Sometimes for the Buffalo Bills fan in your life, it feels like they can’t win for losing.
I mean, the reasons for such are well-documented. Four straight Super Bowl losses in the early 1990s, and that’s deemed a negative, not a positive. Never mind the nine playoff wins in that four-year span to get to those Super Bowls, or the fact no franchise has even been able to go back to three straight Super Bowls, let alone four (even the Belichick/Brady-era Patriots in their eight Super Bowl appearances haven’t qualified for one three times in a row).
Their fans still thirst for a playoff win, and their current 22-year playoff win drought is eclipsed only by the Cincinnati Bengals and Detroit Lions.
And their Hall of Fame running back, and star of stage and screen, is … well, you know who he is.
So it has been a bumpy ride believing in the Bills, and I can’t be the one to tell you all the bumps are coming to an end. But I do think the Bills got it right in starting Nathan Peterman this weekend instead of rookie Josh Allen when Week 1 begins in Baltimore.
It was always going to be a strange off-season for the Bills, and even after ending the longest post-season drought in the league, Buffalo and its utter inability to move the football in a 10-3 wild-card loss against a team equally inadequate at similar tasks (Jacksonville) seemed to dictate change was coming for the Bills.
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The quarterback the Bills relied on to get them to the playoffs, Tyrod Taylor, was shipped off to Cleveland for a third-round pick. Taylor was no one’s idea of a long-term quarterback in a city that’s been seeking one since Drew Bledsoe at the turn of the century, and a long-term answer since Jim Kelly’s final season in 1996.
Since Kelly retired after a home playoff loss to, yet again, Jacksonville, the Bills have had 16 different starting quarterbacks spanning 21 seasons and 336 games. Kelly won 110 games (counting post-season) in 11 seasons. Since Kelly, the Bills have won 148 games in those 21 seasons, and if you’re thinking what I’m thinking — “That’s so Bills!” — they haven’t even been bad enough in that stretch to draft any obvious top-five quarterbacks like a Luck, a Wentz, a Newton, a Ryan, and they sure haven’t found “that guy” in the later rounds either.
There’s a million ways the Bills have done this wrong. First, they didn’t draft a single quarterback in any round between 1996-2003. This doesn’t get discussed enough. By comparison, the Packers had Brett Favre in his prime and still saw fit to draft five quarterbacks in that period of time, including Matt Hasselbeck and Aaron Brooks.
The Bills have drafted six quarterbacks since then, including the aforementioned Nathan Peterman with a 2017 fifth-rounder.
But going into Baltimore in Week 1, it’s absolutely the right long-term call to let Allen observe the increased speed and ferocity of an NFL game to contextualize how different things are in “The Show” compared to being the entire show at University of Wyoming.
There’s no tried and true formula for how much a player should sit and watch, but many NFL quarterbacks have benefitted from not being forced into early action. And given the current state of the Bills offensive line and the struggles it appears they’ll have again at wide receiver, if Allen is your future, that means he cannot be your present. Looking as unready and panicked as he was in the Bills’ home pre-season loss to Cincinnati a couple of Sundays ago didn’t instill any confidence in him, either.
I don’t think Peterman will be terrible, and he’ll never have a half of football again like he did in Los Angeles against the Chargers last season, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to defy all logic. Of all 32 starting quarterbacks this coming weekend, it’s safe to say Peterman would be considered a near-unanimous “bottom five” if each GM were to rank the quarterbacks they’d most like to have.
There has to be a trust level in head coach Sean McDermott here, as well. He didn’t pretend he didn’t make a mistake in starting Peterman in that Chargers debacle last November. It takes a bold man to try something unconventional, but it takes a brave man to quickly admit his error and, as the kids say these days, “take the L.”
So, when for Allen? Circle Nov. 11. Buffalo’s 10th game of the season is that day at the New York Jets. Maybe Allen gets to square off against Jets rookie quarterback Sam Darnold, who should be deep into his first season by then. If things go anywhere from “terrible” to “lousy,” the Bills have a bye week immediately after to sort out the issues.
Buffalo isn’t drafting another quarterback even with a top-five pick in 2019. Too many other teams will be struggling for a contingency plan because of age or injury. As ominous as the Patriots’ presence, there seems no long-term succession plan post-Tom Brady. The Dolphins at quarterback? Please. Outside of the Browns, and to some extent the Bears, no team (besides the Bills) has been as dysfunctional as the Dolphins have been at quarterback since the “Jay Fiedler Years.” Yes, I just did that.
So, while not being able to undo all the wrongs of the past, I do think the Bills have got this quite right going into Sunday’s game. I wouldn’t have drafted Josh Allen — I’d have taken Josh Rosen — but insulating and educating Allen has to be the priority.
