Donahoe's Dilemna

[Formerly Allan in MD]

One of the growing questions about TD is why he has not hired a head coach with experience and a winning record. Perhaps the reason is based on the situation he faced in Pittsburgh.

 

Everyone knows TD got into a power stuggle with Cowher, a respected, winning head coach. Cowher won out and TD got dumped. So perhaps TD is gunshy about hiring an experienced head coach of repute. The same thing could occur in Buffalo and TD could lose out again. Of course, unless you pick the right rookie head coach, you are at risk for other reasons, as TD is obviously finding out.

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

One of the growing questions about TD is why he has not hired a head coach with experience and a winning record.  Perhaps the reason is based on the situation he faced in Pittsburgh.

 

Everyone knows TD got into a power stuggle with Cowher, a respected, winning head coach.  Cowher won out and TD got dumped.  So perhaps TD is gunshy about hiring an experienced head coach of repute.  The same thing could occur in Buffalo and TD could lose out again.  Of course, unless you pick the right rookie head coach, you are at risk for other reasons, as TD is obviously finding out.

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Perhaps?!?!

 

Virtually right from the start TD has struck me in examining the pluses and minuses GW brought to the Bills that he seemed to be motivated in his hiring decisions by vowing (ether conciously or unconciously) to say never again in terms of hiring a guy as HC who would/could fire him and run him out of town as Cowher did.

 

I don't begrudge him feeling this wat or lambaste him as this reaction would seem to me to be entirely human after an ugly Pittsbrgh scene.

 

Still if this is true, I as a fan have to count on Ralph Wilson to see the pluses and minuses of anyone he hired, If this very human motivation is part of the TD framework then it should have been Ralph to have the judgment (he certainly has the power since he signs the checks) to work to allow TD to do the many things he has done well with this football team:

 

1. Improved the business side of the operation as the team has advanced from the tickets in a shoebox era to a more modern system under TD.

2. Negotiated some great partnerships for the Bills with the move to St. Johns Fisher for camp and with outlets such as Wegman's and Tops.

3, Captured SHOUT and turned it into a promotional house organ as Bills Digest (this is good for the Bills business and bad for the fans in terms of info and perspectives)

4. Moved the team out of cap hell a year sooner than most estimated and continued to negotiate a number of contract quite favorable to the Bills in terms of the bottomline (ex. Adams, McGahee, Spikes and still produced good onfield production from these players as individuals. He has attracted and sealed the deal to bring a number of talented FAs to this small market region.

5, Helped revive the excitement about football in this region after a 3-13 seaso by acquiring Bledsoe from a team in the division (in my opinion this was a great trade to do as Bledsoe led the way in establishing a new Bills team after the cap driven house cleaning which saw the team improve its record to 8-8 and Bledsoe produce stats which merited his Pro Bowl nod that year, however after the Bledsoe drain in his performance last year it certainly appears the team would likely have been far better off for him to have cut the team's losses by cutting him with no cap acceleration for this year).

6. Managed drafts under his tenure which like most NFL talent guys has been a mixed bag with some great picks (2001 draft) and some clunkers (2002 draft) and it being too early to juudge the 2003 and 2004 drafts. However, a key for assessment for him will be how WM turns out and so far so good on that one though it is way to early to declare success.

 

Nevertheless, these positives have been outweighed in terms of the team's record by nothing short of a horrendous job in passing on John Fox and Marvin Lewis to hire GW. GW certainly struck me almost from the start of having the advantage of being a good Administrative Assistant to TD choice because of his research and lists, but I was conerned he did not have the right stuff to be a primetime HC. This proved correct as he never establoshed disciplined play, seemed to have lousy game feel leading to clock management, teaching and other errors.

 

Even worse just as TD failed in hiring this important lieutenant, so to did GW fail in hiring and managing effective co-ordinators.

 

The irony for me with GW is that I wish that TD had actually been more aggressive in forcing his will upon TD as TD's decisions on the field may have been more like his GW decisions than his off-field good ones, but it would be hard to do worse than GW did with this team. TD seemed to be oddly passive-aggrssive with GW.

 

He let GW make his own bed on his own, but quickly and clearly (if not gleefully) got GW to kill or alter his mistakes (Sheppard canning, hiring Steckel to fill in for Killdrive after Killdrive was taken over apparent TD pick Clements. and supplementing GW/Gray with Lebeau). TD should hae not only hired a better HC than GW, but once this mistake was made he should have been more aggressive on insisting on Clements over Killdrive or if Killdrive had to be picked forced the team to move to Steckel as OC once it became clear Killdrive was ineffective.

 

The jury is still out on MM simply because contratually he will get at least one mulligan year, but I'm not sure where you even start to get rid of TD's failure and maintain the good things.

 

Sorry about the lack of cliffnotes but I'm frustrated after today's loss and just pouring.

[Formerly Allan in MD]

One of the things that was most impressive about TD's Pitt tenure was how year after year he lost top flight players to free agency but always came up with the requisite fixes to remain competitive. The one constant during those years was a top notch head coach.

 

TD still comes up with relatively decent players, but with his current mindset (see my original post), he won't hire the experienced, successful head coach to put it all together. So this is what we get. Yes, hiring Lewis or Fox would have saved the day for TD, but he got buried under the GW snow job.