Early implosion so very Bills-like
Among the 32 quarterbacks who have taken the bulk of the offensive snaps for their NFL teams, Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills has the secondworst passer rating.
In a league where rule changes have fostered a sharp rise in quarterback play, Allen has completed just 50 per cent of his passes, has been sacked eight times and thrown two interceptions against one touchdown.
And through two games, Allen is unquestionably the best thing about the Bills.
Buffalo is second-last in the NFL in points scored and tied for last in points allowed. Through the first six quarters of this season, the Bills were outscored 75-9, at which point cornerback Vontae Davis retired. It was the football equivalent of a blind date in which one of the parties leaves the table to use the bathroom and then bolts before the entrees arrive.
The fan base must be having similar thoughts. I say this as someone who was a Bills fan for a long time and then realized I had stopped caring about the team.
If anything, the first two weeks of this season have added some context to the franchise’s beleaguered history. When the team got off to an improbable 5-2 start last season under new coach Sean McDermott, it was all very unlike them. Then they lost a couple of games and the coach decided to start Nathan Peterman over Tyrod Taylor at quarterback and that was very like them.
Peterman, a fifth-round draft pick, threw five picks in a blowout loss to the Chargers and it looked like the Bills had blown a chance to return to the playoffs for the first time in two decades.
But wait! The Bills scuffled to a 9-7 record, which looked like it would leave them just out of the playoffs (very Billsy) and then they were saved by a last-gasp touchdown in Week 17 from Andy Dalton and the Cincinnati Bengals.
This moment of unrestrained joy was very unfamiliar to Bills fans, but now we see it for what it was: false hope. Gifted a return to the playoffs for the first time since 1999, the Bills promptly scored three whole points in a loss to Jacksonville and then McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane apparently remembered they actually had planned to be bad last season, so they went right back to that.
Instead of building on the unexpected playoff appearance, the Bills traded Taylor to Cleveland, signed career backup A.J. McCarron to be the stopgap quarterback and made a bunch of trades to get high enough in last spring’s draft to nab a quarterback of the future, which turned out to be Allen.
Except McCarron didn’t make it out of training camp and was traded to Oakland, which led to Week 1 starter Peterman, which led to a rare passer rating of 0.0.
To be fair to McDermott, it’s not like there was evidence of Peterman completely embarrassing himself as a starter, except for that other time when he was the starter.
Only 12 times in the last 20 years has a quarterback with at least 10 attempts managed the bagel rating and only two of those 12 threw for fewer yards than Peterman’s 24 in the opener: Joey Harrington and Ryan Leaf. So not great company.
McDermott’s deft handling of the quarterback position — trading the incumbent and then going through two replacements before having no choice but to give the job to Allen — means the rookie will get his first NFL experience in front of a dreadful offensive line and with a tragically poor receiving corps.
The Bills go on the road to play Minnesota and Green Bay the next two weeks and say your prayers for Allen now. How did it go so wrong, so fast? The short answer is the Bills were awful last season, too, but they survived thanks to timely turnovers and, incredibly, Dalton.
They inadvertently gave their fans a taste of the good life before cold reality slapped them in the face again. It is all, yes, very Billsy.