FMIA Week 8: Trevor Siemian Leads Big Day For NFL Backups

This is what I really love about the NFL: West Virginia Big 20, 85 Delta Go.

I love it because it’s absolutely preposterous. Trevor Siemian, who hasn’t been an NFL starter for four years, throwing to Kevin White, who hasn’t caught an NFL pass in three years. Siemian, who is rarely asked to throw deep, throwing deep. On a larger scale: Siemian, New Orleans’ third-string quarterback, dueling with Tom Brady.

“Think about this,” Sean Payton said from New Orleans late Sunday night. “You’re Trevor Siemian. You gotta prepare to play Tampa Bay. You really have to get your mind ready to go in the meetings, go to practices, and then you gotta do it the next week and you might have to go two or three years, and maybe you never play. You gotta prepare like you’re gonna play, but tell me—what if you were a firefighter, prepared all the time to go fight fires, and there never was a fire for two, three years. You never get to fight a fire. Then one day, there’s a fire, and if you’re not really ready, that house is gone. Burned down. So here, Trevor Siemian’s gotta prepare like he’s playing, because he’s gonna regret it, really regret it, if he’s not ready. Unique job. Know what I mean?”

Siemian was in the game because the starter, Jameis Winston, got corkscrewed into the turf by Tampa linebacker Devin White 17 minutes into the game; it’s likely Winston will be lost for the season with the resulting torn knee ligaments. (Further exams today.) Backup Taysom Hill missed the game with a concussion. (He should be back at practice Wednesday.) That left third-stringer Siemian to enter a 7-7 game against the Super Bowl champions with 43 minutes left.

All Siemian had to do—and keep in mind the Saints weren’t going to run much against the best rushing defense in football—was to summit Mount Brady . . . and also, don’t dare get hurt. “When he went in,” Payton said, “I told him, ‘I don’t want you getting hit, at all.’ I mean, he goes out, and we’re using Alvin Kamara back there at quarterback, taking shotgun snaps. Alvin’s our emergency guy. So we had a lot riding on Trevor.”

So the Saints were relying on Siemian, who’d completed three passes in the last four years, to stay upright, to move the team with not much of a chance to run the ball, and to somehow score more points in the last three quarters than Tom Brady, who is only on pace to throw for 5,631 yards with 53 touchdown passes this year.

Piece of cake.

“What I was thinking,” Siemian said, post-game, “was just don’t mess it up. Keep it running smooth. Have fun. I had so much frickin’ fun out there.”

Wait a minute. I have to be fair to Siemian here. Before we started he said he wanted to say something first.

“I am gutted, absolutely gutted, for Jameis,” Siemian said. “This win was truly for him. I know how much it meant for him, to play his old team and to win. I love the guy. Just love him. And I just hope . . .”

Pause. A bit of an ominous pause.

“I just hope he’s back sooner than later,” Siemian said.

Week 8: the week of the backup QBs. In New Jersey, Mike White, making his first career start for the…