Buffalo Bills GM may want Cardale Jones to start next season

The Buffalo Bills don’t yet know who will be their starting quarterback Week 1 next season, but there is an internal option that may be overlooked.

If they decide to pick up his contract option next month, the Buffalo Bills will owe Tyrod Taylor $30.75 million fully guaranteed for 2017. That’s obviously a prohibitive cost for any quarterback, let alone one as relatively average as Taylor has been.

Taylor may or may not be open to restructuring his contract, or the Bills could just cut him and try to replace him this offseason. Backup and 2016 season Week 17 starter E.J. Manuel is going to be a free agent, and the Bulls have been rumored to have interest in Tony Romo. But there is another in-house starting option that may not come to mind right away.

According to Vic Carucci of the Buffalo News, Bills’ general manager Doug Whaley would be in favor of Cardale Jones as the team’s starting quarterback next season if it came to that. The 2016 fourth-round pick (No. 139 overall) out of Ohio State saw his first NFL regular season action in Week 17 against the New York Jets, completing 6 of 11 passes for 96 yards with an interception.

Jones entered the NFL as a project quarterback, and it’s hard to say either way regarding his readiness to start now. There was some indication of a push from within the Bills’ organization for Jones to play late last season, which Whaley of course denied with the cover of “that would mean something terrible happened.”

The Bills may be best-served to keep Taylor and swallow the $30 million-plus pill for this year, due to no better options being available to replace him. But releasing Taylor to avoid that guaranteed money, and then effectively forcing Jones into the starting lineup, may be just the kind of moves that get Whaley fired. Unless a lengthy playoff drought somehow ends next season, Bills’ fans may only be able to latch onto Whaley making bad enough decisions to be relieved of his duties.

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