Bills shouldn't stay the course: unassailable logic from WGR

[Thurman#1]

It doesn't take 4 or 5 years to win in today's NFL

It's that simple. Also, there is a big difference between 8-8, 8-8, 8-8 and 4-12, 6-10, and no better than 7-9.

And yet it did take Kubiak four or five years to develop a good team in today's NFL.

Clearly, it really isn't that simple.

A lot of the results of the first three years come from whether the team was doing a complete rebuild - if they were, they'll suck for an absolute minimum of two years and more likely three - and how good the draft pick they had was in the first year - if they had the first overall pick they're more likely to be able to bring in a QB who can get the team going quickly - as well as how good the talent on the roster is.

Buffalo had poor talent before the rebuild and abysmal talent after it, they didn't get a top three pick that first year, and they were doing a complete rebuild. Teams in better situations generally have better results.

[The Fun Police]

Here's the wildcard in all this:

According to Mary Wilson Ralph is home pumping iron and chatting peoples' ears off about football whenever he can.

That tells me he is still the biggest Bills fan there is. He could finish up a set of isolation curls one morning, throw the dumbbell through the wall length mirror in his gym, grab the phone, and fire everyone.

[chandler81]

2012 was a wasted season. It was clear that Gailey had no idea what he was doing well before 2011 season was over. His flaws in game management, play calling and clock management will not be resolved with another season. His complete disregard for the defense is ridiculous. 2013 will be the obvious second wasted season. Just like any other position, the Bills should be looking to upgrade coaching.

Remember Rich Kotite? He actually won a playoff game with the Eagles before coming to the Jets. The Jets, however, saw enough after just TWO years to dismiss him. As you point out "it was clear that Gailey had no idea what he was doing well before 2011 season was over." One could have argued for change then, but he got his third year and he and the team have seemed to regress.

While nobody can say with 100% assurance that Coach Gailey won't be successful going forward (and if one wants to hang his hat on that then nothing anyone can say will change their minds), but success from coaches who have compiled records like Gailey's over the past 40+ years has happened only extremely rarely. The numbers are brutal before even adding the qualitative info such as Shaw has provided in this thread. We really do know that coaches whose record Mr. Gailey has followed in have similar characteristics: poor personnel choice, poor personnel usage and poor game day decisions. But, the numbers force one to confront the fact that the "this time it will be different" argument is pretty weak.

[MDBillz]

Gailey has to be gone....

His record is terrible and he needs to be held accountable for this season. You spend $120 million on free agents, you have "your QB" and you have a cupcake schedule. If you turn that into 6 or 7 wins you need to be fired

In a nutshell. Especially the bold part.

[crimsonavenger]

what I've been saying since the Titans game.. how the rest of the season has played out has been pretty predictable since then.

[Shaw66]

Was that Chan who changed the defense? Or Buddy? I don't think that's nearly as clear as you apparently do. I think it's very possible that Buddy hired Chan after telling him that he wanted to run a 3-4 and asking if Chan was on board with that, and if he had done so, I guess Chan would have said, OK, sure, I'm on board. And again, I don't think it's clear among Buddy and Chan who made the decision to go back to the 4-3.

Worth noting, for instance, that under Chan Dallas ran the 4-3 for two years. Defense certainly wasn't the problem there, as the defense finished 3rd and 5th in the league those two years.

Whoever made those decisions, a minimum of one of them was wrong. No question. I'd argue the original switch to the 3-4 was misguided. But at least one and maybe even both of those decisions were flawed.

The DC was fired, and who fired him? Dunno.

And yeah, they've gone three years saying Fitz could win. But they've also said for all of that time that they were looking to upgrade every position, including QB. I don't fault them even slightly for backing Fitz 100% if they were also actively trying to replace him. These days you simply can't say you don't trust your QB. If you do, the team loses faith in him and things get even worse.

My feeling about this whole mess is that Buddy has been trying to draft somebody for three years, but was looking to do so only at the correct value. I think/hope from his recent statements he has finally figured out that QBs no longer last to their correct value or even close. It seems to me they were looking at Ponder, maybe Kaepernick and Cousins, and maybe Wilson, at least, but all of them were gone.

