BillsVet

While I'm glad the Bills are exploring several options about a coach, the length of their search is attracting some crazy and insane posts/threads. This is another one. Watching Lynch, he got too big this season and made too many moves behind the LOS. I can't believe someone thinks he's a top 5 NFL back. So who does that leave in front of him? C. Johnson, Peterson, T. Jones, Jones-Drew, Grant, Turner, St. Jackson, Gore. I'm not even sure Lynch is top 25 in the NFL.

This coach search has attracted TBD's best and brightest. Apparently reading comprehension is not a pre-req.

How is it whining when the franchise hasn't made the playoffs in 10 years? Now I'm sure someone will chime in and tell me to follow another team, but is it too much to ask for the team to prove to fans they're interested in winning? Because I'm not seeing it right now. Then again, the standard is so low around here, some people figure that it's good enough to have a team. Evidently winning is now underrated.

No one can definitely prove this is the case, but I suspect it. When Levy was hired as GM and no one in the front office was moved out, this franchise went down a notch in respectability. Marv is a fine man, but naming him GM was widely panned in league circles. Since then, Buffalo named a marketing guy GM, retained a coach most teams would have fired, and has refused to look outside the organization for the crucial GM job. I can't prove it, but there have been too many suspect moves made this decade for anyone reputable to consider them as a worthy job destination.

That you Dick Jauron? Cornerbacks are the reason AZ is slicing GB's defense? Neither team has generated much of a pass rush, allowing both QB's all day to throw.

You could say that if we'd won 3 more games each season since 2006 that Buffalo could have made the playoffs. It's the same thing every season, and it's not a coincidence: bad to mediocre teams lose games they shouldn't. 13 NFL teams went 7-9, 8-8, or 9-7 in 2009. Only two of them advanced into the post-season, so 11 teams essentially were 3 games away from being a playoff team. All of us would take a playoff appearance, but the goal is to win in the post-season. And yet here we are making excuses for not making the playoffs once again.

If the Bills go with a guy like Frazier or another lesser known personality at HC, they're going to need to sign another "name" FA. Because if they don't, season ticket sales will steeply dive. I don't think a team should hire someone solely on what the fans reaction will be. But when you're coming off a decade's worth of failure, something's gotta give.

And one would think RW would admit to himself that his track record of hiring HC's and GM's isn't all that great since firing Polian in February 1993. I wish more owners were like Arthur Blank, who delegates football decisions to football people. They make sure he knows what's going on, but Blank doesn't believe he know how to make the decisions.

Littman has been Ralph's treasurer for more than two decades and he's not going anywhere. It's interesting this thread popped up when it did in that guys like Cowher probably want to know how much the team will spend to have a winner. I've heard now from two GM's, Levy and Nix, that you've got to sign your own guys. That hasn't happened, and I wouldn't doubt Littman and Overdorf are controlling the purse strings. Surely they won't argue with cutting payroll.

Pardon the OP for stating something that most fans would freely admit. The Dolphins and Jets may have their QB's of the future, and the Pats are, well, the Pats. It's a tough division, one in which each team has made the playoffs in the last two years. The greater question is whether the Bills are descending or ascending. I would favor the former.

Except this time, there's no Levy or TO they can bring in to sell tickets. Their hire at HC will dictate season ticket sales. Frazier's a nice guy, but they know Nix isn't going to keep ST's in the 55k range.

You cannot be serious. A HC overruling a GM? On draft day? I hope this is a joke.

Amen. And for the record, where do most teams that run the T2 play? MIN and IND both play in domes, and Chicago's defense hasn't been stellar for awhile now in the cold weather. Outside of that, no one else plays the T2. And even though it's not a guarantee he'll coach the T2, they have the personnel and it would take a total rebuild on defense to convert to a 3-4 and great effort to go with a 4-3. That's why I don't want a guy versed in the T2. At least when Tomlin took over the Steelers, he was wise enough to let Dick Lebeau maintain his great 3-4.

