I’m on board with you for one simple reason. The blitz. He is effective against the blitz which is very tough for young QB’s. That is why you see teams rush 3 or 4 and then go dime. If we can establish any sort of rushing attack that makes teams respect our run game, get 8 in the box, his numbers will look much better.

It all hinges on the run game. The kid can play

By “make-up”, of course, I refer to his work ethic. I refer to the fact that despite the team’s recent struggles, he remains, unequivocally, the leader of this team. Nobody’s turned on him, as we’ve seen in years past.

I’ve had numerous debates on the NFL QB position. Whenever the debate comes up, I find 3 traits that I believe a QB that wants to be successful needs to have:
1) accuracy – this is most important physical tool. Under pressure, tight windows, you must be accurate
2) Toughness….take hits, not get injured and always play….the top-tier QB’s do not get injured and they ALWAYS get up quickly no matter how bad the hit hurts. Trent does that extremely well
3) Has the RESPECT of his teammates – Trent’s play has earned him that barring these last 3 weeks

In summary, I believe Trent has the entire package. He is tall, strong, can make all the throws. The only time I started to doubt him was the over-throw to Evans last week for the pick. That’s the first time I have seen a relatively easy throw be completely inaccurate from Edwards. That said, this kid works, like Brian said, numerous stories I’ve heard about him he is always watching film, working with his WR’s and trying to get better. I think if we had a TE and WR #2 that could develop a rapport with him, we could have an offense that will be a top 10 offense for years to come. Of course, we need those pieces first so don’t jump on me for that statement. But a pass-catching TE would do WONDERS for this kid. Look at last night’s game. Keller/Watson were the keys to that game.

To sum up. I love this kid. I believe the talent around him has let him down. No run game, Hardy has struggled to develop and Reed has been out. Fix those things surrounding him, and we will see the “elite” Trent Edwards before the season is up.

Fix the line and the QB and RBs will look much better. Lets hope the Bills fix the line before they ruin Edwards.

I’m on the Edwards train. As a former JP fan, I was much slower than everyone else to jump on the train (“Hi, my name is Jon, and I thought JP Losman was going to be a good quarterback in the NFL.” “Hi Jon”) . Of course, I think some people dove on the train thinking it was the Acela Express to super bowl victories, MVPs, pro bowls, etc., and it now appears it’s more likely the Long Island Railroad with plenty of stops and starts along the way. (I’m not sure if that analogy makes sense to anyone else, but it makes sense to me – and that’s all that matters).

Anyway, I like Edwards development. Again, I think some people got sucked in real early and started proclaiming Edwards to be the next Jim Kelly, which at this point, is obviously extremely premature. Might he reach that point someday? Certainly. He has the physical tools as well as the mental tools (something JP severely lacked) to become a very good, if not great quarterback in this league. Oh, and he doesn’t sound like a 12 year old girl when he talks. So, that’s a bonus.

As a two year pro, with only 18 starts under his belt, Edwards has shown some exceptional promise. He has some ways to go, but I think his intelligence and work ethic will allow him to continue to improve. Of course, that all depends on our line’s ability to keep him vertical long enough that he can improve. His most valuable tool resides in his head and getting it bounced off the turf every other play isn’t going to help him any.

Of course, that all depends on our line’s ability to keep him vertical long enough that he can improve.

Coulda used that one, too.

But its never a good iea to completely rule it out either. I just hope for the best

I really like Trent, though I sometimes question his confidence. He doesn’t always seem willing to make EVERY throw, instead settling for the short check downs. More importantly, he looks shaken these past 3 games and it appears to be effecting his play. He just doesn’t look all that confident and comfortable out there right now. That is something that concerns me.

I’m not sure completion percentage is as telling a stat as intended. We all know that a lot of his passes are the short dumpoffs, which can really inflate the completion percentage. Heck Losman has a 63% completion rate over the past few seasons. It is a good stat, but doesn’t tell everything. I’m more concerned about TD passes, which is something that Trent doesn’t seem capable of throwing a lot of…..

I just want him more in control out there, with more confidence Let’s go Trent, turn this around even if Turk isn’t making it easy….

CB on his blog reports that Hardy, Whitner, Royal are all practicing. Butler is a for sure go. Sounds like Reed is a long shot but hasn’t been completely ruled out. I hope if Reed isn’t back this week that he comes back next week cuz we need that 3rd down safety valve for Trent.

