I don't buy the system argument. The Colts use the same system (although, yes, I know that Caldwell is considering his options).
I think it boils down to the offer and the better teams. The Colts are an established playoff team and the Dolphins put their name back in the thick of things when they brought in Parcells. The Bills? Yeah, well, Ralph is up for the Hall of Fame.
Pro Bowler? He's a class below these guys: Johnson, Johnson, Fitz, Moss, Smith, Welker, Marshall, Boldin, Wayne, Ward, Holt, and Hush. There are even better pass catching TEs than Evans in Gonzalez, Witten, Clark, Gates, and Cooley.
Good thing the Bills players love their coach to death. Wouldn't want Ralph to eat a contract if the players voted the coach off the island.
Running the franchise like it's an episode of Survivor.
Wow. On ESPN, they discussed this and Keyshawn Johnson was smiling from ear to ear and overflowing with joy that Gruden and Allen had been fired. Gruden's firing somehow means he wasn't a me first player that got bounced off 3 teams in 4 years despite decent production.
What's really funny is that (if you've read anything about the Dungy defense) you want a guy that has freakish speed at Mike in the Tampa-2 and the Bills traded up to get a guy that runs a 4.7 40 in his boxers.
Hard to say whether that is more interesting than landing a blitzing LB as your big free agency signing though.
About-face!
To be fair to Poz, it is a little difficult to be an "impact player" rather than just another guy when your responsibility in the base defense against the pass is peeling back into the middle deep zone as fast as you can haul ass away from the line of scrimmage. Poz did make a lot of tackles and it is good to have at least 1 guy on defense that can execute a fundamental skill.
Well, if you were in his shoes, what chances do you think there would be that the Bills would commit a nice new contract to you versus letting you play it out and giving you a warm handshake (or just dumping you before they had to pay out the next bonus)? How many playoff victories have the Bills had this decade?
Are you really going to bet against 2 remaining years on that 3 year extension, a possible December "surge" by the team playing for their beloved coach's job to get to 7-9, and the inevitability that a basketful of players (particularly on the undersized defense that can't get off the field) end up on IR, at the end of next year?
Maybe they know that the Buffalo coach hasn't done enough on the football field to justify keeping his job. In fact, of that entire list, he's in the least defensible position of all. (Really, his best defense boils down to: he's the 4th head coach the team has had in the past decade. The last one quit, the one before him refused to sign an extension, and the one before him was fired for "insubordination" because he refused to fire staff members the owner cherry-picked for termination. So you can't keep "starting over" with new coaches -- even if they are obvious upgrades.)