transplantbillsfan

Link? I'm talking about his interview on clean out day. I'm not talking about something we heard through his agent. Do you have a link to where Taylor ever directly said he wouldn't take less money?

This is interesting and actually does lend some credence to Shaw's argument that Taylor is "betting on himself." But man, look at that list of QBs who are in the top 8... Whoof...

Really interesting perspective on the franchise tag with Watkins and Taylor. I agree that I didn't think they were ever planning on moving on from Taylor, though we're never going to be able to prove it. Taylor stated right after the season ended he'd consider restructuring. That's what opened Pandora's box and the reason just about anything coming out of OBD should be taken with a grain of salt, including the supposed Hoyer interest, which could simply have been used as leverage. An NFL organization hears that a player is willing to restructure a $40 million guaranteed contract in order to stay with the team...? HELL YEAH you do whatever you can to make it happen while running no risk of losing him since you can always just exercise the option!!!

We live in the age of social media and the Internet. Everything is easy access now. Saying you live in Philly doesn't give you any more credibility than anyone else regarding Wentz. I have NFL Game Pass and access to All-22 and have watched a good bit of Wentz just for fun. His career could go in a couple directions. He looks like a good pick by the Eagles at this point but he went through some serious growing pains his rookie year and really struggled as the year progressed. It's too early to say what he'll be for sure, yet you just feel like you have to...

It's too bad that you don't actually understand that you need to consider all the outside variables that influence QB play when you evaluate QBs. And there are lots of outside variables, some that influence more than others. My argument was never that Taylor needed to light it up in 2016, it was simply that he needed to sustain what was a pretty high level of play. I even remember giving specific criteria breaking all of that down, but at some point (and I was using "if Taylor has a Passer Rating 85-90, the team would have to really evaluate Taylor and all the factors involved with his decreased production before keeping him") the team would have to evaluate and determine if it would be best for the team to keep Taylor as the Franchise QB. It's clear the Bills organization is now still in that evaluation mode. But make no mistake, if 2016 resembled 2015 much more closely, it's likely Taylor wouldn't have been prodded by the media about being open to restructuring, Taylor wouldn't have said he was, and the team wouldn't have followed suit with a tumultuous non-committal (at least publicly) 2 months. None of this matters. Taylor is still being evaluated and will be for the 2017 regular season. If he plays more like 2015, he stays. If he plays more like 2016, he's not here longer than 2018 as a placeholder because the team drafts the future. If he plays much worse than 2016, I'd bet the team cuts him, takes the dead money hit, and finds a way to get the QB of the future.

My bad... gotcha. We agree, then.

You don't think a difference of 8 or 9 is a fairly significant difference in passer rating? As to the numbers like yards, TDs, and INTs, Smith and Kaepernick did that in 2 more games than Taylor. They averaged about 20 fewer yards than Taylor passing, just for starters. (We're really talking passer rating alone, but if you were to bring in rushing yards and TDs his numbers look even better) And I'd still challenge the question your asking that those were mediocre years for those QBs. They weren't great. But they weren't the negatively mediocre years you imply they were. Again, you're the one who brought up these QBs and wins (you still haven't explained your point, you just tried to accuse me of confusing the issue even though I genuinely don't understand why you brought up wins if you weren't associating them with those QBs) and both of those guys were also on playoff teams, with Kaep making it to the Super Bowl. I think most thought Kaep was a franchise QB after 2013, actually.

It's not really that some of us have a higher tolerance, it's that some of us are able to step outside of ourselves as Bills fanatics and understand that while Taylor's 2016 year was, on the whole, disappointing, that there were a bunch of factors that negatively influenced the team as a whole and to varying degrees directly or indirectly impacted Taylor on the field, including: - A turnstile at RT - A WR corps that was, at one point, Walter Powell, Justin Hunter, and Brandon Tate - An OC to work with in the offseason and start the season who reportedly was on the hot seat from the time the 2015 season ended - A switch in OCs after 2 games - A Head Coach who makes terrible coaching decisions like punting on the opposition's 41 yard line in OT - A defense that yields three 200 yard rushers in one year We understand that there's a human component to this and that there are tons and tons of variables that play into both QB and team success and that good QBs aren't just automatically good. If that were true, David Carr would have been the great Texans QB he was drafted to be. What we're hoping for is that with the coaching change, there will be a lot less tumult and a lot fewer of those negative variables and if Taylor's season still resembles 2016 more than 2015, we're happy to move on and eager for the 2018 draft with 2 first round draft picks. No one's happy with mediocrity. Some of us are just seeing the bigger picture differently from you and believe the bigger picture calls for some patience. Because ending up with the Browns or the Jets might mean more money now, but it also means playing for the Browns or the Jets in their current situations.