Each year the offense starts strong and does decently for a few games and then tails off. I can only think of one likely reason for that trend repeating, and that's that each year Chan makes some great scheme changes to try to hide the limitations of his personnel, and it works for a few games till opponents have three or four games of film on us. At that point, someone figures out how to counter the advantages of the new scheme and for the rest of the year we have to play straight up, our personnel on theirs, and having Fitz as the QB ensures that most defenses can kick our butts straight up.

The Bills are regularly outplayed in the second half? In the second half of the year, the defense has actually been improving in most second halfs. Look at the Seattle game and the Pats* game, the worst game of the second half for the defense, for instance. The defense got better in both second halves. The offense was awful in most second halves, I agree. Again, I think the most obvious reason is simply that a team led by Fitz can be shut down.

With such a bad QB situation, I'd argue, it would have been almost impossible for any coach to do much better.

Thurmie - Your posts are just great. I was hoping you'd respond. Let me comment on a few.

Who's decision was the 3-4? Who's hiring and firing coordinators? It's true we don't really know who is making the calls, but there's pretty good evidence that the 3-4 decision and the coaching decisions were Chan's.

Buddy never said anything about the 3-4 when he was hired. When Chan was hired, either at his initial press conference or shortly afterward, he said they were going 3-4 because he liked the fleixbility and how it caused confusion for the offense. It sure sounded like his call.

As for the coaching decision, the assistants had a lot of ties to Chan - many had worked with him before. It semed like he had free rein.

I know they can't say they don't trust Fitz, until they're ready to make a change. That's why Buddy's comments recently were so momentous.

When you come down to it, if they'd handled only the QB situation better, everything would be okay. The blame for that has to fall in part on each of Chan and Buddy. We'll never know how much Buddy relied on Chan telling Buddy that Chan could win with Fitz. It sure seems like that was part of what happened.

But your Buddy wanted to get a QB at the correct value is the crux of the problem. Buddy flat out misevaluated the QBs. He was at least a round off on some collection of Wilson, Ponder, the guy in Cincy, Kaepernick, Mallett. He said he wanted a QB at the right value, and the rest of league has demonstrated that he didn't understand the value of the position or the value of the guys on the board. In my mind, that's the only defense for Chan. MAYBE Chan was whispering in Buddy's ear "take ________________" and Buddy was saying, over and over again, "don't worry, he'll be there next round." MAYBE.

But even if the QB debacle was completely Buddy's fault, I believe a good coach would have won more games with Fitz last season and this season.

I agree, the offense looks good at the beginning of the season and then stalls. But I'm quite confident that's because the coaches don't layer on offensive wrinkles week after week to take advantage of defensive tendencies and simply to give a new look. That's what good coaches do so that their offenses aren't too predictable in the second half. Chan said a couple years ago that you have get big plays and stop big plays. You get big plays by making the other guys make mistakes, and you do that by coming at them with plays they aren't prepared for. That's coaching.

I'd like to compile the Bills performance coming out for the second half. I think they have a couple of turnovers after taking the second half kickoff. They have some three and outs. They've given multiple scores on the opponents' first possession the third quarter. That's an unprepared team.

Fourth quarter - sure Fitz is a problem, but look at the second Pats game, when you're right, the defense was pretty good in the second half. Fitz was excellent in the second half, until the INT. I'm in the don't-blame-Fitz camp on the INT. FItz threw where he was supposed to throw and Graham didn't make his play. In my mind, that's coaching. By mid-season, Belichick puts his good rookies in exactly those situations, and they make plays. He has taught them, and he knows he can rely on them. Think about - you've had this guy since May, in mini-camps, in OTAs, in training camp, through preseason and the regular season. They guy has been playing football with these coaches for five months (after a five-year collegiate career), running patterns and getting drilled, presumably, by his coaches. He's been starting, more or less, in the NFL for eight or nine games, and when crunch time comes he doesn't know how to run his route? It's not like the Pats did anything to fool him - he ran the route and it all played out exactly as it had been drawn up. Run up the field hard, turn your defender, cut underneath the deep defender. It worked perfectly. I think that's a failure of coaching, period. The coach's job is to get guys to know their assignments and do them.

