Dan Gross

Offensive Line, but of course since he coached under Belichick, that makes him an automatic winner, right? At least Saban was a coordinator at the NFL level...You seemed to fail to mention Carroll...or is it that because Carroll's first foray into NFL coaching was with the Bills that meant he'd never amount to anything in the NFL...?

Kinda like Spurrier and Carroll?

I would think he wasn' alone in the blame game. Feels more to me like Ralph refused to "let him quit" (effectively refused to talk settlement). Could be too that he couldn't get anyone to answer his own calls as he hunted for candidates to replace the assistants that were already gone. It was clear that Mularkey was kept, but on a short leash. Who wants to sign up for that kind of insecurity? Who also knows what kinds of threats, etc. his family felt after it was announced that he was staying... I really don't think it was as simple as Mularkey "dragging things out."

It's not just the head coach though, it's also the assistants. The ranks generally get thin the longer you wait....I really think that's a large part of what happened with Williams' first coaching staff. Though the people he picked were on the top of the "currently available" list, there's no knowing how many names happened to be above the chosen coaches in Greggo's "ideal" situation that had already been hired while the Bills waited to talk to Marvin Lewis....

Yeah, those Pittsburgh OC's make great coaches... Besides, you'd like them to wait until after the super bowl to get the assistants? Could be a Nick Saban, could be a Steve Spurrier, or Pete Carroll, Both took Super Bowl teams and rode them for all they were worth, then tanked them. Doesn't show "as much" with Martz, but 4 of his games every year were against the Niners and Cards, and Seattle's been hot/cold as well. Outside of the Super Bowl appearance with Vermeil's team, the only playoff game he won was against a divisional foe...Heck, even Williams out-coached him. Neither of these guys have proven that they can take a losing team and make winners out of them. In fact, they've only proven that they can't even maintain a winning team...Don't know how that's a "proven winner." Heck, in that list of candidates you forgot to mention Bill Callahan...he took a team to a Super Bowl under the same circumstances as the above two, doesn't that make him a "proven winner?" With his last team he had one great season and a bunch of mediocre-at-best seasons. Sounds like our current coach...besides, other "smarter" teams had a chance at him as well, why did the Texans take a "newbie" over a proven winner like him? Belichick's "track record" was as a great coordinator who couldn't handle being a head coach. Cowher was a reasonable, but not particularly outstanding defensive coordinator. The Eagles were lambasted for hiring Andy Reid when there were other candidates with a "winning track record" available. Face it, it's a crapshoot.

Or use these flushable versions. Developed by a guy in Rochester...

Walt Corey...

Wow, he's 3 centuries old!

Give it up. Coaches generally are available either because: 1. They were fired from a previous job, which generally means they are a "proven loser" (your words). 2. They are coordinators/college head coaches with no NFL head coaching experience. If a coach is coaching well, teams generally try to keep them (duh). There are rare exceptions, like a "proven winner" who quits/retires is lured out of retirement. Those guys will never end up in Buffalo, because while you can argue back and forth whether Ralph will pay more than minimum wage for a coach, he's not going to pay the top buck. Regardless, these "proven winner" types are drawn to more glamorous jobs/locations. Retired coaches like to coach near where they retired to, which is usually the south. They pick where they want to go based on how it suits them, generally regardless of money. Regardless, just like there are no guarantees that a "proven loser" will win here, there are no guarantees that a "proven winner" will win here either. Even the highly touted Parcells has won 1 playoff game in his last 6 years coaching, and his teams have been up-and-down. Shall I even bring up Jimmy Johnson? There has yet to be a coach who has won a Super Bowl with two different teams, but yet there have been winners of Super Bowls who fit into the two categories above. Now Holmgren may change that next weekend, but if he had come here and done the same things he had done in Seattle, he wouldn't have lasted three years before the "general populace" here would have been calling for his head as well... There's no magic formula. For every Kotite, there's a Belichick. For every "Parcells," there's a Bobby Ross. There are "good" coaches that lose and "bad" coaches that win in certain situations. You look at the current situation and see no reason to believe they will succeed. I look and also see no reason to believe they will fail. I won't go so far as to beg for your patience while we wait for the team to actually play against another team, but can't we at least see what the 2006 Buffalo Bills team will be comprised of (or at least where we'll start from) before you decide that it's automatic that we'll be no better than 3-13 for the next three years?

or, alternatively, "therefore, the bills are doomed."

The spam removal filter is very aggressive.

Oh, fer cryin' out loud, you should have warned us that you were posting a spoiler!

Fairchild.

No, just already tired of the Dick jokes...

Are you saying he's managed to accomplish in days what I've been trying to do for years?

Why do you think ticket prices went up?

Blind squirrel, meet nut.

Well I'm sure some here can give you 81 reasons to like him...

Yes, I know that. I guess he doesn't realize that Ralph's comments aren't the only reason his colleagues laugh at him...So he's going to give his colleagues more chuckles by crying like a baby after Ralph picked on him...he should take out a loan and buy a sense of humor.

Probably more durable too.

I had Jackson as one of my fantasy backs and his numbers simply exploded when Fairchild took over...stop trying to make sense, you might give people the false hope that we'll win a game next year...

Oh, so that's why Sully has suddenly turned negative in his columns, after blindly supporting the Bills for all these years... This, too, would be the same guy who, at Levy's press conference, had nothing more pressing to ask than whether the team would keep "secrets" from him like the previous regime...

Gads. I hope GW at least bothered to wear a sports bra.

That's how I remember the Detroit game, because of all the fuss from Chicago. Of course, if Chicago had managed to beat us themselves it wouldn't have been as big an issue, would it have? Even resting our starters Detroit barely beat us...But we somehow still couldn't compete ever at all with "elite" NFC teams.... I figured we had rested starters against Washington, but didn't specifically remember.

Wow, how could they name a defensive coordinator of that calibre without us hearing about his interview first? Can't believe Ralph would lay out that kind of cash....