Senior NFL reporter Albert Breer gave some insight into the Buffalo Bills starting quarterback decision in a recent MMQB piece. According to Breer, the Bills had planned to go with Josh Allen as their starting quarterback prior to his preseason start vs. the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Bills did on Wednesday what they would’ve done on Aug. 27 if Allen hadn’t crumbled behind an onslaught of Bengals pass rushers in the team’s third preseason game. It’s also what was coming, one way or another, before too long.

It wasn’t exactly a fair audition for Allen with left tackle Dion Dawkins out and the Bills rotating their interior line to simulate what they’d do with injuries. But nonetheless, it appears had he played well, the job was his.

Breer went on to explain that even with Nathan Peterman’s far superior preseason, the team was hesitant to name him the starter.

The call to go with second-year pro Nathan Peterman, made on Sept. 3, was a fairly close one. The staff gave Josh Allen a preseason start on Aug. 26 as his shot to win the starting job. He didn’t; Peterman, through a strong August, had. That said, coming out of a preseason playing backups and vanilla schemes, the Bills didn’t know what Peterman would look like with a high-end defense game-planning him.

Obviously, the results weren’t pretty, as Peterman finished the Bills’ regular season opener going 5-for-18 for 24 yards, zero touchdowns and two interceptions against the Baltimore Ravens in a 47-3 loss.

While the past is the past, it’s interesting to hear what many of us assumed: The starting QB decision was much closer than perhaps it appeared and the Josh Allen era was seemingly always one bad game (or half) away.