterman appeared to be. Taylor had 1 bad game ... against the Saints. Maybe if Dennison designed plays that had some prayer of working against good defenses, Taylor wouldn't have to check down so much. Dennison is the one who decides which plays the Bills run, y'know. Minnesota doesn't have a franchise QB either, but they sure don't play Jauron 2.0.

The Bills aren't getting a third or any other pick for Taylor. He's due a big bonus just after the start of the league's new year, and the Bills aren't going to pay that to a player they don't want. Consequently, if they can't trade him, they'll cut him ... and every team in the league knows how the Bills operate. It's why they only got a 6th for Dareus ... teams knew the Bills wanted him gone so badly that they'd take anything.

I'm not sure what your point is. You're the one who claimed that McDermott wouldn't start a rookie unless he was "out of this world in camp" ... and Peterman wasn't. Certainly his play as a starter was so unacceptable that one has to wonder what the coaches saw in him to make them think he could even be a reasonable backup QB. Because he wouldn't be Taylor. I don't think that will happen, however. A first round QB will cost less and sell more seats ... and don't think that the Bills ever ignore their bottom line.

Excuse me, but why in the world would a team give up its first round pick and a player to get "the cream of the 2nd tier" QB???? That's called a backup QB. You only trade up to grab the best QB in the draft IMO. You can draft a backup in the fifth round ... Really? He already did ... even when the Bills were holding down a playoff spot.

The Bills are gearing towards getting cheaper. They are one of the oldest teams in the NFL because they haven't gotten rid of older, expensive veterans in their effort to retool but have simply replaced more expensive players with cheaper ones. A team looking to really retool not simply cut salary would have cut Kyle Williams rather than trade Marcel Dareus if they felt the need to get rid of a DT, which was a stupid move in the middle of the season anyways, but then, the Bills are just special that way. Making stupid moves is the key to their success at avoiding the playoffs for this entire century. I expect Shady to be gone before next season, and likely Glenn, Incognito, and Clay as well. Maybe even Wood, too. Can't waste money on OLers and TEs, especially if they don't buy into the system by getting hurt.

What does whether someone agrees with Taylor about what he thinks about his benching have to do with their being a fan of his or not? We're talking normal fans of a football player, not groupies or stalkers here. As for Taylor's belief that he was benched because he was black, I would like to categorically deny that but I can't. There have been so many personnel moves made that, taken together, scream, "Taylor has been set up to fail". The OC seems to have deliberately instituted an offensive system and drawn up game plans intended to minimize Taylor's strengths and maximize his shortcomings. Then Dennison created a game plan for Peterman that was completely inappropriate for a rookie QB starting his first NFL game as if he were deliberately trying to show up Taylor. Now, McDermott comes out and says, "well, Tyrod's starting against NE but after that 'no promises'". Since it's unlikely that the Bills have lured Peyton Manning out of retirement, I have to wonder what Taylor did to po whomever on the Bills he po'd because somebody sure has it in for him. Or somebodies. There is something putrid about the Bills actions and attitude towards Taylor this year that wouldn't look good in the light of day, and that goes triple for benching him at SD. I don't know what it might be, but it seems to be more than just incompetence on the part of McDermott, his coaches, and Beane. Maybe it's the subtle kind of racism where some people think there are some jobs that blacks just can't do as well as whites or maybe it is simply holding black QBs to higher standards than white QBs. All the posters constantly whining about how many times Taylor leaves plays on the field while conveniently ignoring that white QBs do the same thing are good examples of how that works. For myself, I think benching Taylor might have been done simply to take the focus off how poorly the defense had been playing since the Dareus trade. He's become the convenient scapegoat for all the troubles the Bills FO and coaching staff have brought upon the team by stripping it of most of its talent and insisting on using an offensive scheme that does not fit the personnel that they have, from the QB to the RBs to the OL to the WRs.

I understand statistics fine, but you are trying to change the parameters because your original claim that draft position doesn't make a difference doesn't hold up. It does. The closer to the top of the draft a QB is taken the better chance he has of success. QBs drafted in the top half of the first round have about a 50% success rate, but the QBs taken #1 hit at 80%: of the 10 QBs taken at #1 between 2000 and 2014, only 2 -- David Carr and Ja'Marcus Russell -- were outright busts. Sam Bradford has been a disappointment primarily because he hasn't been able to stay healthy. All the others became Pro Bowlers, some MVPs, Super Bowl winners, etc. Of the 14 QBs taken in the bottom half of the first round (17-32), only Chad Pennington, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco, and Teddy Bridgewater have been successful. That's only about 29% success.

Actually, we do. At best, he is not ready to play in the NFL and at worst he's no better than the TC fodder he played against in the preseason. He is nowhere near the supposedly "pro ready" QB that his fanboys claimed he was. He's not nearly as good a backup as Jeff Tuel was in 2013, so he's not even ready to be an NFL backup QB.

YOU look historically! The only QBs from outside the first round to have any kind of success as starters who were drafted between 2000 and 2014 are: Tom Brady, 6th 2000 Drew Brees, 2nd 2001 David Garrard, 4th 2002 Matt Schaub, 3rd 2004 Kyle Orton, 4th 2005 Derek Anderson, 6th 2005 Matt Cassel, 7th 2005 Ryan Fitzpatrick, 7th 2005 Matt Flynn, 7th 2008 Tyrod Taylor, 6th 2011 Russell Wilson, 3rd 2012 Kirk Cousins, 4th 2012 That's 12 QBs that range in success from the GOAT to minimally acceptable starters out of 153 QBs drafted after round 1 in those 15 years. That's 8% success rate. Only Brady, Brees, and Wilson are truly top tier QBs. Schaub and Cousins are probably a step down from the top three so that's 5 good/excellent QBs (3%) found after round 1 in this century. Moreover, Brees, Wilson, and Cousins were all considered to be either too short or too slight to be successful NFL QBs. Brady was a skinny kid who got caught up in athletic department politics and had limited starts at Michigan despite playing better than the starting QB whom the AD insisted start. Of the rest, Taylor is easily the best ... and he shares the same problem that Cousins has: he's considered rather slight to play QB.

This is what the Bills should do but it's not what they're going to do IMO.

I totally agree. Even players who don't play well almost always play that way because they lack talent. A few may have personal issues that impinge on their ability to play better but guys don't make it to the NFL if they're lazy. I don't even hate my least favorite Bill, Vlad Ducasse; if he could be better, he would be. I'm angry at the poor decisions the Bills FO and coaching staff have made that have made him a starter!!! This year at least most of Taylor's problems are also on the Bills FO and coaching staff. Every QB who ever played from Tom Brady to Nate Peterman needs protection and targets as well as an offensive game plan that maximizes his assets and minimizes his limitations. Taylor has not had any of those this year. Peterman didn't, either. It's like these moronic coaches developed game plans for both of them designed to insure they failed! My guess is that just about every QB in the NFL this season would struggle to look good playing for the 2017 Bills. Well, then, isn't being a fan of any team rather "lemming-ish"? It looked like there were a lot of lemmings waving yellow towels down in Pittsburgh last night. How can you be a fan of any team and not support the players who make up that team? You don't have to be a fan of each player to support them as team members. I don't see the hatred repeatedly expressed against some Bills players -- particularly Taylor and Dareus this season -- as being a sign of anything except the individual hater's own shortcomings.

He's also had a much worse team around him than those 1990s Bills, especially this season when that OL has been trash. It's easy to forget just how talented those teams were. I can't watch video of those 1990s teams ... it's hard to believe those were Bills teams after watching the garbage teams the Bills have fielded in this century.