Taylor started for two seasons with the Vikings, including AP’s rookie year.
Peterson wasn’t around during Taylor’s first season as the starter. Taylor had 300 carries for 1200 yards. Ciatric Fason and Mewelde Moore got the rest of the carries.
I think your overall point is that Taylor could be an every-down back, and Peterson can’t- but the truth is that there are hardly any every-down backs left in the league. LT, Clinton Portis, and… that’s about it. Pretty much every other team has a designated third-down guy (or a time-share). In any case, I would say Taylor’s value is less in his blocking ability and more in his pass-catching- Peterson is decidedly not a good receiver.
Taylor didn’t have to compete for the starting job in 2006- and he started 8 games during AP’s rookie year before losing the job, and had far fewer carries (157 to 238).
Still, he’s a former starter. You said he’d never started.
As mentioned by others in this thread - you’re dead wrong on this point.
As for all you ambulance-chasers…
If Peterson gets hurt, at least we have Taylor, who we agree would likely be a starter on several teams. If Favre gets hurt, at least we have the guys who were going to start the season at QB prepped and ready to go, who some of you say are preferable to Favre anyways.
In both scenarios, we’re much better off than the teams in our division. You can’t “what if” the Vikes without looking how the other teams in our division would fare:
What if the Packers lost Rodgers and/or Grant? Rodgers would end their season…not sure who’s backing up Grant.
What if the Lions lost Stafford and/or Smith? Might be a wash at QB and I’m not sure who’s backing up Smith.
What if the Bears lost Cutler and/or Forte? Who are backing them up?
{shudder!}
Alright- but the point remains, he’s not that good.
The Packers have Brandon Jackson backing up Grant, and did just fine without much of a running game in 2007; Grant showed up around midseason, but they were winning without him. Rodgers is obviously a season-killer if he goes down.
Frankly, I don’t think it will hurt you much if Favre does go down. On the other hand, Peterson’s loss would hurt a lot.
The Lions would probably be better off at QB without Stafford. Say what you will about Culpepper since 2006, he’s still better than any rookie.
The Bears might just have lost Kevin Jones for a while; Garrett Wolfe is the third back, and while he’s a nice squirty-change-of-pace type, he’s definitely not built to handle 250 carries. I have no idea who the #2 QB is- is Grossman still there?
Caleb Hanie.
Sounds like a Mormon preacher.
Plays like one too. But the Bears seem to like him.
Playing like a Mormon might be pretty solid considering the history of BYU QBs. That said, Hanie has really looked solid in preseason. Backup QB is about 25th on my list of concerns for the Bears.
You can not over stress the importance back up QB. Most Qbs get hurt and miss time. You can lose a lot waiting for the No. 1 to return ,if you have a chump backup.
See: Bengals 2008 season with Ryan Fitzpatrick
See 50 other examples showing a huge drop off.
Brian Brohm got released by the Packers? Hm.
This angle is over sold. How many games have the Manning brothers missed? Drew Brees and Philip Rivers? Cutler, Romo and Garrard? First year starters Rodgers, Ryan and Flacco took nearly every snap for their teams and so did several crappy QBs like Orton, Pennington, Campbell and Bulger.
Crappy QBs on crappy teams tend to get roughed up and there are a handful of injury prone guys out there, but you can make a long list of teams that have been successful marginalizing the backup QB role. Hell, even Brady was fabulously durable, last years injury was the exception not the rule.
QB group rankings reveal teams in trouble if starter goes down Here’s an article that disagrees with your contention. QB injuries have badly hurt teams with bad backups.
"Only 16 quarterbacks started all 16 regular-season games. In other words, half of the teams in the NFL had to go to their second or third quarterbacks at some point because their starter got injured or failed to deliver and had to be replaced. In all, 53 different quarterbacks started a game in 2008, one season removed from an NFL-record 64.
How important was having a 16-game starter last year? Of the 12 teams that made the playoffs, only one – Minnesota – had multiple starters after Week 1; Tennessee made its switch by Week 2 and stayed with Kerry Collins the remainder of the season."
I don’t think he knows what the hell he’s arguing and his little chart makes little sense. All he’s doing is ranking the QB depth and relative strength of the teams on defense, nothing in that supports any form of an argument.
the only sentence in that article that means a thing is this one:
Good teams with good QBs usually keep them healthy. Bad teams don’t. If there was a stat that showed a lot of teams who had success on the back of a backup QB then perhaps we have something, that stat doesn’t exist.
Maybe the real reasons lies in the offensive line and their ability to keep the quarterback upright?
Of course, having a quarterback that holds onto the football too long, like it were a pair of tits (see Roethlisberger, Ben) also skews the numbers, as the Steelers are winners.
Sooooo the Lions flip O’Connell to the Jets for a draft pick. That seems pretty fucking shrewd on the surface, getting something for (seemingly) nothing.
Also, with the Lions being super special kinds of inept, they get the very first waiver claim. That person is Marcus McCauley, a cornerback, waived by the Vikings.
Woo?