grb

Way back on 13Oct, this was my take on Petermania : Not to be a sourpuss, but there are three problems with Petermania : (1) Never has so many back-up dreams been based on so little. Usually the backup makes a splash in preseason with big-time plays and gaudy numbers - by (yes) facing third-stringers, future Sears salesmen, and vanilla defenses. But Peterman completed just 54% of his passes for 5.4 yards per attempt. His longest throw was only 28 yards. Petermanics thrill to the memory of a ten yard slant (it was soooooo perfect), forgetting the wildly inaccurate throws it was sandwiched between. Taylor's bad outtings playing meaningful games against some of the league's most brutal defenses are barely worse than Peterman's entire preseason record. (2) Right now the Bills have no running attack, an offensive line which frequently implodes, a (temporary, we hope) head case for one receiver, several punt returners for other receivers, and the very definition of a journeyman pulled off the scrap heap topping the group off. Prior to Cincinnati, Taylor was in the top-quarter of the NFL making plus-twenty yard pass plays with pretty much a tight end and running back alone. Then, of course, he lost the tight end. Instead of dreamily believing Nathan can make more of this dung hill, why not ask how Taylor has been able to accomplish what he has? Setting aside raw attempts, who has made more with less? And here's a question : How exactly is poor NP going to stretch the field? If you found the 4.7 ypa Bengal's game ugly, what do you expect Peterman to produce? Ya ain't seen nutt'n yet, dink and dunk-wise. (3) Taylor and Peterman were both late-round picks for a reason. In both cases there were / are problems with their game. Believe it or not, Taylor is at least an average quarterback today. Given decent NFL-grade talent to play with, he's looked pretty solid. But that has been an accomplishment of years of hard work on both his strengths and weaknesses. If Flacco had gone down Taylor's rookie year, I'd bet anything TT would have flamed-out years ago. Peterman has a chance to beat the odds too, but I don't think it will come from being dumped into the Bills' cesspool offense. The Petermanics' dreamy best wishes may kill their man with kindness..... Edited October 13 by grb I think my last point looks pretty strong today. Peterman can recover from this game, but sometimes entire careers burn out when young players are asked to do too much too soon. Also, prediction-wise : Peterman averaged 4.7 ypa, so my prediction he'd do worse was way off-base...... https://www.twobillsdrive.com/community/topic/197095-again-how-can-a-switch-to-peterman-be-any-worse/?page=28

I have a hard time believing whoever wrote that article took it seriously ....... or was sober ...... or something. It was incredibly lame.

But we'll just need another Tyrod thread then, so what's the point?

OK, lottery tickets : Your odds of winning the lottery on a single ticket is one in 175 million. Say I'm sitting up on a cloud overhead and decide "That jmc12290 has led a blameless life. I think I'll increase his chance of winning to one in 87.5 million" How much better off do you think you'd be? How much gratitude should I expect? Attached is the passing charts of all quarterbacks. In Week 9 three quarterbacks completed a single pass to the deep middle. You follow quarterbacks like Cousins or Stafford or Prescott and they may have one deep middle completion in five games. Remember, this subject came from Thurman insisting it was a critical flaw in Taylor's game. Given it has almost zero important to anyone's (and everyone's) game, how critical a flaw can it be? https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/charts/list/pass

Really? Then perhaps you'd be interested in this : After the Jets game Taylor was sixth in the NFL in the percent of his throws going for plus-20 yards. The people in front of him were Goff, Watson, Brady, Cousins and Brees (though I forget what order). Immediately behind Taylor was Wilson. Then came everyone else.

There's a kind of zen perfection to this response. Here you attempt to tease out some kind of weird distinction with no more substance than dissipating mist, There you loudly disparage useless & meaningless arguing It's like a snake swallowing it's own tail. Definitely well-played obfuscation-wise. Two Points : (1) The refrain from every Tyrod critic wasn't that TT's middle-throws were a few percentage points below league average. The people making that point were defenders, not critics. The critics were the ones claiming Taylor only threw across the middle every time the nine planets aligned in a harmonic convergence. But - you'll say - that's stupid. Yeah; maybe we'll make a Taylor defender out of you yet. (2) But only if you give up trolling games like your chose to / chose not to. The people who convinced themselves Taylor never threw into the middle thought it was because he was too short, too afraid, and unable to process what was happening there. But - you'll say - that's stupid. Yeah.........

Is there? I don't think the people religiously convinced Taylor never threw to the middle thought it a whimsical quirk. Nope, it was another one of his innate flaws, of which the man apparently has dozens upon dozens. He can't throw accurately, he can't see the field, he can't understand defenses, he can't make decisions, he can't throw to his tight end, but he can't throw to his wide receivers, he can't do progressions, he can't "throw receivers open", he can't throw from the pocket, he can't lead late fourth quarter drives, etc, etc, etc. It's pretty amazing someone who can't do any of the things every other NFL QB does sits there at no. 11 by the NFL passer rating - with an o-line prone to turnstile-mode, a rushing attack which disappears completely for whole games, and receiving targets rescued from league equivalent of Goodwill. Just think what Taylor might accomplish if he wasn't the most incompetent quarterback who ever existed in the universe? But to get back on point : (1) Very early starting Taylor focused on outside throws. (2) Into his first year starting, he was throwing to the middle - but at a slightly lower rate than typical. (3) Yeah, he doesn't go to the deep middle often, but it's an infrequent throw league-wide.