I think the Bills fail in the fourth quarter because they aren't prepared.

Fundamentally, where we disagree is with your last statement. I think a good coach, even with this QB, would have done better. Belichick did better with Matt Casell.

[Thurman#1]

Remember Rich Kotite? He actually won a playoff game with the Eagles before coming to the Jets. The Jets, however, saw enough after just TWO years to dismiss him. As you point out "it was clear that Gailey had no idea what he was doing well before 2011 season was over." One could have argued for change then, but he got his third year and he and the team have seemed to regress.

While nobody can say with 100% assurance that Coach Gailey won't be successful going forward (and if one wants to hang his hat on that then nothing anyone can say will change their minds), but success from coaches who have compiled records like Gailey's over the past 40+ years has happened only extremely rarely. The numbers are brutal before even adding the qualitative info such as Shaw has provided in this thread. We really do know that coaches whose record Mr. Gailey has followed in have similar characteristics: poor personnel choice, poor personnel usage and poor game day decisions. But, the numbers force one to confront the fact that the "this time it will be different" argument is pretty weak.

Again, what we know is that there are very few coaches who've been in the situation that Gailey would be in if they re-hired him.

There are almost no numbers as you yourself made clear.

[Jm2009]

no one is hiring Gailey as a HC in the NFL if he is let go. We were/are the only foolish ones to do so.

[Shaw66]

HOWEVER, I will say one thing in Chan's defense, one reason why I will be able to live with the decision to keep him on for 2013, if that's what happens. Here it is:

I always say, and I know it's true, that we, the fans, don't know 1/10 as much about this as the pros do. Buddy Nix has done this for a long time, he's coached with a lot of coaches, he's coached against a lot of coaches, he's seen a lot of coaches come and go in the NFL. He flat out knows more about what it takes to be a winner in the NFL than any of us. (Some people will come on here and say "speak for yourself, because I know better, even if you don't." Yes, it's possible you do, but it's extremely unlikely. Doesn't mean you couldn't be right and Buddy wrong, I get that. But Buddy has much more and much better experience at this than any of us.)

Buddy may actually know that Thurman is fundamentally right. Buddy may be waking up every morning this month kicking himself for having screwed up the QB position, because he knows that with a good QB, Chan would have made a great second-half run with this team and would be 8-6 right now, rather than down and out. Maybe he actually knows that, and he's spending his time trying to figure out how he's going to get a real QB on this team by the end of May.

Actually, I hope that's what's going on. It's easier to have hope for this team if all it needs is a good QB. It's tougher if what it needs is BOTH a new QB AND a new coach.

[eregitano]

@shaw, that's where I'm at too. When purely looking at in game coaching decisions, it's apparent the limitations of Chan Gailey. As a fan I watch the games, and it feels like they win in spite of poor coaching decisions, and lose often times because the coach was unable to adapt when the opposition threw a counter punch. I see consistent in game mis management.

After the Houston game Gailey said he was thrown off by the extra man in the box and chose not to run because of it. Do you think the Vikes limit AP because teams stack the box? Gailey runs this offense like he has Manning at QB, whereas the strong suit of the team is running back. He seems to have no grasp of defense whatsoever, and claims to be uninvolved on that side of the football. A lot of red flags purely from his own admissions, and in game decisions.

In my opinion this same team from a personnel standpoint would have a winning record with better coaching decisions.

[Shaw66]

@shaw, that's where I'm at too. When purely looking at in game coaching decisions, it's apparent the limitations of Chan Gailey. As a fan I watch the games, and it feels like they win in spite of poor coaching decisions, and lose often times because the coach was unable to adapt when the opposition threw a counter punch. I see consistent in game mis management.

