Nathan Peterman is the Bills week 1 starter, beating out A.J. McCarron (who signed a 2-year, $8.1M contract with Buffalo in March, and received $4M from the Bills without ever taking a regular season snap before being traded to Oakland on three days ago) and rookie Josh Allen, taken with the 7th pick in the 2018 Draft.

Which is… well, unusual to say the least. Peterman does not have a strong pedigree nor a track record of success. He was the 5th round pick in the 2017 Draft; as a rule of thumb, 5th round picks don’t start week 1 games for teams unless they have had some success. So, how did he do last season as a rookie?

Throwing 500 incomplete passes would give you a passer rating of 39.6. 2017 Nathan Peterman became just the 9th QB since 2002 to have a sub-39.6 passer rating on 49 or more passes (the number Peterman threw). pic.twitter.com/6ur9Opz56T — Football Perspective (@fbgchase) August 26, 2018

Yes, Peterman was a disaster in 2017, responsible for the single worst quarterback game of the season in one of his two starts (his other start came in a snowstorm and he did not finish the game).

As it turns out, Peterman will become just the 25th quarterback since 1990 — or roughly about one per season — to be a team’s week 1 starter despite (1) being drafted in the 4th round or later, and (2) having fewer than 5 career starts to his name entering the season. Peterman, as a 5th round pick with two starts under his belt (and zero games that he has started and finished), comfortably fits into both categories.

Among those 25 quarterbacks, though, 15 of them were 26 years or older during the season in question. This means those players had either spent some serious time as a backup (often behind a star quarterback like Brett Favre, as in the case of Doug Pederson and Matt Hasselbeck) or in other leagues (like Kurt Warner) or both (like J.T. O’Sullivan, and, well, Warner). Just 9 of those quarterbacks pre-Peterman were 25 or younger and week 1 starters despite low pedigree and few starts.

Who were the first 9 before Peterman? Four of them were starters due to injury.

Who were the other 5? What sort of factors led to a relatively unheralded young quarterback being voluntarily chosen as the team’s top option to open the season at quarterback?

In 2016, Trevor Siemian won the Broncos starting job. He was 25 years old and a second-year veteran taken in the 7th round of the ’15 Draft. One advantage he had over Peterman: he didn’t have “spike the ball every play” caliber season on his resume when he was named a starter.

In 2002, the Lions were in a very similar situation to the 2018 Bills. After taking Joey Harrington with the 3rd overall pick, the team decided to let last year’s 5th rounder — in this case, Mike McMahon — begin the season as starter. That lasted all of six quarters before Harrington replaced McMahon.

Remember 1997 Rob Johnson? Well, he was so outstanding in that game that the Bills traded for him and he was the team’s week 1 starter in 1998, when he also makes this list. With the ’98 Bills, he was a 25-year-old, 4th round pick with one career start. Given that he was great in his one start, and Peterman was a disaster in his first start, it’s not a great comparison. Johnson was expected to be a future franchise quarterback.

In 1996, the Steelers were trying to replace Super Bowl goat Neil O’Donnell at quarterback, and had to choose among Mike Tomczak, Jim Miller, and Kordell Stewart. Miller wound up getting the nod, a 2nd-year quarterback taken in the 6th round the prior year with zero starts to his name (a very Siemian-esque situation). He lasted one game before Miller replaced him.

In 1991, John Friesz beat out Billy Joe Tolliver for the starting job in San Diego. Tolliver had been the Chargers starter in 1990, but Friesz — a 6th round pick who had just one career start entering the season — won the job in preseason.

The table below shows all 25 starters:

On the one hand, it’s fair to wonder just how the Bills landed in a situation where Peterman is the team’s week one starter. On the other hand, last year we saw Scott Tolzien (at age 30) and Tom Savage (at age 27) as week 1 starters, and I’m not sure Peterman’s really any worse than that.