Bills’ follies begin in front office
The hiring of Ryan was symptomatic of botched decision-making
Don’t stop at Rex Ryan, Terry and Kim Pegula. Clean house — your entire, toxic Buffalo Bills house.
Fire president Russ Brandon, fire GM Doug Whaley and fire chief contract negotiator Jim Overdorf while you’re at it. They’re more responsible for the football mess at One Bills Drive than Ryan, the head coach you fired Tuesday, a few days before he could level his record at .500.
In less than four years as Buffalo’s GM, Whaley could not come close to getting along with either Ryan or his predecessor, Doug Marrone. It’s hard to know which brief head-coaching era — Marrone’s or Ryan’s — produced the greater number of surprising, disturbingly press leaks detailing the internal power and manpower wars raging between Whaley and the head coach du-jour.
Any available replacement coach who’s any good surely knows this. Why would he want to work for such a boss?
My point is, Whaley and Brandon both should be held accountable for their disastrous recommendation in January 2015 to hire Rex. Because it necessarily meant firing Marrone’s defensive coordinator, Jim Schwartz.
Schwartz in 2014 had produced probably the most effective unit, offence or defence, the Bills have had during their depressing playoff drought. Schwartz took the talented players on hand and, in his attacking “wide-9” 4-3 scheme, fielded one of the league’s most feared defences in 2014. It finished first in sacks, first in TD passes allowed, second in passer rating, third in take-aways, fourth in yards allowed, and fourth in points allowed.
Defenders at all three levels beautifully fit into it. And bought into it, too, after the clawing frustrations of switching annually between 4-3 and 3-4 schemes from 2010-13 under three different coordinators. Hell, even previously oft-scorched cornerback Leodis McKelvin looked good in it.
So, knowing this, when the Pegulas decided to interview Ryan a second time in January 2015, did either Whaley or Brandon interrupt to say, “Ah, hiring Rex would mean blowing up the one and only thing that has worked around here for a long, long time.” No. Quite the opposite. The new-to-football Pegulas relied heavily on Brandon in that headcoach search. On Whaley too. And both heartily endorsed Ryan as Marrone’s successor, as an in-house story and video chronicling the hiring process — still posted at the Bills’ own website — confirms.
“It was funny because at the start of the process,” Whaley is quoted as saying, “I said, ‘You can’t go in with any preconceived notions of what you want, and what you like. You’ve got to go in with an open mind so you don’t have any biases.
“We all looked at each other and knew that Rex was the guy who we wanted to be our next head coach.”
Those are indicting, unacceptable words. An NFL team’s owner, top executives and GM absolutely SHOULD have preconceived notions of precisely what kind of team and coach they want. And, if you’re GM, specifically what kind of offence and defence you want — so your scouting staff isn’t always playing catchup trying to find new fits for the new coach’s schemes.
Ryan, for his part at his introductory presser, downplayed Schwartz’s departure, saying he’d install his own, better schemes: “I know we’ll lead the league in defence.”
In fact, Ryan’s defences have been average at best, often awful.
In retrospect, it’s easy now to see what the Bills should have done after Marrone’s abrupt departure: hire an offensive-minded head coach, give him final say on the QB, then lock down Schwartz and keep feeding him new parts for his QB-terrorizing machine.
Ryan didn’t work out. Just as Marrone didn’t. Just as the expensive trade to draft wideout Sammy Watkins in 2014 didn’t. Just as signing Mario Williams to a $100-million contract in 2012 didn’t. Just as the entire Buddy Nix/Chain Gailey 2010-12 regime didn’t. Just as re-signing head coach Dick Jauron in 2008 didn’t.
The one common thread? Brandon. He had a principle say, if not the final say, in all of the above decisions. Almost a decade’s worth. We always see him at the photo ops, co-holding the football when the deeds are done, but he never seems to be in the picture when those deeds are undone. Will he ever pay the price? Firing Ryan now, after going 15-16 over two NFL seasons, is justifiable enough. No protest there. He promised a bully but produced only bull.
The last two years aren’t all Rex’s fault. Clean house, Terry and Kim.
Only that way will the Bills ever get off their doomed, ever-spinning merry-go-round of ad hoc hiring and firing, based on no preconceived notions, on ghost-chasing bean-counter sensibilities and on “How do you know? You just know” hunches.