The Underappreciated Genius of Chan Gailey

[Saxum]

10 hours ago, MJS said:

Good OC. Just not a good HC. He shouldn't be making personnel or organization decisions, but he can call a good came on offense.

 

He would be a good play designer without needing to be on the sideline.

[HomeTeam]

3 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.

Here is his exit statement.

 

 Chan's Final Statement to the Bills

 

He was a class act all the way. I enjoyed his tenure here. Even though they did not get the job done, you could always tell that they were doing the best with what they had. 

 

Bless the guy. I hope he's doing well. 

[sullim4]

32 minutes ago, HomeTeam said:

Here is his exit statement.

 

 Chan's Final Statement to the Bills

 

He was a class act all the way. I enjoyed his tenure here. Even though they did not get the job done, you could always tell that they were doing the best with what they had. 

 

Bless the guy. I hope he's doing well. 

 

I agree, Chan is a good guy.  I think he did a good job considering the talent level he had to work with.  The defenses were awful but the offense was equally devoid of talent and was at least competent.  He got the most out of Fitz that he could.

 

Gailey is one of those guys that adapts his playbook to the personnel he has on the roster.  That makes him a lot more flexible than the "system" guys that get run out of the league once defensive coordinators figure their playcalling out.  I'd hire him as an OC, but not as a HC.

[Jay_Fixit]

He believed it was a tuff gayme for tuff payple.

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

You have to admit, nobody ever rented a billboard over Chan.

11 minutes ago, Jay_Fixit said:

He believed it was a tuff gayme for tuff payple.

Shallow of me, but I cannot picture listening to back to back press conferences by Nix and  Gailey.

[BillyWhiteShows]

I’ve thought about this a lot.  First off, Chan was a bad hire to start with.  They hired him because he was unemployed after getting fired from Georgia Tech.  His pal, Bill Cowher told them they should hire him so they did.  Don’t buy the whole “no one else would come to Buffalo narrative.”  Maybe it would have been hard to land a Shannahan or Cowher but they easily could have given a shot to an assistant like Perry Fewell who did a decent job coaching after Jauron was fired.

 

Still, to his credit Chan did get an awful lot out of a very limited Bills roster.  His spread offense was ahead of its time and it helped put a little known QB like Ryan Fitzpatrick on the map.  He also made the best out of low draft picks or UFA’s like Fred Jackson, Stevie Johnson, Scotty Chandler and Donald Jones.

 

But his downfall always has been defense.  I might argue loyalty was his biggest weakness.  I remember he brought it George Edwards to be his DC and it was a flipping disaster.  Chan should have fired Edwards after his first season but he made, perhaps, the biggest mistake of his career and retained him.  The next season the Bills defense regressed even worse.   He ended up replacing Edwards with Dave Wannstedt who was a very bad replacement.

 

In the end Chan was fired and deservedly so. How can you possibly make the argument to retain him?

 

Still he was a great offensive mind and a very good person.  But I don’t buy that he was wronged.  His record speaks for itself.

 

 

 

[Another Fan]

What’s really sad in general is Gailey coached the team for the only legit win against the Patriots in the last 15 years.

 

 

[BillyWhiteShows]

4 hours ago, TigerJ said:

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

 

I completely disagree.  They were going nowhere.  In three seasons they won 4, 6, and 6 games despite improving the roster.

 

It was time to reset and firing Chan was 100% the right call

 

 

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

11 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

I checked: you're right. Edwards was gone right away. 

Don't forget Jeff Tuel as a training camp hero!

 

Trent won the QB battle then ran out of bounds on 4th down with less than 2 minutes on the clock. 

 

That at was his last snap in buffalo

[RobbRiddicksTDLeap]

33 minutes ago, Brianmoorman4jesus said:

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.

 

He never had a defense. He had a GM and FO that was atrocious at evaluating talent. 

 

He was ahead of his time in terms of scheme and vision for the game. He had ZERO talent on his roster. 

 

I loved Gailey. His “you dog one of us, you dog us all” comment was on point. I would have loved to see what he could have done with Manuel. If only they would have given him a chance. 

[Brianmoorman4jesus]

11 minutes ago, RobbRiddicksTDLeap said:

 

He never had a defense. He had a GM and FO that was atrocious at evaluating talent. 

 

He was ahead of his time in terms of scheme and vision for the game. He had ZERO talent on his roster. 

 

I loved Gailey. His “you dog one of us, you dog us all” comment was on point. I would have loved to see what he could have done with Manuel. If only they would have given him a chance. 

He was the coach. It was on him to make sure the Defense was there. He wasn’t the OC. He was responsible for the entire team.

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

13 hours ago, Ethan in Portland said:

Good OC. He was fine as a HC in terms of game decisions.  He just picked the wrong DCs. Dave frickin Wannstedt ended his career as a HC.  

 

 

...didn't he also have George Edwards as his DC?.....shocking that he's STILL floating around...............

[RobbRiddicksTDLeap]

Just now, Brianmoorman4jesus said:

He was the coach. It was on him to make sure the Defense was there. He wasn’t the OC. He was responsible for the entire team.

 

Oh boy. 

 

I wont disagree that he should’ve had more of role in preparing the defense, and that’s probably what led to his termination. But George Edwards and Dave Wanstedt were hires from outside of his comfort zone. 

 

The “hybrid thang” was the most embarrassing defense i have ever seen from the Bills. Regardless of his responsibilities as a HC, the coordinator bares more of a responsibility when it comes to game planning, preparation, in game adjustments, and scheme. 

 

If Gailey had any kind of defense, he would have been more successful here. If he had better players on either side of the ball, he would have been significantly more successful. 

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

14 minutes ago, RobbRiddicksTDLeap said:

...and FO that was atrocious at evaluating talent.

Are we talking football talent? Some so called ‘talent evaluators’ are still collecting unemployment. 

[LSHMEAB]

Dave Wannestadt was Gailey's undoing in Buffalo. I wonder what those teams would have been like with Jim Schwartz. Wanny was the worst defensive coordinator I've ever seen and that's saying something. Defense would never make adjustments, never blitz, rarely even played nickel. Just the worst.

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

2 minutes ago, LSHMEAB said:

Dave Wannestadt was Gailey's undoing in Buffalo. I wonder what those teams would have been like with Jim Schwartz. Wanny was the worst defensive coordinator I've ever seen and that's saying something. Defense would never make adjustments, never blitz, rarely even played nickel. Just the worst.

 

...Jesus bro...heading to Walgreen's for Pepto Bismol after THAT reminder.....

[BillsVet]

3 hours ago, GreggTX said:

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.

 

I tend to believe Nix and Gailey thought they could win with Fitz after 2010 and never seriously considered getting a QB. That was the fatal flaw of their 3 years together.  As forward thinking perhaps as Gailey was with offense, neither he nor Nix had much of a clue on building a modern NFL roster.

 

 

[Nextmanup]

I always thought Chan had a knack for clever play design.

 

 

[TigerJ]

2 hours ago, BillyWhiteShows said:

 

I completely disagree.  They were going nowhere.  In three seasons they won 4, 6, and 6 games despite improving the roster.

 

It was time to reset and firing Chan was 100% the right call

 

 

OK.  I think they needed to make a switch at defensive coordinator, but not head coach.  I don't mind people disagreeing at all though.

[djp14150]

14 hours ago, billspro said:

He definitely made some untalented Bills offences look decent. 

 

 

At the same time he ***** up the D by nepoyism by hiting his 3-4 d buddy ***** up a great 4-3. They had the 2009 defrbse with the 10-12 offenses bills make playoffs.