The Underappreciated Genius of Chan Gailey

[Albany,n.y.]

I though Chan was a horrible head coach.  He won 1/3 of the games he coached.  He didn't trust his FG kicker.  The day he punted from the opponents 34 he lost me forever.  https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1439618-breaking-down-chan-gaileys-worst-coaching-decisions-of-the-2012-season

 

Ever since Bills kicker Rian Lindell went 2-of-5 from 50 yards or deeper in 2010, Gailey has shown almost no confidence in his kicker to hit anything from that range.

The 14-year veteran and 35-year-old kicker has tried just one kick from 50 or more yards in the past two seasons. 

Gailey completely mismanaged a fourth-quarter situation where he had an opportunity to take an eight-point lead with a 52-yard field goal. On 4th-and-7 from the Rams' 34-yard line, Gailey sent the field goal unit onto the field, but that's when Gailey remembered a little line he heard in The Dark Knight: 

Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. ...Introduce a little anarchy; upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. 

Here's Gailey's explanation of what happened, in his own words:

Yeah, we were not going to go for it there. The defense was playing good. We were going to try to pin them back. That was the reason. When they first told me when I first turned, they told me it was a 50-yard field goal instead of a 52-, 53-yard field goal. We had just dropped the snap on the extra point, so that is why I pulled them back out of there and said ‘Hey let’s let the defense try to keep them pinned back.'

Gailey's ultimate reasoning is that he didn't know the spot of the ball. As the head coach, that's frightening. 

Perhaps not as frightening as the fact that the two-yard difference was enough to completely unravel Gailey's confidence in his kicker (or the holder, it's unclear because Gailey's good like that). But of course, nobody panics when things go according to plan, right? If the Buffalo defense holds, everything changes, right?

 

 

Edited January 19, 2019 by Albany,n.y.

[Thurman#1]

2 hours ago, Green Lightning said:

I always liked Chan as an OC.  He got a lot out of what he had.

 

 

 

Yup, a brilliant OC.

 

Undermined as an HC by a flawed personnel acquisition staff. And probably a bad DC as well.

 

 

 

OP, thanks for posting, it was a good article. Amazing to think their two top QBs were Brodie Croyle and Damon Huard ... and then both got injured and they had to go even further down the depth chart ... and did pretty well on offense. I mean, after the top two were out and they put in Thigpen and the new offense they went from 257 YPG to 340. That's insane. In those days making that leap was going from 31st in the league to 16th ... by installing a new offense mid-year with Thigpen as your QB.

 

And now we see how very influential all that stuff has become.

 

Again, thanks, OP.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Marv's Neighbor said:

I don't miss his too frequent wildcat calls.

 

2 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Yeah. That just never worked. I mean never.  I don't recall a single Brad Smith direct snap amounting to anything. But dammit, they paid him and they were gonna use him ...

 

 

No, look at the stats. It worked very well. Most of his carries were direct snaps and he averaged 4.4 and 8.3 YPC in his two years here. Not a lot of carries. I think one of the main reasons they ran him was to give defenses yet more to prepare for, to make the Bills harder and much more time-consuming to game-plan for.

 

Edited January 19, 2019 by Thurman#1

[ComradeKayAdams]

6 minutes ago, Albany,n.y. said:

I though Chan was a horrible head coach.  He won 1/3 of the games he coached. 

 

Not entirely fair. For one thing, Chan inherited a team completely devoid of talent in 2010. Then for 3 years, he had to deal with Russ Brandon, Nix, Whaley, and an out-of-touch owner who sacrifed a home game each year to Toronto. In 2011 and 2012, I also believe the team was hit hard with injuries. In hindsight, he never really had much of a chance here to be successful. But at least he made the most of the limited talent on offense. Chan Gailey reached 6-10 with a garbage roster. Rex Ryan, meanwhile, went 15-16 with a fairly loaded one. Rex Ryan is a coach whom I would call "horrible." Gailey was just "meh."

 

 

[Red Squirrel]

1 hour ago, formerlyofCtown said:

Actually Edwards started a season 5-0 IIRC until Adrian Wilson ended him.  He was never the same after that.  It was a hit that would have brought a hefty fine now days.