After the Houston game Gailey said he was thrown off by the extra man in the box and chose not to run because of it. Do you think the Vikes limit AP because teams stack the box? Gailey runs this offense like he has Manning at QB, whereas the strong suit of the team is running back. He seems to have no grasp of defense whatsoever, and claims to be uninvolved on that side of the football. A lot of red flags purely from his own admissions, and in game decisions.

In my opinion this same team from a personnel standpoint would have a winning record with better coaching decisions.

Yeah, all of this. In-game decisions don't bother me as much as preparation issues. When asked about why they didn't run Spiller last week more, he said they were in defenses that made it tough to run (same as Houston) and then said but sometimes we went two tight ends and ran anyway. I heard that and I thought "so you had ONE response to the other team's efforts to stop Spiller." That simply isn't creative enough. AP is a good example, although Spiller isn't AP. EVERY WEEK defenses are stacked to stop AP, and EVERY WEEK the Vikes have to come up with multiple tactics to spring AP despite that. You have to create those alternatives, and then you have to have the in-game courage to stick with them. I don't se that.

And you're right about his comments that essentially say "I don't pay attention to the defense." It's unfair to keep pointing to Belichick, but he's the model. Belichick spends his time from week to week with the unit that needs him most. I remember last season (or 2012) that Brady complained how much tougher it was to prepare for games because Belichick had been spending all his time on the defense. Then late in the season he came back to his weekly meetings with Brady and - voila - their offense improved. Belichick's a genius, of course, but the point is that a quality HC has to know and be able to work both sides of the ball.

In fact, the problem may be that Chan is th eoffensive coordinator AND the HC. This team probably would be a lot better with Chan as the OC, Wanny as the DC and someone like Marv as the HC - someone who will be more demanding, of the OC, of the players, of everyone.

[jasonb]

ultimately people can use statistics to promote anything, from football arguments to other issues (e.g. gun ownership, etc.)

i recently read a scouting report on a QB, maybe Dysert, where the report said if you looked at the stats of a particular game, you'd think that the QB having thrown 3 ints had a bad day -- but the writer said the QB played amazingly despite the line.

i think where most posters here make their judgements are with the same gameday "eyeball" test: does the team look ready, inspired. does the play calling look good. does the personnel use make sense -- does CJ sitting on the sideline for long stretches look "right."

in my eyeball test on this team, Chan fails and has had enough time to prove us otherwise.

yes, with a better QB he'd do better but that argument could be made of any coach. many coaches with this personnel would do better too.

to me, the ultimate questions is do we settle for a coach who has had some good moments and a lot of bad? or do we aim for greatness.

settling for mediocrity, with coaches and QBs as well, has been the bane of this team for over a dozen years.

[Men of Fearless Faith]

Fundamentally, where we disagree is with your last statement. I think a good coach, even with this QB, would have done better. Belichick did better with Matt Casell.

Boy, that is an amazingly good point. sometimes I get emotional and forget that. Football is the one sport where the coach makes all the difference. And I really do believe that a good coach can win even with a mediocre QB. There are just so many examples of exactly that through the years.

[Thurman#1]

Thurmie - Your posts are just great. I was hoping you'd respond. Let me comment on a few.

Who's decision was the 3-4? Who's hiring and firing coordinators? It's true we don't really know who is making the calls, but there's pretty good evidence that the 3-4 decision and the coaching decisions were Chan's.

Buddy never said anything about the 3-4 when he was hired. When Chan was hired, either at his initial press conference or shortly afterward, he said they were going 3-4 because he liked the fleixbility and how it caused confusion for the offense. It sure sounded like his call.

As for the coaching decision, the assistants had a lot of ties to Chan - many had worked with him before. It semed like he had free rein.

As I looked back, Nix didn't say anything about the 3-4. Gailey didn't commit that way either, though he said he was more open to it than he had been.

http://www.buffalobills.com/news/art...1-03a8bc15f132

It was only when they hired Edwards as DC that they committed to the 3-4, at least publicly. I don't see any proof here, but maybe you can guess, since I agree that it seemed that Chan had a free hand with assistants, that he wanted, or at least was open to the 3-4.

