By: Kory Reid

Posted: November 17th, 2017

There’s something I have to get off my chest. This drought of 17 years has a stink over Buffalo that you can smell from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It’s something we can’t seem to shake, and a way of life at this point as a Buffalo sports fan. It’s made us lower our standard of what we should expect from the Bills. Many from the national media, and even fans of other teams, will tell you that Buffalo should be happy with good enough, run of the mill or average. Quite frankly, I’m absolutely sick of it.

On my ride home from work yesterday, I had the WGR550 app fired up, excited to hear what ESPN’s John Clayton would think about the move to bench Tyrod Taylor. I assumed he would defend Tyrod, which he did, but there was much more to it than that. His reaction made me believe two things; that he hasn’t spent much time watching the Bills outside of the odd prime time game and that he thinks that we should feel complacent with the mediocre product we’ve grown used to. What really struck a nerve was what his concept of what us as Buffalo fans should be happy with come playoff time.

“In the big picture, is it that big of a deal in any city to be able to make the second wild card, lose by two touchdowns in the first playoff game? In Buffalo it’s huge.” said Clayton, “It’s fantastic, a great opportunity.”

Photo credit: LA Times and thecomeback.net

I can’t express how much is wrong with that mentality. It’s essentially saying shoot for being a manager at McDonald’s, and if you don’t make it, you are who you are. It’s setting your goal for a car as a used 2007 Kia.

We as Buffalo fans deserve to dream big, and not settling for an average to below average quarterback in Tyrod Taylor is doing just that. We deserve to fantasize about long playoff runs, AFC Championships and dare I say, Lombardi Trophies. Taylor has proven that unless you have an elite team around him, you can’t even entertain the idea.

Tyrod Taylor is nothing more than a quarterback that more than likely won’t hurt your chances of winning, and on rare occasions will carry the team. When I mean rare, those happenings are few and far between. He’s not someone you should sacrifice your future over, and I applaud the Bills for realizing that. Even if they are moving to Peterman because they believe he can help them win now, what are we really losing in Tyrod Taylor? He is at best the 18th most talented quarterback in the league, who will take up over a tenth of the salary cap next year.

This is a quarterback driven league. Look at the list of AFC championship winning quarterbacks from 2003 and on. There’s been 4 in 14 years. It’s obvious what you need to win in this league. An elite quarterback. If you don’t have it you’re stuck in purgatory, and that was the road we were on with Taylor.

Back to the main message of the article. Bills fans, don’t let the search for the playoffs blind you from the bigger picture. We don’t want a one and done team, we want to sustain greatness. Aiming for the playoffs this year shouldn’t necessarily be the main goal, setting yourself up for years of playoff runs should be. Pulling Taylor, whether it was because they believe that Nathan Peterman gives them a better shot at winning now or that they want to move on from him in the future, was the correct move. It allows us Buffalo fans to dream big once again, even if the national level doesn’t believe we should.