Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

I'm not a huge Rex fan, but am objective! Rex was fired because he wore out his welcome and everyone knew something had to change and it made the most sense that it was the coach. I seem to recall the owner stating, he really hated to fire him but basically knew in his heart it was the move that had to be done. He was a coach that took a team as recently as 5 years ago to two league championship games. How many other coaches who were available at the time and definitely indicated an interest they want to be a coach could you say that about besides Rex. Since you used the word "articulate" in your post, I'd say it was rather in-articulate to describe him as being pulled from a dumpster. Laughable may be a better choice.

He's an average coach. Looking at that most teams either have a guy like a Tomlin, Belechick, Peyton, I'll even throw Lewis in there, coaches who have real good records. So that means most of the remainder must have real bad records as when you add the numbers all up, the total number of wins and losses must equal .500 The Bills and many other teams who keep switching coaches have had many of these, Jauron, Gailey, Williams etc. so actually having a coach with a .500 record is better than probably 25% to 30% of the league.

Thinking about it, this may have been a rather unique situation Buffalo had. How often is a new coach brought into a team that was a league leader one one side of the ball. Usually they are teams bad on one side and maybe just OK on the other side, so in that situation easy for a coach to come in and say this is the system we're going to use and get the players to buy into it as what they were doing wasn't working very well already. Usually when the new coach is brought in, the team will hire the new guy who's strength is on whatever side was weaker to begin with. In the case of the Bill's you'd normally hire a guy who's strength is offensively. The other thing you'll often see teams do if they need to replace the HC is promote the coordinator from whichever side of the ball was doing well so you can keep continuity there. The Bill's did interview Schwartz, but the problem was his prior HC resume was rather sketchy at best. There probably would have been a better chance of the Bill's hiring Schwartz as the HC if he had never coached before as then no bad record to think about. On top of that then Rex pops into the picture, guy who's labeled a defensive genius, can only imagine what he can do to improve this group. Players love the guy, had some success in NY and much of his failure was blamed on a bad situation with the relationship with the GM and not getting very good players than him. So Rex is hired, everyone from the players, coaches, front office expected all the players to get on board with this and things will go great. Have to wonder did Mario create the mutiny once he saw things weren't going well or did he create issues right from the first day of mini-camp, planting seeds with others, once things started to go south was easy for him to get a full scale mutiny going. And Rex to a fault being a players coach was against his principles to stop it. It was the Perfect Storm created! On a related topic, when was the "Vic" article about the Bickering Bills? Curious as I must have missed reading it.

Here's what I see is the problem with picking the coach first: Coaches get fired much faster than GM's typically do. 3 to 4 years of losing you're gone, where usually you'll give the GM at least one more shot with another coach. Now you have a GM who was hired by the last coach picking the new coach. GM needs to see the bigger picture, what helps the team down the road next season or the season after that. All the coach cares about is next Sunday for the most part. A GM hired by the coach may tend to do to much of what the coach wants and not think about the long term good of the team. A coach can pick the GM, but may turn out the GM now doesn't ask "how high" when the coach tells him to jump. If the GM hired the coach, the coach wouldn't expect him too, when the hire was in the other order he will and can see the relationship going down the tubes quickly when he doesn't do exactly as asked. The only way I could see it working is if the GM is told specifically he works for the coach, but again the long term good of the team may suffer unless the coach is really good. NE kind of unofficially has that relationship, but even there it took some years of Belichick proving himself before he was given that kind of power.

Letting the coach pick the GM is often the case, but only when you bring in an established name like a Shanahan or someone at that level. At this point a guy like a sean Peyton has earned that right. Can't believe you're going to let Marrone pick the GM??

Hope you're happy with this thread as I'm sure it makes you feel like you're actually smart! Keep posting as there's always a few that will agree with you, so that's another sign as to how smart you really are. Agree with you about Seantrel. Any good GM would have known he was going to get Crohns disease in year two. That one is all on Whaley, you're correct again, wow, you should be so proud of yourself!!

Fred became a legend here because he was the only thing of any consistency over close to the past ten years. But the main reason for his consistency was the rest of the team was so bad so long. If guys like A Smith, and Lynch had stuck around, and Spiller had played like the level he was drafted at; it's highly likely there never would have been much of a Fred Jackson career in Buffalo. Fred kind of became the martyr of the cause, the cause being the lousy years.

I don't know I can't buy the "CEO/owner" of any type of company making a statement like that. Smart people don't talk like that, not about what they might do in another year. Yes I'm sure TP isn't happy and did think about making changes, but can't believe he'd talk about it to anyone unless the source is Russ Brandon. Others may have heard that TP is unhappy and would make changes, but "blow up" leaves much to interpretation.