Who made the switch back to the 4-3? The reasons they gave for that were centered around not being able to find the talent to run the 3-4, most especially a 3-4 ROLB who was athletic enough. Does that mean it came on input from Buddy who doubted one would be available in that draft (it was the Von Miller Marcel Dareus draft, by the way). I'm not sure that's clear.

Either way, IMHO, at a minimum one of those switches was a bad idea, and maybe even both of them.

I know they can't say they don't trust Fitz, until they're ready to make a change. That's why Buddy's comments recently were so momentous.

When you come down to it, if they'd handled only the QB situation better, everything would be okay. The blame for that has to fall in part on each of Chan and Buddy. We'll never know how much Buddy relied on Chan telling Buddy that Chan could win with Fitz. It sure seems like that was part of what happened.

But your Buddy wanted to get a QB at the correct value is the crux of the problem. Buddy flat out misevaluated the QBs. He was at least a round off on some collection of Wilson, Ponder, the guy in Cincy, Kaepernick, Mallett. He said he wanted a QB at the right value, and the rest of league has demonstrated that he didn't understand the value of the position or the value of the guys on the board. In my mind, that's the only defense for Chan. MAYBE Chan was whispering in Buddy's ear "take ________________" and Buddy was saying, over and over again, "don't worry, he'll be there next round." MAYBE.

I suspect what was being whispered wasn't "Please take a QB," so much as "We need an upgrade long-term. I can do better than most anyone else in the league with Fitz. But we need an upgrade." Pure guesswork, but I base it on the times Buddy said in those first two years that they were looking to draft a QB, and that when they asked him he was satisfied with Fitz he'd say that they were but were always looking to upgrade at every position.

I don't know if Buddy "misevaluated" those QBs. I'd argue he evaluated their ability maybe fairly correctly but misunderstood how demand had changed their value. One of his real bedrock principles seems to be that you don't reach in the draft. Unfortunately, at QB these days, everybody reaches, so if you don't, you simply have no chance of getting a good QB. He seems to get it now, but I agree that this one mistake is the single most important thing holding the Bills back, that if we'd picked Russell Wilson or one of the others, things would look a lot better right now.

But even if the QB debacle was completely Buddy's fault, I believe a good coach would have won more games with Fitz last season and this season.

I agree, the offense looks good at the beginning of the season and then stalls. But I'm quite confident that's because the coaches don't layer on offensive wrinkles week after week to take advantage of defensive tendencies and simply to give a new look. That's what good coaches do so that their offenses aren't too predictable in the second half. Chan said a couple years ago that you have get big plays and stop big plays. You get big plays by making the other guys make mistakes, and you do that by coming at them with plays they aren't prepared for. That's coaching.

I think that's a reasonable opinion, but I disagree that it's a proven fact.

How many times this year has Buddy called long passes, had them open, and had Fitz botch the execution? I mean it's happened again and again. And that is the "wrinkle" you need when teams decide to combat your scheme by putting lots of guys close to the line. You need to hit a long ball two or three times. Gailey has tried that, and simply doesn't have the QB to make it work.

That's not coaching, IMHO, that's roster quality making certain plays impossible and therefore taking options away from the coach that would break these defenses they're so successfully stopping us with. He's called plays that surprised the defense enough to get a guy open, and we simply couldn't

IMHO, that's the reason the locker room is so solidly behind Chan. They know he's dialed up the right plays, and that the execution hasn't been there.

Could I be wrong? Sure. But it's at the very least a reasonable guess.

I'd like to compile the Bills performance coming out for the second half. I think they have a couple of turnovers after taking the second half kickoff. They have some three and outs. They've given multiple scores on the opponents' first possession the third quarter. That's an unprepared team.