Yes, the Bills should take their time and do all of their research before hiring a coach. However, it's imperative to get a coach on board so they can begin evaluating their new roster and decide how to approach UFA/RFA and the draft. The GM has to coordinate his vision with that of the new HC. I also believe the Bills job, despite being the only one truly open (if we believe reports about Carroll) is not an attractive one. People like Polian, AJ Smith, and others have put the word out that working for RW and Brandon does not permit enough operational latitude to control a new GM's destiny.

I'm embarrassed that you attend the same institution that some of my good friends used to years ago. You come off as a spoiled kid that can't take some good natured ribbing. If you can't handle it and stop making a fool of yourself, it's best to do something else. And I'm quite certain you don't know who Howard Beale is, unless of course you've consulted wikipedia or imdb. Relax for goodness sakes.

tbarrett2030 is the Howard Beale of TBD. And this is best help he ever got.

To quote Kent Dorfman, a.k.a. Flounder: "Oh boy is this great!"

Good. There's been a tendency on this board by big green folks to say that volunteers are simply amateur and professionals are the only "true" firefighters.

Two part question: Have you ever seen Backdraft, and are paid fire departments so much better than volunteer ones?

Two questions: 1. Do you pity any janitors? 2. Do you go to school at an Ivy-League caliber university?

APUS is another resident poster who knows better than to question the future and stability of the franchise. Don't take it personally, there are several of them around here that question the fact that we wonder if this team will ever return to being a top NFL team. Mostly, these posters show up during the offseason to talk up how next season will be better. And without variation, they're wrong. I've seen it happen for three going on four offseasons now.

No one is realistically saying the owner is a bystander in a coach or GM search. The degree of involvement is what remains troubling for me. Ralph Wilson is an owner, not a GM and as such doesn't know the finer points of what a GM or HC does. I expect him to have say but not make the choice. And if you believe that Nix isn't getting "input" from RW, Mr. Smithers, and Littman, you're living in a cave. Nix is a football guy, but the authority he has will be seriously in doubt until he can make changes to the front office. And that's probably not happening, given that John Guy and Tom Modrak are still in their positions. Make no mistakes APUS, RW is making the decision.

I think the OP is making a point deeper than that. The Bills entered the off-season needing to find a GM to fill a vacant position (Levy and Brandon don't count) and a new HC. They never interviewed one person outside the organization for GM, and have interviewed only one individual in 10 days from other teams (Frazier) that they have a reasonable chance at hiring for HC. They've been rejected by name and no-name coaches, and have an owner who meddles more than just about anyone in the NFL not named Snyder or Jerry Jones. Has it occurred to some fans that few people are willing to work here? And that's why we have to evaluate where we are as fans of this franchise. We can say we're "die-hard" fans, but there are two major issues taking place here: 1. The team has been bad for a long time. Perhaps not Raiders or Lions bad, but consistently mediocre. That record of futility is a lot to stomach, especially when the promised evaluation and supposed house-cleaning hasn't/isn't happening. 2. The ownership situation is seriously in doubt, and has been for a long time. When fans ignore that, they're ignoring reality. We don't know where this team goes when the owner passes and that uncertainty adds to an already bad situation.

I want to say this thing went down, but who knows. The way Marv drafted was supposedly based on "football" character, not "character" character as explained to me on this board. Football character has nothing to do with actual character, and essentially means that the person is committed to being an excellent football players. The football character argument is pure BS by the Marv apologists to squirm out of the fact that Levy's two years set the franchise back. Marv got 1 starting player out of 6 picks in the first three rounds of the 06 and 07 drafts: Posluszny.

What if that asset showed a loss ten years running? Would it be okay for the owner to keep calling the shots? The man is 91 years old and he's in charge of a company which is valued at more than 900M? How many fortune 500 CEO's are in their tenth decade of life AND making good decisions? The bottom line is, football people are not allowed to make football decisions in Buffalo. At least not since Polian. For the most part, all of the teams which are run by their owners are colossal flops: Dallas, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Oakland, and Washington. Dallas hasn't won a playoff game since 96, Cinci is in the playoffs for the second time in nearly 20 seasons, and the other have little to show for this decade. RW is holding this team back with his penchant for making bad decisions. He cannot trust anyone and it's killing the franchise.