This is a myth that apparently will never end. First off, Edwards went 4-0 against 4 of the worst teams in the league that season.  I believe he threw 4 TDs in the 4 games, so he didn't even contribute that much. Yeah, it was a rough hit. And the first game after he came back he had the best game of his career. Had a couple decent ones later on, too. The problem the rest of that season was the schedule toughened up and exposed his complete lack of sense of urgency to, you know, score points. If you are generous to him, you can feel that the folllowing seasons revealed a delayed reaction to the hit; it is just as likely that defenses realized they didn't need to worry about covering passes more than 10 yards downfield.

 

 

[bills11]

Chan was a very innovative play caller from actually making Kordell Stewart look competent in Pittsburgh to making Fitz look like a franchise qb albeit for a few weeks ..his downfall though was his loyalty to these average players obviously he had a big hand in Fitz premature extension in buffalo ..and he never really seemed to have an overwhelming desire to work with an elite signal caller when he got to the Jets he brought in Fitzy asap 

[TAinLack.]

6 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Nice article in The Ringer about Chan's Chiefs, c. 2008:  https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/1/18/18188064/kansas-city-chiefs-10-year-challenge-afc-championship

 

Chan's offense(s) just plain worked, at least better than most of the alternatives. I think I was the only person clamoring for him to start Tyler Thigpen with the Bills in 2011-12. I remember Chan stuck him in for one play in a game situation that mattered: he rolled right in some kind of option and completed a short pass. Hey, back then that was enough to inspire faith in me.  

 

Chan on how he came to use college tactics in an NFL offense back in 2008:

 

“We lost our two QBs,” Chiefs third-string quarterback Tyler Thigpen remembers offensive coordinator Chan Gailey telling the team in a meeting. “Tyler is our guy, and moving forward, hey, we’re going to try to build an offense that’s best for him.”  The 6-foot-3 Thigpen played quarterback in a wing-T offense in high school and in a spread offense at Coastal Carolina. The Chiefs signed him in 2007 from the Vikings, who were attempting to put him on their practice squad. With Thigpen as the starter, the Chiefs’ offense was in shotgun almost all of the time. It switched to wristband play-calling so it could run more plays from no-huddle, and Thigpen ran read-option-type plays, utilizing running backs Jamaal Charles and Larry Johnson while he ran out of the shotgun or pistol formation. The receivers, including Tony Gonzalez and Dwayne Bowe, would spread the field to offer a passing threat. These wrinkles are routine in modern NFL playbooks, but they were not in 2008. And the Chiefs players had to answer a lot of questions about them.

“The most frustrating part was the questions from the media. They’d say, ‘You can’t run shotgun all the time’ and ‘You can’t run the spread,’” said Thigpen. “I knew eventually the game would evolve to that.”

 

 

Interesting post, thanks for sharing. I enjoyed Chan Gailey's time here.

[Troll Toll]

As a HC he shot himself in the foot with bad DCs. I always felt bad for him from that perspective. Wanny and George Edwards really let him down. That and he tied himself to Fitz when he clearly was not a long term answer.

[formerlyofCtown]

8 hours ago, Ol Dirty B said:

 

They were gone a season before Sammy was drafted?...

Yes he was fired after the 2012 season and Watkins was drafted in 2014

6 hours ago, Red Squirrel said:

This is a myth that apparently will never end. First off, Edwards went 4-0 against 4 of the worst teams in the league that season.  I believe he threw 4 TDs in the 4 games, so he didn't even contribute that much. Yeah, it was a rough hit. And the first game after he came back he had the best game of his career. Had a couple decent ones later on, too. The problem the rest of that season was the schedule toughened up and exposed his complete lack of sense of urgency to, you know, score points. If you are generous to him, you can feel that the folllowing seasons revealed a delayed reaction to the hit; it is just as likely that defenses realized they didn't need to worry about covering passes more than 10 yards downfield.

 

 

To me he always seemed to not want to take a hit after that and didnt make the right decisions with the ball.

Edited January 19, 2019 by formerlyofCtown

[TigerJ]

I think he was one of the head coaches that Buffalo dumped prematurely.

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

6 hours ago, Ol Dirty B said:

 

Peterman is a 10000000000000 times worse than captain check down 

Thanks a bunch...my smart phone wants to call your estimate.  ?

 

?

[The Bills Blog]

7 hours ago, hemma said:

2009 we scored 16.1 per.  2011 we scored 23.3.  