Thing I wonder about RT is was Henderson suffering the affects of his illness all season? Finally it got to be too much and he was sat down. But was he playing in a weakened state all season? Assuming it's something he can get under control and gets his weight and strength back, then maybe not such a glaring need. He was rookie of the month in Sept 14 if I recall correctly, how bad was he? I expected him to continue to improve, but he didn't, if it was due to the illness, not so worried, or could be he just reached his abilities. He was a 7th round draft pick, but only because of off-field issues, not based on talent alone. I recall he was the #1 OL prospect coming out of high school.

Yeah, figured that was probably the case, just never noticed it before. The scary part of that is, it might mean I have nothing better to do than examine these maps in that great a level of detail! What will I do next week?

So apparently for the week 17 changes, along with two opposing 4:30 games the rule about no televised game on opposite network when you're playing at home also goes away. The Bills are playing in Buffalo at 1:00, in other weeks Fox could not televise a game into the Buffalo market at 1:00, but this week they are along with every other home market of teams. Never picked up on that in past years.

I also think he'll be re-signed with Denver. If he were to hit FA, to me that sets off a red flag. If the team that sees him every day is willing to let him go, then maybe he's not as magical as he's made out to be. You could also make the argument that if the Bill's were to go after Osweiler, it may be fore the same reason, that they see too many flaws in TT that are not fixable. There may be flaws that once teams see more of Osweiler he'll regress. TT also has played more games so more to look at on him, both good and bad. The question for both of them is can they take the next step. For that reason I'd more likely stick with TT in that he know the offense. Improvements to the O-line and the defense overall, and he could likely pull a few more wins out by next season. Overall there are many things wrong with the Bills that need fixing more than changes and spending money at QB

Polien also got out of Buffalo before the big push in free agency started. Instead he left that mess to John Butler, who never met a player he didn't love and over-paid for many. Granted it kept the team strong through the late 90's, but then the bottom fell out fast.

I'm not against keeping Rex around for another year, but am against re-doing the roster to suit a one-trip pony coach. I suppose maybe that's not a fair statement in that we have no idea what Rex was stating privately. Maybe it's just his style to publicly state how they'll be the #1 D to try and build up their confidence, but behind closed doors talking about what changes they'll need to make. But if he truly told both DW and Terry that he's make this cast of players the #1 ranked defense then hold him too it and lets not make another bunch of changes

Why?? What exactly has HE done as oppsoed to the GM and others in the front office. He may be great, who knows, but how do you know who really were his choices? How do you know this guy didn't say, "You asked me to evaluate players: A, B, C, or D I did and I'd recommend they be picked in order of A, C, B, and wouldn't pick player D at all, and the GM then said well I like player D the best and picked him. That guy became a star and everyone is giving Wolf the credit. I realize it's not anywhere that simple, but really don't know what Wolf really has done himself compared to the rest of the team. And as was mentions having Favre and Rodgers makes anyone look good. He may be great, but who knows so I'd be reluctant to get rid of a guy like DW for an unknown considering IMO DW has done way more good than bad. You can blast him for his QB selections, but you can blast almost all of the teams in the league there too, ironically except for Green Bay

Were there really many injuries to the D in the first 5 or 6 weeks? All I recall was Aaron Williams being injured early in the season, but the defense was bad from the first game on. (at least they were consistent) So really can't completely buy the injury argument. To me the funny part about the Fred Jackson thing was everyone went nuts over; Fred was such an inspiration, belongs on the wall of fame, etc. In reality the only reason Fred was here so long and was the star was that the rest of the team was terrible for so long, so made him look real good.

we wouldn't need the NT or the 3-54 DE if Rex just used the players to their strengths

I wish there were a tool you could use to determine is the person just trolling or are they really that stupid. 1000+ posts, have to lean towards the stupid side. If they are just trolling still feel bad for the person that they need to do things like this to get attention and make themselves feel important

I can recall reading that his kid was coming in and that he was going to hire AJ Smith, another one who'd help run the team into the ground. Granted the articles could have all been 100% speculation based on Polians former moves Don't understand why anyone would want Schwartz as HC. Rex was a great coordinator too, and even has a better track record the Schwartz does as a HC, look how that worked out?

Wow, apparently their site doesn't have the same level of censorship as we have here with respect to naughty words.

I'm sure Rex was drooling at the thought of taking these great players and exposing them to his brilliant defense, they'd become the greats D-line in the history of football and likely he told Terry that too.

