There's no doubt about that if E.J. Manuel wants to be the franchise quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, he needs to win and play much better on the road then he has so far. Of course he's a rookie and rookies obviously struggle in year one, minus Andrew Luck, RGIII, Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan and Big Ben to name only a small few. Outside of those, pretty much every rookie struggles in year one, but shows some promise at the end of the year and by the end of year two going into year three show you whether or not they are going to be the franchise guy or not.
Manuel has shown flashes of brilliance as well as struggles that every rookie goes through. He's been good at home/Toronto but has been bad I mean really bad on the road. Again, on a not so good football team with a rookie QB I don't expect a ton of wins, especially on the road. But what I need to see is at least one win and good performances in general from him on the road in their final two road games and this week's game at Jacksonville is the easier of the two, and that's not even that easy considering Jacksonville has won four of its last five after starting 0-8. Obviously the last game is New England and I just don't see Buffalo winning there, they never won at Gillette Stadium and haven't won in Foxborough since 2000, before Gillette was even built.
EJ has been a completely different QB at home/Toronto then he was on the road. In his five home games, Manuel has completed 62.8% of his passes for 1,068 yards, 7 touchdowns and 3 interceptions along with a 91.8 QB Rating and a 7.2 yards per pass attempt. Pretty darn good numbers for almost anyone, especially a rookie. Oh yea, he is 3-2 at home and his two losses were by a combined 5 points. They lost on a late field goal to New England in the opener after which EJ played pretty darn well for a rookie in his NFL debut and lost in overtime in Toronto to Atlanta after both Stevie Johnson and Scott Chandler fumbled, costing EJ a chance at a 4th quarter or overtime victory.
His final drive against Carolina was something of a beauty. He had his struggles during the game with an interception and a lost fumble but overcame that by leading an 80-yard drive with no timeouts left to throw a TD pass to Stevie with little time remaining. The win over Carolina looks even better now because of how well Carolina has played since. He completed 27 of 39 passes for 296 yards. His best game as a pro so far was the game against the New York Jets as he completed 20 of 28 passes for 245 yards for two long touchdowns in a 37-14 blowout of the Jets. EJ played very bad against the Jets earlier in the year at the Meadowlands but rebounded very nicely in this game. Plus EJ showed he could throw the deep ball, something that had been lacking in his game as he threw four long passes of 31 yards or longer. His one drive went just two plays with a 40-yard pass to TJ Graham and then followed that up with a 43-yard touchdown bomb to Marquise Goodwin. Plus EJ even had two QB sneaks on a 3rd-and-one and a 4th-and-one that were both converted for 1st downs to keep drives alive.
But on the road, it gets very, very ugly. He is 0-4 on the road and completed just 52.2% of his passes for 711 yards, 2 touchdowns, 5 interceptions, a very dismal 57.2 QB Rating, and an even more dismal 5.3 yards per attempt. Also, 20 of his 24 sacks have come on the road including 7 this past game at Tampa and 8 against the Jets. He must be more nervous or tentative in the pocket when on the road. Maybe the crowd noise or whatever gets to him, very understandable on the road in hostile environments. He needs to be able to overcome them. He's very cool and calm and relaxed in the pocket at home. Now he was pretty decent at Cleveland on Thursday night before he was injured as he was probably going to win that game. But he got hurt and missed the next four games and the Bills went 1-3, probably costing them a playoff berth.
His first road game was at the Jets which he was sacked eight times, most of it on the O-Line. EJ however really struggled and kept throwing deep passes out of bounds and not keeping them in play for a chance at a play or penalty. The positive was that how bad he played, he rallied them from a 20-6 deficit to tie the game at 20-20 late in the 4th with a nice TD pass to Scott Chandler, before the Bills blew it by giving up a TD to lose the game 27-20. At Pittsburgh, it was EJ's first game after missing more than a month with his injury and played absolutely dreadful. He was scared and kept checking down all day long, not going deep at all as he had no confidence whatsoever. That game scared me into thinking he was Trent Edwards all over again. I can see playing in Pittsburgh and against a great defensive mind like Dick LeBeau could be intimidating as he owns rookie QBs plus he was a little rusty. EJ completed just 22 of 39 passes for 155 yards for a dreadful 4.0 yards per attempt, but he only had 11 completions for 79 yards until a late garbage time TD drive where he completed 11 passes for 76 yards.
He did rally from that awful performance to play his best game against the Jets so everything seemed OK. Then came this past week at Tampa. Now if he was intimidated at Pittsburgh or even New York with the hostile crowd i could understand. Plus the cold weather and very windy conditions esp at Pittsburgh are tough for anybody. But this was Tampa, it was 80 something degrees and very sunny. No weather concerns whatsoever. Plus there was not much of a crowd so that couldn't be a problem either. And don't forget, he played his entire college career in Florida. And it was by far his worst game, even worse than Pittsburgh where I didn't think he could be worse. He was like a combination of Edwards and JP Losman. Very bad. So what was the problem? The Bills failed to score a single TD on a day in which the NFL set a record for most TDs scored in a single day, and many of those were scored in very snowy and horrible weather conditions. Again what was the problem? He was sacked 7 times and the line played bad at times. But half of those were on EJ himself as he missed seeing wide open receivers and had time to throw on at least four of his sacks. Plus he threw four INTs in which two of them were off receivers hands and the other two were terrible throws by him. His QB Rating was 31.2.
If anything was to change this season, it would be that the Bills don't get blown out on the road like they have the previous 13 years. But this season looks the same in terms of road blow out losses and EJ has been responsible for two of those and a third had he not played well in the 4th quarter against that Jets. If anything is going to change for this franchise in the future, its playing better and especially winning on the road if this team wants to be in the playoffs. And it starts with EJ playing much better than he has on the road and he must win on the road as well. You can't just win at home you know. This must start this week against Jacksonville. We shall see or else another QB has come and gone.
