Archives for November 19, 2014

‘I later found out that Mr. Wilson wasn’t told a whole lot about my being hired. Kay and others in the organization advised me to “kind of stay below the radar.” That was pretty easy, given that my office in the Bills’ administrative building in Orchard Park, New York, was the roughly the size of a storage closet. Besides, Mr. Wilson was based in Detroit, where he spent most of his time, and I was going to be out of town virtually every weekend during the season, doing advance scouting of upcoming opponents.’

‘Marrone continued to score points by signing a few autographs before resuming his quest to make it to the Orchard Park stadium.’

‘Noble said Carpenter shoved himself a path as he headed over. “He had to cut through the snow from his driveway just to get to our front door … and he only had a small snow shovel.’

‘After the expensive acquisition of rookie wide receiver Sammy Watkins, Whaley indicated that he felt it was worth giving up first- and fourth-round draft choices to get a player who would lift Buffalo into playoff mix. He acknowledged it was a gamble … but one worth taking. Unspoken was the fact that it was Marrone, not Whaley, who would be in the crucible if the Bills weren’t a playoff team.’

‘”We thought it was a calculated risk and a risk we were willing to take,” Whaley said in May. “The high costs not making the playoffs is something we weighed in and we thought this guy was going to get us to the playoffs.”‘

‘”We were all on board with the pick,” Whaley said. “It’s one of those things where everybody was obviously… when it was Buddy, it’s going to be attached to Buddy. When it’s me, Sammy’s going to be attached to my name. But when you’re going through a scouting process, especially with the guys in the top four to five rounds, you’re going to have five to six opinions. And what we do is we collectively come up with a Buffalo Bills opinion. So, EJ Manuel was a Buffalo Bills pick, and all of us were on board with it.”‘

‘Unlike Dixon, I have seen snow before, but not like this. I experienced plenty of snow storms growing up in Massachusetts and braved the 20 inches Missouri got unexpectedly while I was at college, but I was told it would be different in Western New York. I can now confirm it is, in fact, different. I could hardly walk down the street, let alone drive.’

‘”All my life people have been telling me what I can’t do,” Marrone said of the driving ban.’

‘Let me look at this way. We’re in a results based business, and has he done some really good things? Absolutely. But the last two games, it hasn’t been up to par because we’re in this business to win. Will he get better? Yes. Will we get better? That’s the plan. Now for the future right now, we’re looking at the New York Jets because we’re in playoff mode, fellas, right now. I know everybody’s saying what about next year, next year, but our sole focus in this organization right now is the New York Jets. And we’ll deal with everything else after the season like we always do.’

‘”I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job up front of running the football,” Marrone said. “At the end of the day, when you’re 25-percent efficient running the football, that’s a major issue.”‘

‘”There were a lot of questions about the Bills making the big move in the draft to go up and get Sammy Watkins,” Bowen said. “But when you see a player with this type of talent and you know he’s going to be a superstar, you make a move like that. “‘