Look, I understand that the worst NFL quarterbacks are way better passers and athletes than the average person; better than the vast majority of college athletes, who never get a shot at the pros. And yet, when I hear about another team signing Nathan Peterman, I do not get it.
The Las Vegas Raiders signed the former fifth-round pick yesterday. The Bills selected him back in 2017, and since that time he's started games for Buffalo, Las Vegas and Chicago, and will now embark on his second stint with the Raiders. This is not meant as a character assassination; maybe he's a very nice guy. Probably, because it is the only way it makes any sense that he gets to keep cashing NFL checks.
The last seven years, Peterman has started 5 NFL games, and appeared as a backup in 10 others. In those 15 contests, he's completed just 53 percent of his passes, throwing 4 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. He's compiled a passer rating of 39.4. We don't tend to do a lot with passer rating, not fantasy relevant, but we've noted in the past that if a quarterback did nothing more than drop back and spike the ball into the ground on every play, he'd compile a passer rating of 39.6. So Peterman's career performance across the past seven years is worse than that.
Out of curiosity, I used the search tools at pro-football-reference.com to see how every quarterback who's appeared in at least 10 games since Peterman entered the league has fared. I looked for all quarterbacks who had at least 100 pass attempts but compiled a passer rating of less than 75.0.
There are 14 such players, and Peterman has been noticeably worse than all of the other quarterbacks on the list.
| QBS WITH A SUB-75 PASSER RATING, 2017-PRESENT | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | G | Cmp | Att | Cmp% | Yds | TD | Int | Rate |
| Trevor Siemian | 25 | 418 | 722 | 57.9 | 4350 | 26 | 22 | 74.7 |
| Dwayne Haskins | 16 | 267 | 444 | 60.1 | 2804 | 12 | 14 | 74.4 |
| Bryce Young | 16 | 315 | 527 | 59.8 | 2877 | 11 | 10 | 73.7 |
| Zach Wilson | 34 | 566 | 993 | 57.0 | 6293 | 23 | 25 | 73.2 |
| Brian Hoyer | 30 | 211 | 361 | 58.4 | 2291 | 9 | 11 | 72.8 |
| Blaine Gabbert | 26 | 196 | 342 | 57.3 | 2136 | 13 | 13 | 72.7 |
| Mike Glennon | 19 | 315 | 517 | 60.9 | 2925 | 17 | 20 | 71.3 |
| Brett Hundley | 14 | 197 | 327 | 60.2 | 1885 | 9 | 12 | 70.2 |
| Josh Rosen | 24 | 277 | 513 | 54.0 | 2864 | 12 | 21 | 61.1 |
| P.J. Walker | 21 | 185 | 339 | 54.6 | 2135 | 6 | 16 | 60.0 |
| Brett Rypien | 10 | 98 | 168 | 58.3 | 950 | 4 | 9 | 59.9 |
| DeShone Kizer | 18 | 275 | 518 | 53.1 | 3081 | 11 | 24 | 58.9 |
| Tim Boyle | 20 | 114 | 183 | 62.3 | 934 | 4 | 12 | 55.2 |
| Nathan Peterman | 15 | 85 | 160 | 53.1 | 712 | 4 | 13 | 39.4 |
Inclusion on this list is not a good thing, but at least Bryce Young has only one year of games to get him on it. There's still plenty of time for him to turn things around. Zach Wilson doesn't have that excuse; in fact he has more appearances (34) than anybody else in the table. When the Broncos cut him a couple of weeks from now, he might have a hard time finding work.
But as Peterman proves, it only takes one team in need of a No. 3 to keep you in the NFL, no matter how poorly you perform when you get on the field.
--Andy Richardson