Fourth quarter - sure Fitz is a problem, but look at the second Pats game, when you're right, the defense was pretty good in the second half. Fitz was excellent in the second half, until the INT. I'm in the don't-blame-Fitz camp on the INT. FItz threw where he was supposed to throw and Graham didn't make his play. In my mind, that's coaching. By mid-season, Belichick puts his good rookies in exactly those situations, and they make plays. He has taught them, and he knows he can rely on them. Think about - you've had this guy since May, in mini-camps, in OTAs, in training camp, through preseason and the regular season. They guy has been playing football with these coaches for five months (after a five-year collegiate career), running patterns and getting drilled, presumably, by his coaches. He's been starting, more or less, in the NFL for eight or nine games, and when crunch time comes he doesn't know how to run his route? It's not like the Pats did anything to fool him - he ran the route and it all played out exactly as it had been drawn up. Run up the field hard, turn your defender, cut underneath the deep defender. It worked perfectly. I think that's a failure of coaching, period. The coach's job is to get guys to know their assignments and do them.

I think the Bills fail in the fourth quarter because they aren't prepared.

Fundamentally, where we disagree is with your last statement. I think a good coach, even with this QB, would have done better. Belichick did better with Matt Casell.

I think Cassel, with a good supporting cast, is as good as and probably a bit better than Fitz. Not a lot better, but a bit. But the reason Belichick did so well that year with Cassel had an awful lot to do with a spectacularly easy schedule and a really solid defense that year, 8th in points and 10th in yards.

As for Graham's play on that INT, from what I understand it's never been settled whether or not he ran the wrong route. Graham says he did and Fitz says he didn't. Either way, though, it seems extremely clear to me that either way Graham ran, the pass was going to be far behind him. If he'd gone underneath the D-back, it'd have been even further behind him than it already was when he went behind him.

If I were to guess, I'd guess that our problems in the 4th quarter mostly come from being behind so we have to throw more often, and teams know it. That puts our offense in the worst situation possible, highly dependent on Fitz while the defense knows it.

I respect your knowledge and approach to the game, Shaw, even when I disagree, as I do here.

By the way, are you (or anyone else out there) a fiction reader? I'm reading "Shantaram" by Gregory Roberts, and it's incredible.

Merry Christmas to all.

[Thurman#1]

Boy, that is an amazingly good point. sometimes I get emotional and forget that. Football is the one sport where the coach makes all the difference. And I really do believe that a good coach can win even with a mediocre QB. There are just so many examples of exactly that through the years.

Win? Yes. Win in the third year after a rebuild with a mediocre QB? Not many, not at all. Win a Super Bowl with a mediocre QB? Roughly 10% of all SBs have been won by teams with mediocre QBs. That's not a model you want to follow, or a handicap you want to give a coach.

[kmspooner]

Chan is popular with the players, and that's fine. He has improved talent on the starting team, but there is still no depth. By mid-season they are always weakened by injuries when other teams still have enough players to keep winning or at least compete. The main reason he needs to go is his play calling. The offense has enough talent to score, even with Fitz at QB. Half the time it looks like the opposing defense is listening in on Fitz' headset.

[LTarmy]

I've read some good posts....even though I might not agree with all of it. Here is where I'm at:

Buddy Nix needs to be fired: He has brought in the players on this roster. While the talent may be better than it was in 2009, the record is no better and the QB position hasn't changed. The fact that he hasn't made a real effort to improve the QB spot in three years and combined with the 15-31 record, should be enough to get him fired. Bill Polian said on Sirus that he believed he was fired because he never had a decent backup behind Peyton Manning....and his teams were very good from 1999-2011. One bad year (and it was bad) got him canned. Think we can all agree, Polian has been a much better GM than Nix....and he was held to a standard, I think Buddy should be held to a standard as well. he needs to go.

Chan needs to be fired: He has done some good things. The emergence of Johnson as a WR, a offense that isn't stuck back in the stone ages (as it was under Jauron) Freddy Jackson/Spiller's play in the running game, the O-Line (when healthy) plays well. However, we all know the problems with his play calling, gameday management and use of players. He has regressed as a playcaller and IMO, he should've gave up playcalling a while ago. The defense falls on him too.

The job should be more attractive to a new GM/coach than it was in 2010. Should be!!!!