Kelly Holcomb

There’s one thing to like about this situation, but it’s very important: Steve Fairchild is the offensive coordinator. When he took over the play calling from Mike Martz last year he was so pass happy that he got into a fight with running backs coach Wilbert Montgomery, who wanted to use Steven Jackson more. When you draft a fantasy QB, you want his coordinator to be a guy who’d rather fight than run. We’d be more aggressive in drafting a Bills’ signal caller if Holcomb gets the nod when camp breaks. But he was nothing special other than his 9.6 rate of poor throws (J.P. Losman threw poor passes at a rate almost twice as high, 18.4 percent). Holcomb’s QB rating late/close was only 69 and it was 65 on just 21 11-to-20 throws (less than 10 percent of his total attempts, an extremely low percentage for an NFL QB and evidence that the coaches either didn’t think he could make those throws, or that Holcomb checked down too much). Regardless of who wins the Bills' starting job, you'll need to cross your fingers if you choose to make them your fantasy QB.

If J.P. Losman struggles, the Bills, who have a good enough defense and running game to compete for a playoff spot, probably won’t wait too long to turn over the reins to Holcomb, a competent veteran QB with an average arm and not much speed. If that happens, Holcomb would inherit an offense with plenty of talent at wideout in Lee Evans and Eric Moulds, but the Bills are run-first team that’s likely to be in more than their share of low-scoring games.

As is often the case, the bloom fell off the rose once the backup was asked to start. Holcomb was horrendous with his decision making last year (12 picks against 10 TDs), but he was the NFL's most accurate passer (only nine percent of his throws were poor).