And if Rex has any doubts (or perhaps the past tense works better there, as multiple reports late Saturday and this morning suggest the decision has already been made), he should give Mike Shanahan a call.
Taylor, who was injured by an illegal horse-collar tackle on the improbable third-and-forever scramble that keyed last Sunday's how-did-that-happen 14-13 win against Tennessee, did practice some this week. But Manuel took most of the first-team snaps and, if Ryan and offensive coordinator Greg Roman did not spend much time thinking about Shanahan's experience with Robert Griffin III, they should have.
You might recall that RGIII was once the future of the National Football League, who won the Heisman Trophy at Baylor in 2011 and swept rookie-of-the-year honors the next season, leading Washington's rebound from a 3-6 start to a playoff berth.
But late in the regular season, like Taylor, he had injured a knee ligament. Shanahan sent his prized rookie, whose game relied heavily on his mobility, out to start the playoff game against Seattle in a knee brace.
Griffin threw two touchdown passes in the first quarter, but spent the rest of the day hobbling, falling and finally breaking down, his knee completely blown, as the Seahawks rolled to a 24-14 win. Griffin has never been nearly the same, repeatedly losing his job to the immortal Kirk Cousins.
Shanahan, meanwhile, was fired after going 3-13 in 2013, and Washington spiraled from a franchise with quite possibly the worst owner in modern professional sports history to a mainstream national punchline.
A few hours before the 3-2 Bills host the unbeaten Bengals, it would appear Ryan won't make the same gamble with his promising young quarterback (who, to be fair, has yet to approach RGIII's rookie-year level). If everyone involved is smart, Taylor will be in street clothes today, or at least league-sanctioned sweats, preferably as far from the field and any potential incidental contact as possible.
Which brings us back to Manuel, who, until little more than a year ago, was Buffalo's franchise-quarterback-in-development.
After a promising, if injury-plagued, rookie season, Manuel was yanked a month into his second capaign by a panicky Doug Marrone after a couple iffy performances and one lousy one in Houston.
The revisionist view holds that Manuel was irretrievably terrible, and that his replacement, Kyle Orton, saved the season.
To again quote Eric Cartman, bullcrap.
We're not going to rehash the Orton Era here (though you can do so by following this link), but the Bills could be in much worse shape. Like, for instance, if they were stuck with the smartly exiled Matt Cassel, the supposedly cagey, mistake-free veteran who somehow managed to commit nearly two turnovers a game over the past five seasons, and who will start for Dallas after their bye week because the Cowboys have no other choice.
While in his first two seasons, Manuel was not been as mobile or as accurate as Taylor has been through five weeks, he's put together some decent-or-better games, especially at Ralph Wilson Stadium. Buffalo was 3-1 with Manuel starting in Orchard Park in 2013, with the lone loss coming to New England on a last-second field goal in the season opener. He split the pair of 2014 home starts he got before being benched, with a scattered day against San Diego rating as his worst non-road game to date.
Even against the Chargers, though, Manuel didn't turn the ball over. In those six home starts, he committed a total of five giveaways, with three coming in a 23-20 upset of Baltimore in Week 4 of 2013. He completed 63 percent of his throws in those games (compared to 58.6 percent overall), with eight touchdowns and three interceptions (as opposed to an 8-9 split in road outings and one counterfeit "home" contest in the best-forgotten Toronto experiment).
Besides, the Bills have plenty of other things to worry about today.
There's the health of the reportedly returning LeSean McCoy and Sammy Watkins, both of whom would provide more explosiveness around Manuel than Taylor has enjoyed the last couple weeks.
And there is Rex's defense, which kept Buffalo in last week's game long enough for Taylor to pull out the late comeback and flattened Indianapolis and Miami, but has yet to bully a quality offense in the fashion promised since Ryan's arrival.
Not to mention the Bengals themselves. Andy Dalton takes justifiable criticism for his annual playoff flops, but is a week removed from a huge comeback win against Seattle, which triggered the sort of "Andy Dalton has finally arrived!" talk that always precedes those yearly January disasters.
Much of Dalton's supposed improvement can be credited to a potent running game in which Giovani Bernard gains most of the yards (377 through five games) and Jeremy Hill scores the touchdowns (five), as well as the emergence of tight end Tyler Eifert and wideouts Mohamed Sanu and Marvin Jones as complements to the rather brilliant A.J. Green.
The last time the Bengals were in town, Buffalo also operated with a backup quarterback. Filling in for Manuel, who went down with a knee injury against Cleveland 10 days earlier, Thaddeus Lewis threw for two touchdowns and ran for another, nearly pulling off the upset before the Bengals won in overtime.
Two years and five days later, Cincinnati and the Bills are both significantly better. If Ryan's defense can succeed against Dalton where it failed against Tom Brady and Eli Manning, Manuel should be good enough.
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