League proves it will flee from controversy
NFL continues making it abundantly clear it prefers terrible QBs over Kaepernick
The worst quarterback performance I ever witnessed in person happened 21 years ago, almost to the week.
Injuries forced the Buffalo Bills to turn to their third-stringer mid-game. In went Billy Joe Hobert, and as he scrambled around hopelessly, it looked like he didn’t know the plays.
Well, he didn’t know the plays. Hobert, after a two-interception performance that included several other throws where the ball was nowhere near a Bills receiver, admitted his familiarity with the playbook was not exactly comprehensive. The dog ate his homework, or something. The Bills promptly released him.
I thought about Hobert when Buffalo was forced to turn again to Nathan Peterman after rookie Josh Allen was hurt against the Houston Texans. Peterman reprised his spectacularly bad Week 1 performance with another two-pick special, including one returned for a touchdown that gave Houston the win. He has now appeared in six games and thrown an interception on 13 per cent of his pass attempts. That is more than double the career interception rate of notable flame-out Ryan Leaf.
The remarkable thing here is not just that Peterman has put up some historically bad numbers, it’s that the Bills — coach Sean McDermott and GM Brandon Beane — thought he was the right choice to be their starter. They were so sure of this fact they traded away a veteran pivot, A.J. McCarron, in the pre-season, even though they had just signed him to a two-year deal to be the veteran who kept the QB seat warm while Allen got up to speed.
And yet Peterman was objectively worse than the guy who once didn’t read the playbook.
All of which is to say, if the Peterman clip reel does not feature prominently in Colin Kaepernick’s collusion case against the NFL, then his lawyers need to watch more tape.
For their closing submission, they can add the highlights from the performance of Derek Anderson, the 35-year-old who was signed by the Bills just two weeks ago, who hadn’t won a game in five years, and who was still considered a better option than Peterman.
Anderson threw three interceptions in Buffalo’s loss to the Colts on Sunday.
Don’t worry, this isn’t about to be another column that argues at length about why Kaepernick should be on an NFL roster. The calculus for that hasn’t changed over the two seasons during which he has been avoided like the plague by every NFL team with a quarterback-sized hole on their roster. It was obvious last fall that the reasons for his absence from the league went beyond his ability to play football, and it remains obvious today.
Consider that three teams — Buffalo, Arizona and Cleveland — entered the season with rookie quarterbacks they didn’t think were ready to start, so they left the teams in the hands of various veteran journeymen.
Those quarterbacks, Peterman, Sam Bradford and ex-Bill Tyrod Taylor, ranged from ineffective to cringe-inducing, and so the rookies were thrown in.
It looks increasingly like all of them could have used more seasoning on the bench.
If Kaepernick was just a guy, and not the face of a protest movement, does anyone seriously doubt one of those teams wouldn’t have signed a veteran who took his team to the Super Bowl to be the stand-in while the rookies held a clipboard for a year?
Jacksonville, fresh off an AFC final in which they were desperate not to leave the game in the
If the Peterman clip reel does not feature ... in Colin Kaepernick’s collusion case ... his lawyers need to watch more tape.
hands of Blake Bortles (nevertheless giving him a US$54-million extension in the off-season) saw their quarterback Bortlesing in the extreme Sunday. He has utterly Bortlesed. The Jags turned to Cody Kessler after they benched Bortles. Kessler, who had appeared in 11 career games and lost 11 of them, is now winless in 12.
The Kaepernick story this season is not that some teams should have signed him, because, well, duh, but that it is increasingly clear the NFL has totally moved on without him.
The protests that he began three seasons ago have again dwindled to only a handful of players.
The only times the issue has flared has been when someone other than the players poked the smouldering embers: Donald Trump last fall and the owners this spring, when they unilaterally changed the rules to require any player on the field to stand during the national anthem.
The owners, having backed down from that plan when the players complained about it, now appear likely to not bring it up again.
The issue has died down, no one is talking about respecting the anthem, and even antagonists like Eric Reid and Malcolm Jenkins are fighting among themselves, which no doubt makes some of the owners positively giddy. Trump hasn’t even complained about the NFL for months. Maybe he just appreciates the explosion in offence.
What team would bring Kaepernick into this environment? Sure, he’s a proven NFL quarterback with playoff experience and he might be able to put up spectacular numbers in a league that has made playing the position easier than it has ever been before. But then again, controversy.
What team would be bold enough to risk that?