Archives for January 26, 2004

‘Tolbert comes to Buffalo with just one year of NFL experience under his belt. It came last year, where he coached receivers with the Arizona Cardinals.’

‘Tolbert replaces Fred Graves, who was hired by Cleveland last week.’

‘Tolbert comes to Buffalo after spending last season coaching the same position with the Arizona Cardinals. Prior to that, he coached for nine seasons at the college level including stops at Louisiana-Monroe (1994-97), Auburn (1998), Louisiana-Lafayette (1999-01) and Florida (2002). A native of Conroe, TX, Tolbert was a three-year letter-winner as a receiver at LSU from 1988-90.’

Kevin Gilbride has landed on his feet again. Fired as Buffalo’s offensive coordinator in the Gregg Williams purge, Gilbride has been reunited with Tom Coughlin with the Giants. Gilbride accepted Coughlin’s offer rather than become the head coach at Cornell. When Coughlin was Jacksonville’s coach, he hired Gilbride as OC after the Oilers fired him. Coughlin and Gilbride did so well with the Jaguars, helping them reach the AFC Championship Game in 1996, their second season, that Gilbride was hired as San Diego’s head coach.

‘After making 18 of 29 attempts the following season, Norwood left the Bills – run out of town, some said. No other NFL team picked him up despite his impressive lifetime record. Rightly or wrongly, his association with failure made him a pariah.’

‘In Nick Daschel’s profile of Buffalo Bills kicker Rian Lindell, Lindell talked about how intense Bills fans are about their team. It appears the Mountain View High School grad was prophetic, because that profile became the most-requested story from the newspaper last week, thanks to links from several Bills websites.’

‘I was on the Buffalo sideline for the first half. After one play, Gregg Williams, the Buffalo coach, yelled to one of his players, “Catch the ball, you trout-mouth rookie.” During a timeout a few plays later, I walked over to him and said, “Coach, what the heck is a trout-mouth rookie?” He laughed and said when someone looks confused and has his mouth open like a fish, he calls him trout mouth.’