As Figster says below, why believe any report or indication? It's like the pre-draft process... Chicago played the draft absolutely brilliantly to get their guy in Trubisky. Hell, even Trubisky was shocked he was taken. We have no clue if Cleveland (or some other team) would have taken him before Chicago at 3, but they managed to keep all their cards to themselves during the draft all the way up until the moment he was picked even after they traded up. No one will ever know what really happened for sure or what the motives were from the time the season ended until the time Taylor renegotiated his contract, but it's a fact that Taylor said that he'd consider restructuring his deal right after the season ended. With a set date of March 11th to make a decision and CAP restraints and the ability to retain Taylor no matter what reports, negative or positive, came out, it would have been fiscally irresponsible for Buffalo to try to get Taylor to renegotiate. You say Buffalo was prepared to move in a different direction. Where are those indications? More "the Bills were reportedly interested in ________" reports... ? Sorry, no one can say they know for sure, and that's why anyone who says they know for sure why or how this happened deserves to be greeted with great skepticism. Ummm... okay... So you're saying stats only mean something in a win? You've summed up precisely where I am

Wait... you were actually saying that Smith in 2011, RG3 in 2012, Kaepernick or Foles in 2013, and Wilson in 2014 were playing as mediocre QBs in the years they earned high passer ratings? Or are you arguing that mediocre QBs can have years where they earn high passer ratings? If it's the latter, I agree. If it's the former, not so much. I think you need different examples, to start, because Alex Smith in 2011 and Colin Kaepernick in 2013 don't really imitate the quality of Taylor's 2015. The point here that Shaw has made and that I agree with is that while Passer Rating may be flawed on a small scale sample size. One game with a high passer rating means very little. But those random exceptions to the rule that you came up with (what was it... 40/40 for 200 yards and one TD vs. 20/40 for 350 yards, 3 TDs and 1 INT) are going to become less and less likely.

I think that's something I'd like to see, too, but I don't know how you really quantify it. And that becomes EXTREMELY subjective at that point. Actually, Fahey begins his chapter on Taylo with this issue in the very first paragraph: “A quarterback could go to the Pro Bowl every year if he made half the throws that Tyrod Taylor leaves out on the field each week.” Those were the words of the MMQB’s Andy Benoit. Benoit has consistently been one of Taylor’s most ardent critics and that was his most damning statement. It’s a fair criticism of Taylor that he will miss open receivers at times. Whether the veracity of what Benoit states is true is more debatable. ​ He follows this up with a discussion of the Raiders game, one of the games Taylor is most widely criticized for in terms of not being able to find open WRs. In conclusion of that game, he states: It was tough to find the open receivers that Taylor had supposedly missed. There were plenty of examples of the pocket collapsing before anyone could get open. The Bills didn’t look to work the middle of the field with short and intermediate routes. The Raiders realized this and used aggressive man coverage outside that forced the receivers to win one-on-one on isolation routes. Although Sammy Watkins was on the field, he wasn’t showing off the burst that has made him such a dangerous receiver. Watkins wasn’t getting open and neither were his teammates. Shaw, you keep saying it's $30 million guaranteed, but (having not looked at the contract in awhile) from what I recall, it's not actually $30 million guaranteed because the Bills have the ability to cut him at the end of this year. Granted, there's a good deal of dead money involved, but Taylor is not guaranteed $30 million. I could be wrong, but if I'm not, this seems a central premise of your argument and I just want to make sure you (and your agent friend) have the facts straight.

If you say so

I'm going to repeat the argument I've made time and time and time again. ON A PER GAME BASIS, if Taylor can do exactly what he did in 2015 every single year of his career, which means passing yards per game (217), completion % (63.7%), rushing yards per game (41), almost 2 TDs per game, and a turnover every other game, he will rightfully NOT be going anywhere. That's if, and only if, he can do that every single year of his career on a consistent basis. We saw a dip in 2016, so based on 2016 alone, he couldn't keep that up. And if 2017 looks like 2016 in terms of production, I expect the Bills to use their arsenal of 2 1st rounders and other draft picks (and maybe Taylor himself... ?) to trade up to draft the franchise's QB of the future. However, if he's able to get back to producing all the numbers from 2015 or better, the Bills aren't moving on from him and it's doubtful they bother drafting a QB early again. Again, I'm talking production. If he produces like 2015 or better, however he does it, he's not going anywhere.

