The Nathan Peterman Experiment has been a Disaster

We’re all guilty of playing ‘Monday Morning Quarterback,’ but sometimes the person in the armchair may actually know better than the coaches.

I’ve always viewed the NFL as one of the purest meritocracies in the world. The NFL, and most professional sports leagues for that matter, are special bastions where politics and connections are overlooked and players earn their roster spots and playing time based on their. NFL quarterbacks don’t start a game because their dad is the General Manager, or a coach, or a senator, instead they earn the right to start based on their credentials and presumably because they won their spot in practice. However, there is a glaring exception to this notion and he lives in Buffalo, New York. I’m not sure who Nathan Peterman’s dad is, or what he does for a living, but I can only assume that he has threatened physical harm to the family of Bills’ GM Brandon Beane. Nathan Peterman has inexplicably managed to start 4 games for the Bills during his 2 year NFL career while amassing the jaw dropping career stat line of 3 TDs, 13 INTs (including 3 pick-sixes), a 32.5 QB rating and an addiction to throwing interceptions. Peterman is a prolific interception specialist (artist?) as 16% of his career completions have been to the opposing team. Similar to Sandy Koufax with strikeouts, Peterman’s name has become so synonymous with interceptions and pick-sixes that I propose replacing “INT” with the letter “P” as the official symbol for an interception and a backwards “P” for a pick-six.

               After posting six of his interceptions, and a 30.7 QB rating, in his 2017 rookie season it looked like the Bills’ staff had learned from their mistakes when they selected quarterback Josh Allen with the 7th overall draft pick in the 2018 draft. However, in a literal manifestation of the old idiom “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” the Bills coaching staff bizarrely selected Peterman over a healthy Allen to be their week 1 starter in 2018. Peterman did not disappoint, passing for a whopping 24 yards with two picks and zero first downs until the 3rd quarter en route to a 47-3 blowout loss to the Ravens. In his four appearances for the Bills this season (2 starts), Peterman racked up 1 TD, 7 interceptions, with 2 returned for touchdowns, and was sacked 34 times.

At a certain point Peterman’s performance isn’t even his own fault. The Bill’s coaching staff is really to blame as they continued to make the decision to play him, even after witnessing his obvious inadequacies. Hindsight is 20/20, but Nathan Peterman should probably never have suited up for an NFL game. The coaching staff’s decision to start him against the Chargers in 2017, in which Peterman tossed 5 interceptions, could have been more or less explained as a gaffe – as a horrible blunder and lapse in judgement accompanied by a wholehearted pledge to never let Peterman touch the field again. But he did touch the field again. He touched the field seen more times in a Bills uniform and may have actually regressed as a quarterback.

I feel very passionately about this post because no matter how hard I try to wrap my head around what rationale could have possibly been employed to justify continuing to play Peterman, I just can’t do it. I find it impossible to believe that there wasn’t at least one serviceable quarterback on the market worthy enough of starting over Peterman. The Bills would have had a better chance of winning if they lined up LeSean McCoy at QB all game and just ran out of the wildcat.

I have zero doubt in my mind that I could not play any worse, in an NFL game, than Peterman did in his infamous 5 interception performance. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, Nathan Peterman somehow found himself taking the Bills’ first snap in week 1 this season.