Sisyphean Bills

You're right. He'd already have cut him. There is no way Belichick puts up with a DL leading an insurrection on his team. (That was the scenario laid out. Not one of constructive dialogue.)

Holmgren is a good mention wrt a "cure-all czar". Holmgren was a total zero.

Belichick would cut him. Absolutely no question about it.

Yet, Bill Parcells once put it: you are what your record says you are.

Whaley was also part of the trigger group that hired Doug Marrone.

Maybe he only has input on decisions that work out fabulously well?

You're assuming that the only reason to keep Rex would be to hit a magic number. That might be true. OTOH, he may not be totally incompetent. No one is saying it worked out swimmingly in year 1, but one might hope the Bills hired him because they felt he could be a good coach. Who knows. What a mess.

It could be for show. OTOH, it would be a risk to fire the coach. It sends a message to any prospective coaches about the organization itself. The Bills had a head coach opt out after less than 1 year under new ownership and fire the next guy after 1 season. That doesn't look like a good situation from the outside. Of course they can always hire a Mike Pettine type coach, but is that just rearranging the deck chairs? It may be missing the players as a component to what is wrong. It's easy to keep the coaching carousel spinning, but if players are mailing it in for coach A, B, C, ... why are they going to suddenly light a fire for coach T, U, V? Frankly, it isn't going to happen.

I wonder if the Bills will manage to get swept by the worst division in football. Matt Cassel. Yikes. Well, we can start looking forward to the draft now.

The one and done coaching hires worked pretty well for Cleveland.

The natural process of organizational decision making would suggest complete absolution smells like an agenda.

Some pedal the goods that Brandon plays no role and has zero input. Just saying.

Not disagreeing exactly ... but he's gotten players to no avail. If the players can't execute the offense and suck in the defense, then what do you have exactly? A team that will extend the longest run without a playoff appearance in professional North American sports.

Well, it was a couple of "fans" who got Buddy to call their cell number so they could record it and put it on the internet. Fitz is probably still pissed off at the swipes.

FWIW: there might still be the video on Buffalo Bills.com in which Russ Brandon says rather emphatically that Whaley has control of the 53.

The bolded just underscores a point. A good GM doesn't build a "great roster" in total isolation. This is a team sport. The roster must be built to work as components of an overall design that includes the coaches—the guys that put together the game plans, etc. It is a long road of futility to just build a collection of shiny parts. 3 new mufflers, a pair of mag rims, curb feelers, and fuzzy dice might up the "bling" factor, but they don't make a functioning car.

There's the rub of drafting a QB in the 1st round. If he is a flop, then a GM's runway gets shortened significantly. It could even derail one's career, which perhaps explains why some Bills FO types would never even consider it. Of course, Whaley can always push the decision off on Buddy Gump. Sort of.

The timing seems off. It makes a sort of sense to point fingers if one is interviewing for other gigs. Anywho ... as the Bills World turns ...

A real pain amplifier is seeing Buddy Gump's original cast of Gailey and Fitzpicks using the soft schedule to quite likely sneak the Jets into the playoffs.

For a second, I thought you were going to say "batted balls".

Ryan has coached legit NFL defenses before. It doesn't add up that he'd ask one of his better pass rushers (on paper) to do nothing more than bull rush and grapple with the tackle play after play after play. It's still the NFL. You build a "tendency" like that and you are going to be useless.

The Bills schedule was as favorable as it could get in playing the weakest division in both conferences. Add that the Dolphins fired their coach in September and the Jets nominal starting QB got his jaw broken in pre-season. And yet they look like they will still miss the playoffs. Does it hurt? It should. Maybe it's more uncomfortably numb.

On paper perhaps. Williams has played in different systems and has a body of work that suggests he excels in some systems and is simply average in others. And I wholeheartedly agree that using a huge chunk of cap for average isn't good management.

The real downer is that swapping out parts to convert from a highly functioning wide-9 defense to a 3-4 system distracts attention and resources from the offense. Between Gailey trying to coach up journeyman QBs and Marone's trying to build an OL out of chicken salad, the Bills strategy on offense could probably use a little more attention.