Sean Payton feels ‘strongly’ about Ian Book

We can’t believe we miss the days when we covered the Taysom Hill-Jameis Winston quarterback battle in New Orleans Saints‘ camp, but here we are.

Twelve weeks into the season, we have a much more drab (and convoluted) QB rivalry to talk about: Trevor Siemian vs. Taysom Hill vs. Ian Book.

If you could even call it a rivalry.

Siemian handled all quarterback snaps in the Saints’ home field walloping at the hands of Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills. Suffice to say, he did not play well, throwing for one score and 163 passing yards while recording an interception.

After the game, Sean Payton addressed questions about who the backup quarterback was since Hill was still injured.

Had Siemian gotten injured against the Bills, the insinuation is Hill would have stepped in but played a much more limited role at center.

Ian Book was listed as inactive that game despite Payton’s “strong” feelings about the rookie.

New Orleans Saints’ Sean Payton tries to clear up QB hierarchy

Payton also said he “had a pretty hard time finding any positives in any one’s individual offensive performances,” so take it all with a spoonful of salt.

Even in a game that was already lost by the third quarter, Payton seems hell-bent on keeping Siemian on the field and benching Book.

He may believe Book simply isn’t ready for the role, or he may want Siemian to get as many reps as possible to help the offense gel a bit. It isn’t working.

Payton himself admitted Siemian had a poor performance but attributed it as more of a team loss than anything:

"We struggled blocking him. We struggled running. I think it’s going to be difficult to do a lot of anything if you can’t block him and you can’t have some balance."

But the issue still begs the question of whether Book should get a chance to play. Given the sorry state of NOLA’s offense, and under these extremely depressing circumstances, one may ask: How much worse can it get?

Hopefully, not dead-last-in-the-NFC-South worse. The Saints are tanking their season as we speak, and Payton is right. It’ll take more than a quarterback to fix this mess.