If that's generally true, then he'll end up being a long term backup / vet journeyman somewhere around the league. 2017 is going to be an interesting year.

Get off your high horse Crusher, no one has demonstrated more excitement to absolutely thrash the opposing side of the Taylor argument than you. Sometimes it's downright scary. I'm all about civil and rational disagreement. Sometimes you're able to do that. But then Mr. Hyde comes out of you and you get all giddy at just the prospect of being able to bash other posters in the future. Stop pretending you're a martyr. You're not. You're part of the problem, not the solution. Good GAWD this is just ridiculous!!! People gotta hate... Here's an article on all of this. https://theringer.com/nfl-buffalo-bills-gm-doug-whaley-fired-sean-mcdermott-d87e027bae86-d87e027bae86 There's no absolute proof of anything, but it's a very flimsy argument based on everything that happened to assume that Whaley was running the show. It seems pretty clear this has been McDermott's show since he took over, even if there's no absolute proof.

I remember hearing that even though we didn't exercise the 5th year option, even franchising him would only cost about $3 million more than exercising that option would have cost. If that's true, regardless of what Sammy does this year, I think it was smart to not exercise the option because injury and injury settlements are actually the only risks involved with exercising that option. If Sammy plays really well this year and stays healthy, I don't think he goes anywhere.

Without even looking it up you're forgetting Steve Young. Typical...

You can't count very high, can you? 2 threads on Taylor in over 2 months.

You really didn't dismiss anything. You completely missed the points he made and tried to negate them with marginal tangents that barely touched the issue. You should do yourself a favor and stop posting for a day or two. Options were limited? You sure about that?

Crusher, you're on a whole new level when you do it...

You're letting an important fact just slip past you: McDermott (who it's now very clear has had GM like authority since he arrived) had 2 months once he arrived to evaluate Taylor and the QB position and chose to hire Taylor's former OC and keep him. Really only 2 conclusions based on what's transpired: 1) McDermott is planning on tanking after keeping a QB who was already on the team who he believed would help the Bills get a high draft pick in 2018. OR 2) McDermott believes this team can win NOW with Taylor and in the process will further evaluate his long term prospects, but doesn't have any intention of committing to him if we can't. I'm sorry, but option 1 seems far-fetched, especially with the Dennison hire.

It's a subjective ranking by one guy. Is Taylor 13th or 11th? I used to have a subscription that expired a couple months ago. I thought he was 11th when I last checked. Mighta been 13th, though. Yeah... we all know where you rank Taylor... Isn't it funny the hypocrisy of it all? That's not PFF, that's one guy's subjective measure who works for PFF. Oh, 10th I guess. Thought it was 11th. It just says a lot of sad things about your biased perception of Taylor when you say you'd take Tannehill over Taylor any day... and that you call Taylor a gimmick QB is even dumber. No... I'm sure the Bills want Taylor to show he can be the franchise QB this team has been looking for so we can use BOTH those 1st rounders next year to load up on talent. Even someone biased like you should realize that's the ideal outcome. But no, you're still blinded by your disgusting desire to be right (which you don't seem to be very often) to gloat about it and snidely point out everyone who was wrong. It's just sad...

Taylor was 11th in terms of PFF QB grades. Steve Palazzolo does his own subjective rankings and ranks him 20th.

Shaw, I'm with you here, but people seem incapable of actually understanding that hypothetical argument and lean toward being derisive when arguments like it are brought up. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if Taylor is able to get back to 2015 form in terms of his production and stay healthy on a consistent basis, he's simply not going anywhere.

Yet you're the one bringing wins into the discussion. Maybe you shouldn't have drawn attention to the Vikings finishing 8-8 and 3rd in their division, then. That sure sounded like you trying to insinuate that Passer Rating doesn't correlate with winning (which I'd generally agree with) and yet you follow that up with what you present as more examples like him, even though not a single QB on your list, including Bradford, ended their seasons losing more than they won as starters. Plus 2 NFC champions. I'm not trying to do anything except piece together what you actually mean.