Two points : A zillion people said Taylor "can't throw over the middle". Is it possible you never saw that nonsense repeated over & over & over & over? No, it's not possible. So you must be trolling, which is a pretty "desperate" thing to do. You've tried this "deep & intermediate" shtick before, and it's never worked - not even once. Why do you think it will work this time? Attached is a link to NFL passing charts. Give it a look and you'll find your not "nearly as often as other QBs do" thing is as bogus now as the other twenty times you've tried it. https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/charts/list/pass

Pro Football Focus judged two of the sacks as Taylor's fault. Five sacks in one game is also inexcusable.

Take it a step further and image Taylor with (say) Dak's pocket - not to mention his receivers & running attack.

Total agreement......

(1) Taylor's average time to throw is under three seconds - a bit better than Russell Wilson or Deshaun Watson, 7/100 of a second worse than Jared Goff. No doubt they can't process the field in under five seconds too...... (2) You'd think if Taylor really was as wide-eyed & befuddled playing as his detractors are so eager to believe (to an unseemly degree, eager), he wouldn't be sitting at eleventh by the NFL passer rating - with swiss cheese for an offensive line, a running attack which is nonexistent every other game, and receiving targets cobbled together from scrap heap retreads. What quarterback does better with less? Which leads us to ........ (3) Those darn yipsters. One thing those dang fopdoodles always bring-up is Taylor's performance in the 15 games where both Watkins and Woods played - the only time his three years starting where he had close to an NFL-grade pair of receivers : 63.6% comp. 8.25 YPA. 27 TD passes. 6 INTs (4) Speaking of the Bad Timing Award : How 'bout peddling this - he earns a right to pout in the corner versus showing leadership to overcome those adversities - right after a game where Taylor was one of the few Bills who showed-up as a professional, played the entire game with heart & drive (while half-ass was the more typical effort), and got brutally hammered as a result.

They should both have a sizable impact, as Taylor has shown he's looking for new weapons - witness the immediate use of Deonte Thompson, or the continual targeting of Jones even when he seemed buried in a funk. But the real issue with the offense is the running game, at home vs away. The numbers : Taylor is averaging 204 yards passing a game, with a small difference between home & away : 218 (H) and 190 (A) The running backs average 91 yards a game, but the difference between home & away is much larger : 125 (H) and 57 (A) Maybe this is just a fluke caused by a few bad games in a small sample size, but it looks both troubling and weird.

In another thread, HappyDays researched how many teams won with 63 or less rushing yards while allowing 194 or more rushing yards from the other side. The answer was : 10 wins 197 losses 197 "pedestrian game managers", no doubt....... https://www.twobillsdrive.com/community/topic/197928-the-rockpile-review-good-gets-bad-bad-gets-good/?page=2

The Jets? Well, lets look at the numbers : New York - Week 1 : The running backs gain 154 yards at 4.47 yards a carry. Taylor throws for 224 yards, runs for 38 yards. New York - Week 9 : The running backs gain 28 yards at 1.75 yards a carry. Taylor throws for 285 yards, runs for 35 yards. So you look at this and blame Taylor? Because the Jets didn't think to "focus on the ground game" in Week 1? It didn't occur to them? Is it possible your reasoning is a bit simplistic?

(1) The "Whaley wanted to release Taylor" thing is a common statement. Care to guess how much evidence exists to back it up? Right : Zero. It was speculation from sportswriters, who never had any statement from Whaley, never had any statement from a Bill, never had any off-the-record remark, never had any second hand comment supposedly leading back to the team's front office, never had anything but their own theories. Was management talking-down Taylor behind the scenes? Possibly. But if they were, they were very careful about what they let out. Personally, I think they were probably posturing towards a restructure from day-one. They never had a real plan-B, they just didn't want to commit to Taylor long-term. (2) Speaking of speculation, no one knows what Taylor could have got on the open market because it never reached that far. My speculation was he stood no chance of getting the long-term cash of his old contract, but could have done as well or a bit better than his new. But that was irrelevant from Taylor's perspective, because his real question was where is the best place to play to set up his next deal? Cleveland? The Jets? Even granting he wanted to stay a Bill, a major part of his decision had to be where could he play to give him the best chance to earn a big payday. If I had to guess, I'd say he's looking long-term.

I'd consider this fair it it was even close to reality. But it's a common theme of this board to claim Taylor had no bearing whatsoever in the Bills' victories. He is just along for the ride, like those tourists you see on open-top buses. He's made huge plays in every victory, but some people never saw a single one. The defense played good (except when it didn't), the running game carried the team (at least a few times), and points just magically appeared on the scoreboard. Has Taylor gotten one tenth of the credit for wins - even while getting most of the blame for losses? No. That's life for Tyrod......

Agreed. Taylor played with professionalism and drive the entire night. As you observed, the quality of his performance didn't change from first quarter to last minute. But when people sneer at his numbers because of "garbage time", you have to give them their due. After all, it's not even based on the QB's performance, but the way a defense changes when closing out a game with a big lead. Quantifying garbage time, however, is an inexact thing. To use an old-fashioned analogy, it's like pornography : Everyone knows it when they see it, even if they can't come up with a good definition.

He didn't hear the footsteps; he didn't secure the ball. Definitely on him. It's pretty astounding how rarely it happens.....

What percent of sacks league-wide would that apply to? Ninety percent? Ninety-five percent? Are all those other quarterbacks at fault, or is this just a Taylor-thing?

My measure was the first half X 2 & write the rest off as extra "garbage time" production. That's probably not entirely fair to Taylor, but would strike about 50yds off his total. As Shaw noted, stuff like completion percentage and ypa were pretty consistent - garbage time or not.

The easiest route to ten is Saints, Chargers, Colts, Dolphins, Dolphins. That means the next two games are critical....

Someone said the numbers at the half were 11-14, 115 yards, 1 TD

Coaching-wise, it was a good decision to keep Jones playing these last few games & keep targeting him. You can see he's gotten over whatever issues he had.