What are the Buffalo Bills doing? We are two weeks into the NFL season and they seem like a pathetic football product without a plan. And no more is that lack of basic preparation and positive results present than at the quarterback position.
The Baltimore Ravens, Seattle Seahawks and Philadelphia Eagles are all examples of teams that won their most recent Super Bowls surrounding a young and relatively cheap QB with expensive talent around them. The L.A. Rams have gone all in trying to do the same around Jared Goff as have the Jacksonville Jaguars around Blake Bortles.
The NFL is a QB driven league. The game changing ones are by far the highest paid players. Since the proven commodities eat up so much of the salary cap the safest route towards roster construction is fast tracking the learning curve of a young QB while having a team ready to win around them.
That’s what it seemed like the Bills were doing after trading up to get Josh Allen in the draft a year after making the playoffs.
But the plan out of training camp was to start Nathan Peterman because Allen wasn’t ready yet. Peterman completed 80.5 pre cent of his passes in the pre-season with three touchdown passes and just one interception. Veteran QB AJ McCarron, who was signed in the off-season, was promptly traded to Oakland.
And then Week 1 happened. The Bills 47-3 season-opening loss to Baltimore was the worst performance of the opening weekend.
Buffalo mustered just 153 yards of offence and held the ball for just 24:46 in that game. Peterman had a 0 QB rating, which hasn’t happened since 2015. Peterman was 5-18 for 24 yards and two interceptions before being pulled at halftime. Because of the offensive ineptitude they became the first team this year to make a quarterback change.
[relatedlinks]
The Bills should have learned this lesson last year. In 2017 Sean McDermott benched Tyrod Taylor for Peterman while the Bills were still in playoff contention, then reversed course when Peterman proved unplayable by throwing five interceptions in one half.
Unlike Peterman, Allen has showed in flashes that he has the physical tools to be an elite passer in the NFL. In his debut he showed strength in the pocket, arm strength and the ability to run to keep plays alive. But it still wasn’t pretty.
On Sunday, Allen was sacked five times for 36 yards lost. He finished the day going 18-33 for 245 yards, a TD and two interceptions. Not great but good relative to Peterman who has thrown for 276 yards total in his five NFL appearances.
Allen is working behind an offensive line made up of many players that would be back-ups elsewhere. The Bills lost three of last season’s starters on the offensive line and the two free-agent linemen they did sign, Marshall Newhouse and Russell Bodine, both failed to win starting jobs.
Making matters worse, the Bills don’t have players on the perimeter that win early in the route and make Allen’s reads easy.
Buffalo refused to get Allen receiver help in the off-season after that position group was one of the worst in the league last year. They signed Jeremy Kerley, then cut him after the first game. In the draft they only added sixth round pick Ray-Ray McCloud who is primarily a returner.
And they don’t have a defence that will erase some of Allen’s mistakes, keep them in the game and give the rookie a short field to work with. The Bills have been outscored 78-23 this season with the 78 points being the most they’ve given up in their first two games since 1970. This is also the first season the Bills have started 0-2 since they started 0-8 in 2010.
In fact, things got so bad in Week 2 that Vontae Davis retired at halftime. No, that isn’t a joke.
Josh Rosen might be the only other QB from the 2018 draft class in a tougher situation to succeed. Which is exactly why he isn’t playing yet. Even though the Arizona Cardinals have QB friendly players like David Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald on their offence, their offensive line is porous. So instead of letting Rosen take licks before he learns, he is being groomed as the under study behind Sam Bradford.
Not only is Allen not being groomed, he has nobody in the building to help groom him. His backup Peterman is a 24-year-old second year player.
The front office could have signed a bridge QB and a veteran to help mentor Allen when Case Keenum, Sam Bradford, and Teddy Bridgewater were available this offseason. Instead the Bills wasted the momentum from a team that was 9-7 last year and made the playoffs for the first time since 1999.
If the Bills don’t address their QB management it might be another 17 years before they are back in the playoffs.
Allen was the seventh overall pick. If you are going to draft a QB that high you have to have a plan on how you’re going to develop him.
Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. When the Josh Allen experiment is a failure we shouldn’t be surprised. The Bills failed to capitalize on the cost savings of having a young QB and now are failing to put Allen in a position to succeed in the short or long term.
Next year the Bills have 10 draft picks and the second-most cap room in the league. Hopefully, in 2019 they learn from 2018, which is quickly looking like a wasted season.