If I’m Terry Pegula, I hear the fans, many of the media, and other NFL folks I speak with stating I should dump Rex. But I also hear the people stating we need continuity and that does also make sense. When you’re filthy rich like I am, paying $20 plus mil to Rex doesn’t sound like much, but it’s still $20 mil. I could instead use it to buy that helicopter I was looking at last month! Likely I’m not going to get any offsets on his contract either as highly doubtful another team will sign him as a HC. If Rex is fired, think there’s a better chance he and his brother Rob show up next on the carnival circuit than getting close to another HC offer. I also don’t want it to look like I have no idea what I’m doing if I fire Rex after one season, both in how it affects others view of the team, i.e. potential coaches, players, etc. and for personal reasons, I’d rather not look like an idiot either, but could live with that if it helps the team. So maybe I call rex into my office next week and ask him, Rex what happened? Defense is a complete mess, hell even my son knows that, leading the league in penalties, no discipline, special teams is a disaster. Maybe that’s an easy one, we both agree on, can the ST coach, but what about the defense? It was a top five before your arrival, you told me they’d be #1, what went wrong? Why couldn’t you use these same players like they were used last season and they played great? Haven’t you ever heard, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Why am I hearing your defense was so complicated there was only one guy in NY who understood it, that’s not good!! Yes we had many injures, but other than Aaron Williams, really not many injuries the first 5 or 6 weeks defensively, and they were terrible from week one on. Here’s the one thing I’m NOT going to do Rex, I’m not getting rid of perfectly good players because you tell me they don’t fit your system, and sign new ones and get ourselves into salary cap hell again. If these players don’t fit your system, you should have told me that last year before I resigned Hughes and Darrius to extensions, or better yet before I hired you. So either you need to coach the bulk of these players and make a good team out of it or I’ll get someone who can. I’m not going down this rabbit hole with you, so you need to figure out how to dig yourself out with the tools I’ve given you, or I’ll drop a big rock right on the top of the hole and you’ll be buried forever, never to be heard from again. Please explain to me why exactly I’m paying Dennis Thurman a salary? What does he do besides yell at officials after the games over? He needs to be the second person you fire after Crossman. Quite frankly based on where we are right now, I’m not completely certain you can turn this around, but am willing to give you the chance. You need to hire a defense coordinator that knows how to coach these players to their strength, who can coach a “Wide Nine”. Someone like a Jim Schwartz though doubt he’d come back. Then again the reason he left was he felt if the D played well or better, you’d get all the credit and not him so staying wouldn’t help his career. Well the way things are now, if he came back and re-righted the ship, he’d get all the credit for turning the D around and you’d get none. I hired you to be the HC, not run the D so you need to hire a DC who will run the defense again best suited to their strengths and let him run it the way he wanted to. Then maybe you can concentrate on being the HC, as lord knows this team needs a good leader. Between the penalties, lack of discipline, comments to the press, they need someone. Maybe then you can concentrate on replays. So Rex, can you do this, hire a good DC and you do what is needed as the HC. If you don’t feel you’re able to tell me now, if you’re just some one trick pony and can’t do anything different than what I just saw, I’ll move on now. I’m not big on the press like you are, so I have no problem, letting you call a press conference and announcing to the world how you figured out these are the changes that you need to make, you can take all the credit, that’s fine. There are some other lesser changes needed that we can talk about tomorrow, so go home sleep on it and let me know if you think you can handle this….. I’m sure the argument would be Rex would never agree to this, but the way I see it, if TP fires Rex, he’s take some ridicule from some, but he’ll also earn praise from others for admitting his mistakes and moving on. For Rex getting canned after only one season could be brutal, he will be the brunt of all the off season jokes. At the NFL awards show, Rex will likely be front and center in the hosts 15 minute opening monologue . If he’s fired his career could be over or at best if he’s lucky he may get a DC position, but even that I’m not certain the way things have gone here in one dreadful season. So he may have little choice but to go along with Terry’s “suggestions” And last but certainly no least, if I’m Terry Pegula I’d announce that I’m going to give .0001% of my net worth to anyone on Two Bills Drive whom has over 10,000 posts!! And the author of this post too of course!

Um... I was joking!!

What really amazes me is that they did all this without Freddy!!! I can only imagine where they'd been with him!

You'd think Pegula himself and maybe in discussion with Whale at a very high level would have to ask long and hard, OK if we make moves like this and the team doesn't play any better, still lead the league in penalty's, no discipline etc, if at the end of next season I did want to fire Rex, how much would these moves set the team back in regards to flexibility moving forward. You'd likely be eating contracts at the expense of giving Rex the team he wants, now if you bring someone else in as coach, you could be looking at dumping even more. Is it better to bail out now before digging yourself such a deep hole, it could take even more years to dig out from. (rather fitting WRT Terry's comments about digging another well I suppose)