SDS

Agreed. They mostly offloaded middling talent that may be better than what they have now, but not good enough to make any real noise. They lack high end talent in every offensive position (except the fumes McCoy is running on).

Well, I don't think that exact trade was considered at the time. ? If you go back to the summer and preseason - the field reporters will tell you Peterman won that job. It was not a surprise that he started the season. It is hard to comprehend coaches whiffing so badly on an evaluation, but they managed it. You may not believe the plan was to start McCarron in the beginning. You may not believe Peterman was plan B. I believe those things and I think all their actions support those decisions.

I’m not in the locker room. I don’t know what was said to McCarron. In a vacuum, what you said makes sense. But that didn’t happen. Why? Clearly Beane valued the 5th over the alternative. JoeB suggested that McCarron may not have been on board with the position he found himself in and may need to have been moved for attitude reasons. Perhaps it was also contrary to what they told him at signing and they were trying to do “the right thing”.

A lot of people would like to know. Again, I think SM found a Christian soulmate who works hard, but doesn’t have the talent, but SM doesn’t want to admit it.

Meh. If someone is asking why Peterman isn’t starting as a means proving/disproving an argument - then I’m not really sure it is an honest discussion.

and no one knows why. It may be unfair, but my guess the devout Christian thing has merit.

BECAUSE NATE PETERMAN ***** SUCKS FAR MORE THAN THEY THOUGHT. BECAUSE NATE PETERMAN ***** SUCKS FAR MORE THAN THEY THOUGHT.

This may be the case. The defensive side of the ball looks great for a second straight year. The offense is a hot mess. But they knew it was going to be this way and they decided to put $54M in dead cap money into this season, load up on draft picks and salary cap space for 2019. As I said before, this all looks bad if you think they made an honest effort to win the MOST games THIS year. I am arguing they did not and have made moves to try and set themselves up for the future. It's fine if people want to be critical of that strategy. However, it's not really logical to criticize them for not succeeding in something they aren't attempting to do at the moment. I'm sure they are well aware of the holes on offense. Their plan is to address them in the future.

You are just being argumentative now. Peterman isn't even a bad backup. He's a once in the history of the NFL bad backup. He provides no cover.

Because he is the best QB on the roster now. But just because that is true today doesn't mean that was the plan in March when McCarron was signed. I'll say it to I am blue in the face - you don't sign and trade McCarron unless he failed to meet expectations. Once that happened, it was on to plan B, C, D, and E. The front office whiffed on McCarron and they have grossly misjudged Peterman. Because of these misjudgments they were forced to play Allen. No, they started Nate Peterman. That's the dumb as ***** move.

I think you know that the Bills were not going to start the guy that played 3rd best throughout training camp and preseason. If that was the plan they would have done that. The reason that he is gone is that they whiffed on the signing and decided a 5th was better value than keeping him on the roster in a season they don't care about.

Trading McCarron is only a mistake if you believe they wanted to maximize the outcome of THIS season. Given all their moves and their desire to push all the dead money into this year - it is clear they are not all in on this season's record.

https://www.wkbw.com/sports/bills/buffalo-bills-trade-qb-aj-mccarron-to-oakland McCarron was signed before Allen was drafted, but the Bills were all in on drafting someone. I don't know what they thought of Mayfield or Darnold. They didn't blow $4M in signing bonus money for him to be a 3rd string QB. At MINIMUM you have to concede the expectation was that he had to outplay Peterman and he didn't. What promises were made to AJ when signing him? Read what Joe B had to say about McCarron as training camp progressed. He wasn't living up to expectations. So, the plan changed.

Fair statement. Although I don't think they have tried to really go after any top tier offensive talent other than Benjamin. That was clearly a whiff. Everyone else has been an on the cheap signing to hold the team over until they dead cap money clears.

Because he got outplayed by both QBs. That wasn't the expectation. They cut their losses and moved on. Put another way, why would you sign McCarron and pay a $4M signing bonus and trade him for a 5th, if you didn't think there was a larger plan for him? Added: McCarron was the two-year bridge QB while they worked with Allen. They chose him over a better QB, because they only wanted the short term bridge guy. If they signed him to be a backup, why didn''t they keep him as a backup then? Easy: he was never supposed to be the backup.

It's not wrong. Beane brought in McCarron to start. McCarron failed to take over as they expected. Unfortunately, I can't find the quote that stated as such. He flat out said, uncharacteristically for a GM, that McCarron wasn't the player they thought he was.

There was never an intention to play Allen this year. You are making a straw man argument.

??? This makes no sense. Allen was billed as the guy with the best physical attributes, but also the biggest project. That is the long game. Drafting him was the complete opposite of winning now. The plan was to have him sit this year at minimum. That failed when McCarron failed to impress enough and Peterman ***** the bed.

Is it a failure to do something if you never had any intentions to do it in the first place? The McCarron trade is everything you need to know about their mindset. He was a completely serviceable lower tier player that didn’t perform as they had hoped, so they quickly moved him for assets. He’s wasn’t in the plans and he wasn’t moved off the team, regardless of the impact this year. This is the contract purge year. Next year they will have freedom to add more talent.

I don’t get the hand wringing. Is it not clear what they are doing? They purged the roster of everyone they didn’t see moving forward with. They cut all their big contracts on other players. They aren’t playing the short game. They are playing the long game. The lack of talent today doesn’t mean a single thing to them.

If Allen needs surgery he is probably out for most or all of next year too...

I see this idea more and more and I don’t get it. If you want a new quarterback then draft a quarterback you want in the spot you think you can attain them. Artificially choosing a couple rounds a priori does not make any sense.

Yeah. I agree with you here. I’ve had trouble with this on the Bills board. When politics and the sport mix, it seems to me to be fair game. Not everyone agrees with me though. ?‍♂️

FWIW, he hasn't returned since. It would be quite a loss if he didn't return.

There’s a difference between calmly analyzing the quality of play and ranting about the quality of play. I think when he was told to STFU - it was completely uncalled for. And there is absolutely no reason for great hockey talk to be taken off the main board.