After the Cardinals released him, the next stop for quarterback Kevin Kolb has slowly been coming into focus. On Saturday, he reportedly will make it official by signing a deal with the Bills, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. The deal, writes The Sideline View's Adam Caplan, is worth a maximum of $13 million over two years.
While Kolb was a disaster in Arizona -- he only played 15 games in two years and went 6-8 as a starter -- the Bills have had quarterback woes of their own. After signing Ryan Fitzpatrick to an, ahem, ill-advised $59 million contract extension in 2011, a former Bills coach called him “average to below average” and Buffalo released him this month.
The Bills needed more depth at quarterback, considering Tarvaris Jackson and 2012 college free-agent Aaron Corp are the only two signal-callers on the roster.
The Jets and the Raiders reportedly had shown some interest in Kolb. But other than that, the market seemed quiet for him. Probably, in part, because John Skelton beat him out for the starting Cardinals job at the beginning of 2012.
Still, this move doesn’t rule out the Bills taking a quarterback with the No. 8 overall pick in next month’s draft. In fact, five of our six mock drafters have the Bills selecting a quarterback with predictions ranging from USC’s Matt Barkley to Syracuse’s Ryan Nassib to West Virginia’s Geno Smith.
Considering new Bills coach Doug Marrone coached Nassib while at Syracuse and coached against Smith, those quarterbacks -- though none are considered by many draft analysts to be franchise quarterbacks -- could make sense for Buffalo.
If not, will Kolb be much better than Fitzpatrick? Probably not. But he also probably won’t be much worse, either.