Trent hasn’t look poised but the lack of running game, predictable play calling, and lack of options besides Evans have hamstrung him. I think he’ll be alright if he can get one good game on Monday and start snowballing the confidence from there

I decided to look at the two first seasons of some of the great ones and the results were quite surprising. Because there is such a big discrepancy in the quantity of games played over their two first seasons it’s difficult to use any other indicator but the QB rating. I know its not perfect but it does mean something and for the purpose at hand it is probably a very accurate stat to use.

Unfortunately, what these stats don’t show is the compliment around him. For example, Big ben benefited being on a team that had a top rated defense generating lots of turnovers with short fields and he also had a great OLINE & Running game. So unfortunately it’s impossible to take all those other factors into account. What we do know however is that Trent has had to produce these numbers with a really weak Offensive line, an overall weak running game, a defense that has a very difficult time getting off the field and rarely creates turnovers.

So lets look at where Trent lies amongst some of the great ones:

ROOKY YEAR
Rank Player GS Att Comp PCT Yards TD INT Rating
1 Big Ben 13 295 196 66.4 2621 17 11 98.1
2 Dan Marino 9 296 173 58.4 2210 20 6 96
3 Tom Brady 14 413 264 63.9 2843 18 12 86.5
4 Jim Kelly 16 480 285 59.4 3593 22 17 83.3
5 Joe Montana 1 23 13 56.5 96 1 0 81.1
6 Johnny Unitas 7 198 110 55.6 1498 9 10 74
7 Peyton Manning 16 575 326 56.7 3739 26 28 71.2
8 Trent Edwards 9 269 151 56.1 1630 7 8 70.4
9 Joe Namath 9 340 164 48.2 2220 18 15 68.7
10 Steve Young 5 138 72 52.2 935 3 8 56.9
11 Eli Manning 7 197 95 48.2 1043 6 9 55.4
12 John Elway 10 259 123 47.5 1663 7 14 54.9

Y2
 Rank Player GS Att Comp PCT Yards TD INT Rating
 1 Dan Marino 16 564 362 64.2 5084 48 17 108.9
 2 Big Ben 12 268 168 62.7 2385 17 9 98.6
 3 Peyton Manning 16 533 331 62.1 4135 26 15 90.7
 4 Johnny Unitas 12 301 172 57.1 2550 24 17 88
 5 Joe Montana 7 273 176 64.5 1795 15 9 87.8
 6 Trent Edwards 9 245 164 66.9 1845 7 7 86.9
 7 Tom Brady 16 601 373 62.1 3764 28 14 85.7
 8 Jim Kelly 12 419 250 59.7 2798 19 11 83.8
 9 John Elway 14 380 214 56.3 2598 18 15 76.8
 10 Eli Manning 16 557 294 52.8 3762 24 17 75.9
 11 Steve Young 14 363 195 53.7 2282 8 13 65.5
 12 Joe Namath 14 471 232 49.3 3379 19 27 62.6

The above numbers include the three game loosing streak. I continue to think that those last three games were lost because of extremely poor play-calling & extreme predictability which made Trent’s job almost impossible. Nonetheless, he is still sitting at 86.9 rating. It got me to thinking what his numbers were from the six games he played and they were:
 2 Trent Edwards (first 6) 6 152 106 70% 1209 5 2 98.8

So if we exclude the last three games from the equasion he then ranks 2nd behind Dan Marino. Furthermore, in those 6 games he was sacked 11 times (152 attempts, so approx 7.5% of the pass attempts) whereas Marino was sacked 13 times in 16 games (564 attempts, so approx 1.9% of the pass attempts). I can’t stop but wonder how bad Marino’s numbers would have been behind a lousy line like ours. So what makes this so impressive is that he accomplished these stats with only 1 quality receiver, no O-Line, no running game, no tight End. Not even the great Tom Brady has ever had to deal with such factors, especially not in his second year!

I don’t know how scientific this analysis is but it sure shows that our guy is pretty dam good. Since before the Bye week we’ve been complaining that the play-calling is way too predictable and that the O-Line really really sucks this year, well even a great QB will eventually start to have problems in those circumstances and I believe that has been the problem the last few weeks.

So in my opinion we have definitely found our franchise QB

WILL be a great QB in this league. just as many of you pointed out, he is gonna need some help. take any of the players off that list of ‘the greats" and put them in there with this crew and i would be suprised to see them do any better than edwards has done this year. all i’m saying is… if we can continue t build around trent, give him some damn protection, and supply him with some more weapons, he will be as complete a QB as there is in this league.

It’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish.

Let’s see if Monday night’s game leads to a strong finish for Edwards and the Bills.