Trevor Siemian Could Move, Not The Bills Answer

Editor’s Note: Alright, I can’t get past how much Siemian looks like Bobby Boucher from “The Waterboy” in this picture. We here at HashtagSports hope he continues to drink that high quality H2O

Trevor Siemian, the former 250th overall selection (7th round) of the 2015 NFL draft who just completed his second year, has a winning record as a starter. He led his team to an 8-6 record. Now that Mike McCoy has accepted the Offensive Coordinator role in Denver, along with new head coach Vance Joseph, the clear connection between McCoy and Pro-Bowl (and disgruntled) quarterback Phillip Rivers is pretty clear. That would give Denver a recently drafted first round quarterback in Paxton Lynch, current starter Siemian, and Rivers all on the same roster, which is simply too much of a logjam. So would Siemian be a fit for the Buffalo Bills?

At first glance it makes sense:

Siemian looks like an NFL quarterback, standing at 6’3”. In 14 games, Siemian threw for over 3400 yards, a near 2:1 touchdown to interception ratio, and played through a non-throwing shoulder injury for nearly three months that required surgery within the last two weeks. Obviously you would want to see the completion percentage to be at or above 60%, but at 59.5%, it is pretty close. His salary is $615,000 for 2017 and $705,000 for 2018; Affordable and productive. If the Bill were to offer a 3rd round selection and a conditional 5th next season, this deal would likely happen.

Comparing his passing production to Tyrod Taylor, who has a salary cap figure that twenty-six times Siemian’ s for 2017, the numbers are reasonably comparable.

From a passing perspective, it appears that Siemian is the more effective player, having accrued more yardage, more passing attempts, higher Yards per Attempt, higher Yards per Game, and lower Sack numbers. Clearly, not many quarterbacks in the NFL are as elusive as Taylor, so attempting to compare Taylor’s rushing total to Siemian’s is really a waste of time. Just know it is not close…at all.

So what is to say the Bills couldn’t save nearly $16 million dollars in cap space and use that to sign Alshon Jeffery or resign Stephon Gilmore or Zach Brown? It’s the advanced metrics that tell a different tale (the following statistics courtesy of playerprofiler.com):

Deep Ball Attempts (passes attempted that traveled long than 20 yards)
Siemian: 51 (or 3.6 attempts per game)
Taylor: 69 (or 4.6 attempts per game)
Deep Ball Completed
Siemian: 23.5%
Taylor: 27.5%
Pressure Completion (Completion Percentage when hit in the pocket or pressured outside of it)
Siemian: 27%
Taylor: 30%
Air Yards (the distance of the actual completion to wide receivers and tight ends removing yardage gained after the catch)
Siemian: 1982 (141 air yards per game)
Taylor: 1952 (130 air yards per game)
Red Zone Completion Percentage
Siemian: 54.7%
Taylor: 60.4%

Overall, even though Seimian’s total numbers look better than Taylor’s, the statistics state that Seimian’s are bolstered by a higher level of wide receivers. Here is another snapshot (from pro-football-reference) of similar advanced statistics. To put this in perspective, scoring a 100 is actually league average, so if you score 120, you are among the league best. Scoring 85 means you are among the league worst:
Y/A+ Yards Per Attempt
NY/A+ Net Yards Per Attempt
AY/A+ Adjusted Yards Per Attempt
ANY/A+ Adjusted Net Yards Per Attempt

Siemian:

Taylor:

In an attempt to summarize; Seimian’s shows to be a below average quarterback, and Taylor isn’t much better. Is Siemian an overall better passer? Yes. Is Taylor an overall better runner? Yes. Is Taylor going to cost you twenty-six times more money to get essential identical total production? Yes. By comparison of Taylor to Siemian, is it worth a 3rd and 5th round selection? No, it isn’t. If Rivers (or Romo for that matter) goes to Denver, Siemian would not be an improvement over Tyrod Taylor.
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