Aaron Rodgers just had one of the worst games by an NFL quarterback in recent history.
In the New York Jets’ Week 17 loss to the Buffalo Bills, Rodgers posted a QBR of 1.2, the worst by a quarterback since Davis Mills in Week 4 of the 2021 season. Rodgers netted 86 passing yards while throwing two interceptions and taking four sacks, one resulting in a safety.
After helping to bury the Jets in a 40-0 hole, Rodgers took a seat on the bench. He was relieved by Tyrod Taylor, who followed Rodgers’ grotesque outing by immediately leading New York on back-to-back touchdown drives. Taylor completed 11-of-14 passes for 83 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions. He also took no sacks and threw for a two-point conversion. The journeyman finished with a 131.0 passer rating and a 95.9 QBR.
Obviously, Taylor’s performance should be taken with a grain of salt. It occurred in garbage time while Buffalo was playing a vanilla defense with multiple backups on the field.
Nonetheless, it was jarring to see Rodgers’ historically poor performance followed by a crisp pair of drives from Taylor. It adds interesting context to the Jets’ upcoming quarterback decision. Taylor is under contract for next season with a cap hit of just $6.8 million. Meanwhile, New York must decide whether to keep Rodgers, cut him, or try to negotiate a new contract.
I have advocated in the past for the Jets to ride with Taylor as their bridge quarterback for the 2025 season. Seemingly, his impressive outing in Buffalo would support that case, especially in contrast to Rodgers’ disastrous game.
Is that really the case?
Let’s break down Taylor’s brief appearance in Buffalo to see if there are any tangible takeaways that should affect New York’s future.
Tyrod Taylor vs. Bills
Although Taylor played in garbage time, his stint on the field did not have the typical makings of a garbage time appearance.
Playing behind a makeshift offensive line, Taylor was constantly harassed by the Buffalo pass rush, taking pressure on 40% of his dropbacks, per NFL Next Gen Stats. This is a high rate; for perspective, the 2024 NFL average is 33.5%.
The pressure, along with some tight coverage in the back end, forced Taylor into attempting a low-percentage diet of passes. His 14 attempts carried an expected completion percentage of just 59.4%.
Yet, Taylor vastly outperformed these circumstances, making some great plays in difficult situations. While his expected completion percentage was 59.4%, he actually completed 78.6% of his passes, giving him a CPOE (completion percentage over expected) of 19.2%.
That is nearly 10 points better than Rodgers’ season-high (9.5% vs. New England in Week 3). Not only that, but it is the seventh-best single-game CPOE of the 2024 season by a QB with at least 15 dropbacks, and the highest by a QB who was also pressured on at least 40% of his dropbacks.
The film reflects these numbers. Taylor didn’t just throw checkdowns against a prevent defense. He showed that he still possesses the same athleticism, accuracy, mobility, and playmaking ability that has allowed him to last in the NFL for so long.
Taylor is left one-on-one with a defensive end on a naked bootleg. He freezes him with a hesitation, outruns him to the edge, and fires a completion to Davante Adams in a tight window along the sideline.
Feeling pressure from his right, Taylor slides left while keeping his eyes downfield. It’s a great job of using his peripheral vision to feel the pressure without taking his eyes off the routes. Taylor fires a dart to Garrett Wilson on the curl route with tight coverage from behind – nice timing to get this ball to Wilson just before the defender closes in. It’s a little high, but Wilson makes a good catch.
Fantastic throwaway by Taylor. Firstly, Joe Tippmann delivers the snap way too high, and Taylor makes a nice snatch. Taylor starts his read to the left, and when he comes back to his right, there’s a free blitzer exploding through the B-gap. Taylor immediately chucks the ball out of bounds, negating a sack. Give him credit for knowing where to go with the ball to avoid a grounding penalty. Additionally, Taylor wisely throws the ball with enough heat to ensure it gets out of bounds and has no chance of being picked off. This is disaster prevention 101 on multiple fronts by the veteran QB.
Another great throwaway by Taylor. The Jets leave an unblocked defender off the edge, and Taylor spins out of the pocket. His jersey is grabbed, but Taylor pulls free and sprints out of the tackle box so he can chuck the ball out of bounds. This play shows that Taylor still has plus athleticism for the quarterback position.
Tippmann launches another terrible snap that Taylor has to leap and snatch to his left, which is problematic in this situation considering Taylor wants to look for Garrett Wilson on the right. Taylor comes down with the ball and patiently resets his feet, launching a beautiful back-shoulder ball for Wilson. It’s a great job of staying calm and not panicking after the bad snap, especially following the immediate pressures on the two plays earlier in the drive.
Nothing too groundbreaking here, but you like the poise from Taylor to sense the pressure from John Simpson, keep his eyes downfield, step up into the open space, and deliver a perfect ball in stride to Tyler Conklin.
Taylor scrambles to his right to create an easier throwing angle to Kenny Yeboah in the flat. Throwing on the run, Taylor places a perfect ball in Yeboah’s hands, but Yeboah drops it. Taylor’s three incompletions were comprised of this drop and the two throwaways we saw earlier. Outside of those plays, he was 11-for-11.
Post-snap, Taylor sees the field-side safety drop, which tells him that Tyler Conklin is 1-on-1 up the seam against single-high coverage. Taylor holds the safety, gets his eyes back to Conklin, sees him with the leverage to win vertically, and throws the ball with elite anticipation – if you pause at the moment Taylor begins winding up, Conklin is still about a full yard underneath the defender. Taylor puts a perfect ball out in front, standing tall in the pocket while pressure comes from the right side.
Tippmann desperately needs to improve his snap accuracy this offseason. Good job by Taylor staying with the ball and preventing a turnover.
This is just a nice display of the athleticism Taylor still has. He isn’t Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, or Jayden Daniels, but I’d wager he is still more athletic than at least half of the NFL’s current starting quarterbacks. As recently as 2023, Taylor averaged 32 rushing yards per game across his five starts for the Giants.
Taylor didn’t do anything to show he isn’t the guy we’ve come to know him as
It would be silly to draw any strong conclusions from a one-quarter performance in garbage time. With that said, we learned that Taylor still has the physical traits that have made him a respectable starting quarterback throughout his career. He may be 35 years old, but with limited mileage on his tires (58 starts in 14 seasons), Taylor does not seem to have lost a step athletically.
There is little Taylor could have done to improve his case to be the Jets’ 2025 starting quarterback in a tiny sample size with low stakes. However, he definitely could have hurt his case with a poor performance in which he looked like a depleted version of himself. This certainly did not happen.
As a result, the Jets’ new regime can feel more comfortable about evaluating Taylor based on his career body of work. Nothing about Taylor’s performance suggests he is likely to be any different than the player he’s been throughout his career.
