As someone who can’t let go of past failures and have seen them jade my prism of optimism, I understand what Bills fans are going through. We are a broken fan base. A fan base that can’t get over the past and are trying every “Get rich quick scheme” to forget the darkness and move into the light. We are a fan base that is desperate, confused, and angry who just want the idea of change to actually happen instead of just dreaming it. Let our eyes dictate our football dreams and not the other way around is what we want.
I don’t blame you for your state of mind. 14 years without playoffs makes you become an irrational fan who has zero patience for this crap. You can’t even breathe whenever adversity hits as you just tumble like a deck of cards.
This is what is happening with some when it comes to EJ Manuel’s latest setback, if you want to call it that. Of course, certain press corp. fellows decide to use our past against us by asking if the Bills should draft another QB?
Of course, when your audience has a sense of panic, lamestreamers are throwing gasoline on whatever tiny fire there is.
The trick question/radio show topic is “Well, you don’t know if EJ is a franchise QB, so, if you feel this QB in the 2014 draft is a franchise QB, why wouldn’t you decide to draft him? Increase the odds!”
Let me let you in on a secret or a hypothesis: GMs don’t know if a QB will be a franchise QB when coming out of college. If they did, we’d have franchise QBs hanging from the ceiling and GMs wouldn’t get canned. It takes a lot of development to make them into a franchise QB. Evolution to be precise. If Peyton Manning, Big Ben, Cam Newton and a list of others played exactly the same way they did during their first season, they’d probably wouldn’t be MVP worthy.
Their rookie stats may look decent, but you have to get better because teams catch up. Just Compare Newton’s first and 2nd year and see how he has progressed this year.
“Sophomore slump” isn’t a term that should really be just about the sophomore. It should actually be about the school surrounding them. That’s why the slump occurs.
As far as the narrative being pushed by lamestreamers goes, the best way I can put it would be my the theory on how local news pushes the “Storm of the Century” ten times a year and the foundation for this is based on our panic from past experiences. Not every storm is the “Storm of the Century” and not every slip of a 1st round QB means a natural disaster is here.
For crap sakes, I got Jerry Sullivan reaching with Trent Edwards not being the same after his first concussion against Zona.
Note: First off, he played well against probably the 2nd best team the Bills beat in the 2000s in SD a week later. Two..he had great games against the Chiefs/Broncos to finish that season. Three…even if your silly hypothesis was correct, um, head injury vs. leg injury? Please. Teams caught up. End of story. And to top it off, EJ’s best game this year came 2 weeks after coming back from injury.
EJ has been what your mid-level expectations are for a rookie QB. He’s had nice games and he’s had some bad games. It is what almost every rookie QB goes through on their way to either becoming a bust or becoming a savior.
Injuries?
I give you exhibit A on why you shouldn’t give a shit:
Matthew Stafford’s first two years were mired with injuries. He played in just 13 games and had 19TDs and 21INTs while averaging almost 200 yards a game. Not great, right? Well, he rebounded quite nicely and hasn’t missed a game since. Did Detroit, with their shitty history like ours, panic and say we gotta select Blaine Gabbert in the 2011 draft? No.
Maybe I’m naive, but a part of me kind of thinks if this game actually mattered, EJ would be playing. I mean, he did finish the Jacksonville game, right? What about the preseason injury? Did it hinder his development when his first two starts were pretty stellar? Maybe the Bills decided that playing in meaningless football games in August didn’t matter anymore for his development.
On top of this, EJ Manuel was relatively unscathed entering the NFL, which makes the whole “Injury prone” narrative such bullshit.
Terrence McGee was injury prone. It was decided when he couldn’t stay healthy for four straight years. But, hey, we have a horrible history in disappointment and our defeatist mentality makes us want to go to Defcon 2 and we love to argue. So, LETS ARGUE ABOUT THIS?! Which leads me to this all being a moot point…
There is NO WAY IN HELL the Bills select a QB early in the draft!!!
In the last 25 years of the draft (Too lazy to go back further), no team has spent back-to-back 1st round picks on QBs. The only team to use a 1st and 2nd round selection on QBs in back-to-back years was Carolina with Cam and Jimmy Clausen.
The earliest a team went with selecting 2 QBs in the first round was in 1991 and 1993 with the Seahawks when they selected Dan McGuire and Rick Mirer. It just doesn’t happen because QBs need time to develop. Sadly, full development doesn’t happen overnight or after 10 games or whatever.
So, stop panicking.
We have more than enough time to have the football universe open up and swallow the Bills and their fans yet again. We have waited this long to find a franchise QB, what is another 6 months to a year in trying to anoint him a failure based on injuries and fear? We have all of next year to do that.
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