Bills smart to go with Josh Allen with nothing at stake
The Bills didn’t want to hand over the offense to Josh Allen in Week 1, but Nathan Peterman’s ineptitude made it the right choice for Buffalo.
Credit Sean McDermott and Co. for trying their best to avoid throwing Josh Allen to the wolves. Unfortunately, Nathan Peterman didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. His awful performance against the Ravens forced the team’s hand.
In some ways, it’s the perfect situation to give Allen his first taste of regular season action in the NFL. The score of the game was 40-0 when the rookie signal caller took his first step. The odds of the Bills making a miraculous comeback were astronomical at that point.
To say that Peterman wasn’t very good would be a massive understatement. He went 5-of-18 for 24 yards passing before he was mercifully taken off the field. With him at the controls, the Bills offense was only able to muster 33 yards against the Ravens defense in the first half. Baltimore is pretty good on that side of the ball, but they aren’t that good.
Giving Allen the chance to make his debut in such a low pressure environment should pay dividends down the line. It’s not as if he can play any worse than Peterman did today. At best, he can help the Bills offense look competent during the second half. That would be a significant improvement over their first half performance.
The way Allen plays against Baltimore is going to go a long way towards determining who starts against the Chargers next week. If he shows any signs of life, it will probably be enough to earn his first start. The Bills clearly wanted Peterman to be the guy to start the season, but the way he played today makes trotting him out there as a starter next week virtually impossible for the Bills’ brass. Doing so would send a really poor message to the rest of the team about the franchises’ desire to be competitive in 2018.
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This season was always destined to devolve into an experimental playground for Allen at some point, but no one thought it would happen quite this soon. Look for the Bills to hand their offense to their rookie for the rest of the year. He’ll make plenty of mistakes, but his upside is infinitely higher than Peterman’s.