jonramz Posted November 18, 2009 Share Posted November 18, 2009 Seriously, if there is one thing this team did right, it was picking the correct year to have to hire a new coach. Never before has there been such a good amount of proven winners available to hire. The real question is.... will Ralph spend the money to go get a quality GM and Coach. Money isn't very useful when you are dead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrudginglyPessimistic Posted November 18, 2009 Share Posted November 18, 2009 Seriously, if there is one thing this team did right, it was picking the correct year to have to hire a new coach. Never before has there been such a good amount of proven winners available to hire. The real question is.... will Ralph spend the money to go get a quality GM and Coach. Money isn't very useful when you are dead The neat thing for a team owner about HC jobs is that there are so few of them and the $ are so good in the market that a team is never really dead unless it chooses to be. On of the problems for the Bills which has led to their 0 for about a decade playoff performance is that we have simply chosen to be dead for a large part of the market. Mr. Ralph has continually set a tone for penny-pinching for the HC job which has not allowed the Bills to compete for the most successful HCs. Proven HC winners like Holmgren to Sea or Parcells to MI have shown a willingness to go to very bad losing teams in exchange for big bucks and great control. Mr. Ralph has not only tended toward marginal bucks but exercises his right to be an active owner despite the fact his hands were all over some very bad football judgments (for example only he could make a handshake deal with Jimbo which totally violated the letter and the intent of the salary cap to reward Jimbo in his next contract. Not only was Mr. Ralph totally wrong in this football judgment about how much Jimbo had left, but this proved to be a real enough off the books deal that Mr. Ralph gave Jimbo a million bucks just to simply walk away). Mr. Ralph also tilting at windmills in an ill-fated effort to gyp Wade out of a years worth of $ when he got deservedly canned and also him likely setting up a situation within which MM simply walked away from millions he was owed are other examples of Mr. Ralph exercising his right to meddle. Mr. Ralph has demonstrated he will let a GM have his way in the TD case without exercising his owner's ability to meddle even if he is making bad football judgments. Yet, ironically he then completely failed to exert even reasonable checks and balances on TD who simply went made trying to do stuff to make sure he never got run out of town by a coach he hired. Mr. Ralph was then left with his only choice being to fire TD. He then unfortunately listed to far in the other direction as he crawled back to old reliable Marv and they penny-pinched again hiring Jauron for much less than the top of the market rate. This situation got even worse when Mr. Ralph emboldened by two consecutive improved over the TD/MM product 7-9 record (still mediocre in the real world though) made the football judgment that the 4-0 initial record called for extending DJ. Ironically again, this judgment of how things would happen on the football field was wrong wrong wrong and DJ got fired this year with likely over 7 million still on his contract. You are right that this is likely a great time to hire an HC as past proven winners like Shanahan, Holmgren, Gruden, and even Cowher are likely in the market place. If Mr. Ralph is willing to demonstrate to these HCs likely to be in demand that he will not meddle and force stupid judgments (in addition to mr. Ralph having his hands all over the incorrect Jimbo call, there are suspicions he had a significant role in fostering the RJ/DF fiasco fight, the rush to start Losman, and though there is no clear indication of blame he at least had to check-off on incorrect judgments to guarantee RJ a big payoff without proof of durability, Bledsoe getting extended despite the Bills being able to simply call it a wash and cut him after his goshawful bad season in his second year to balance a very good first year, and then the decision to cut Bledsoe and rush JP into the starting job. If Mr. Ralph is willing to pay the market rate for an HC who has won it all before and he is able to make reasonable guarantees of not exercising his right to force stupid football moves on his HC/GM then we should be able to hire someone who has demonstrated he can lead a team to win it all. The Bills are a bad team, but clearly being awful is not a disqualifier for the most accomplished talent, In fact, it is desirable to the extent that it is even easier to improve the team. Whomever takes over as HC of the Bills will not have to make the playoffs in 2010 to show improvement over DJs Bills. Simply getting a winning record or even going 8-8 in 2010 will be a clear step forward for next year's Bills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dancing_joker Posted November 18, 2009 Share Posted November 18, 2009 "Mr. Ralph" - that's hilarious Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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