 

I’ll look around tomorrow and see if I can find his departure speech.  

loyal to the end.

"Great, great Buffalo fans. Great football town."

 

"This is the only team that ever fired me that I'll pull for."

 

And he said both while choking up. This is how I recall it.

[formerlyofCtown]

5 hours ago, Red Squirrel said:

This is a myth that apparently will never end. First off, Edwards went 4-0 against 4 of the worst teams in the league that season.  I believe he threw 4 TDs in the 4 games, so he didn't even contribute that much. Yeah, it was a rough hit. And the first game after he came back he had the best game of his career. Had a couple decent ones later on, too. The problem the rest of that season was the schedule toughened up and exposed his complete lack of sense of urgency to, you know, score points. If you are generous to him, you can feel that the folllowing seasons revealed a delayed reaction to the hit; it is just as likely that defenses realized they didn't need to worry about covering passes more than 10 yards downfield.

 

 

It also may have had something to do with the fact that last seasons Roster looks like a Pro-Bowl roster compared to 2008.

 

But to help put my comments in perspective, the comparison I was responding to was with Peterman. 

Edited January 19, 2019 by formerlyofCtown

[formerlyofCtown]

36 minutes ago, Ridgewaycynic2013 said:

Thanks a bunch...my smart phone wants to call your estimate.  ?

 

?

Mine too.

[mabden]

8 hours ago, Reader said:

 

I thought with the Bills he worked only with Fitz...unless you're counting that one game that Trent was so bad that they cut him afterwards. I wonder between Peterman and Edwards who is the bigger training camp hero. 

1

 

Edwards had some decent games for us until he suffered the concussion.  He never was the same afterward.

[machine gun kelly]

I liked Chan as well.  He didn’t have a lot to work with, but made the most of our team.  His defense left a lot to be desired.

[Another Fan]

He was a great offensive mind and a good guy.   It was actually exciting to watch the team in 2010 even after starting the year 0-8.

 

Defense though?  They were historically bad under his watch.  The 45-3 loss to the 49ers always come to mind along with the Patriots scoring 45 second half points in one meeting.  Also the 8 game losing streak of 2011

[Beast]

2 hours ago, The Bills Blog said:

"Great, great Buffalo fans. Great football town."

 

"This is the only team that ever fired me that I'll pull for."

 

And he said both while choking up. This is how I recall it.

 

Yeah, that was hard to watch.

 

If good guys made great head coaches he and Dick Jauron would be in Canton.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Binghamton Beast

[Capco]

10 hours ago, hemma said:

2009 we scored 16.1 per.  2011 we scored 23.3.  

 

I’ll look around tomorrow and see if I can find his departure speech.  

loyal to the end.

 

Paraphrasing:

 

The entire staff has been relieved of their duties... I was brought in to turn the ship around.  Didn't get it done.... we got it done before 2 times, but we couldn't get it done here.  

 

Great, great Buffalo fans. Great football town.

 

This may be... no, actually this is the only place that has ever fired me, that I'll pull for.  Thank you.  

Edited January 19, 2019 by Capco

[GreggTX]

Chan was a great OC. His big problems were that he fell in love with bad QB's and when he was in Buffalo, we had the worst defense ever. He was a brilliant playcaller, which is an underappreciated art in the NFL today. He was the only OC in the NFL that knew how to make Spiller a huge threat. I was frankly surprised that the Jets didn't sign CJ while Chan was there. He should be 66 or 67 right now, so he may be retired for good.

[Brianmoorman4jesus]

I was thinking the other day that I honestly feel like the hiring of Chan Gailey was the worst head coaching hire I can ever remember. He was absolutely terrible and I don’t know how anyone could feel differently. It was the closest I ever got to canceling my Sunday ticket. Nobody else would have ever considered hiring him for a HC. There was no reason for us to do it. We could have hired a real HC and probably got him to be an OC. He ran the same plays over and over regardless of situation. Every team in the league figured him out and after that 5-2 start, we never did anything again. The book was written and then end of that year and the following season was just a complete embarrassment. We forced the same stuff over and over again and Fitz actually proved to be a very productive QB after Chan. This is all not even considering there was no attempt to even pretend to play defense for 3 straight years. I think he was the single worst HC the Bills have had in the last 30 years and I don’t think it was close.