Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

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)

Is he even a good scout?? That may be pushing it! The other name he'd like push is AJ Smith who I'd also want to keep as far away as possible.

Cause he's a players coach, Rex would likely never do that.

Henderson struggled this whole season. If it turns out he lost weight, and was actually somewhat sick since September or so, that could explain his weak play. Assuming he's over the illness next season, I'd problem give him another year to see how he does. If he truly was healthy till maybe around Nov and and his play the first half is as good as he really is, then I'd imagine you need a replacement for him regardless of whether he can play or not.

Yes but the origina; post was talking about next year, 2016 season, so that's two years older

So what's your suggestion instead of TT? Certainly easy to find potential better choices than Rex. QB is a different story. Like it or not, the truth is just based on all the other teams also struggling at QB, finding someone better is not very likely for QB

Jim's system worked with the 2014 Bills. as was pointed out the D line is now 2 years older.

That's the biggest reason to run as far away and as fast as you can from Polian. Everything I've read his son is a disaster, but likely if you hire Bill you get he kid too. And not far behind will be AJ Smith another mess. And what makes you think Peyton knows anything about running a football team? This infatuation with big names amazes me!

More than likely "The Dude" is correct only because the odd are highly stacked in his favor. Look around the league, many more fail than succeed. I've said it many times, I'd gladly take a bet with all 32 teams that I'd state QB "X" is bad and will be gone in less than 3 years. If I made 32 bets like that one for each team I'd win more than I'd lose. That's the OP's problem we have a much better chance of replacing TT with an EJ type of talent than an Aaron Rodgers simply bast on league history.

Per Carucci's column today, he stated, "DW has one year left on his contract" I was surprised to see that as all along heard this was the final year?? Wondering which is correct, or did Carucci mean one year left as in this year?? I've also wondered what impact Rex may have in hiring of a new GM as am certain he wouldn't want to go down same path as what happened with him in NY

I'd agree with most of what you stated. Yeah he's no where near Rothlisberger, but neither are about 25 other #1 QB's on teams in the league. So we can draft someone in the 1st or 2nd round, but what makes you think he'll be any better and this by no means a knock on the Bills scouting and coaching. It's just reality as there are very few people that make the transition from college to the NFL very well. Everyone knocks EJ, but the real problem with him isn't so much his abilities as much as where he was picked. If the Bills had picked him in the 2nd or 3rd round, there wouldn't be nearly the hysteria over him, he still would have been just as bad, but no big deal, and you dump him. I bring him up only to point out there is a much better odds of getting someone of his capabilities than there are of getting another Aaron Rodgers. They just don't exist hardly ever. Is TT capable like Eli did today of bringing the team back from down 35-7, probably not, but the key is don't allow your defense to give up four TD's like the Bills did today. Assuming he improves somewhat, particularly on short passes and build a good team around TT he likely would be capable of winning. Unless you can get real lucky and get a Rodgers, but instead have one of these at the next level of talent, once these others rookie contract expires they will still get big $$ and then there isn't enough money left to build the team around him. As I read somewhere just last week in a comment about Brady, "He is able to make the players around him better" Well unless you get real lucky and get someone of his level, more likely you'll be dumping TT for another EJ.

Mets (2), Knicks (2), Islanders (4), Rhinos (1) I was even at that game, SU Basketball (1), Jets (1) As a kid growing up in NYC followed them till the early 80's

Both of those positions were absolutely addressed. A new QB was brought in, granted it wasn't Aaron Rodgers, but if you know where someone like that is available, please let the Bills know. The O-line has 2 new starters, that's 40% change You had a rookie last year who showed promise at RT that you'd expect him to improve more, that didn't happen, maybe the illness has been bothering him all year or maybe he isn't going to get any better at all, but he was just playing through it. Eventually got so bad he had to sit. Is it the front offices fault for not anticipating one of the starters was going to develop Crohn's Disease? Did the changes work out as well as expected, actually most would argue those were two areas that the changes made worked out much better than anticipated, particularly with Richie and TT

While I certainly agree with the comments about the undisciplined style, lets give it another year with players who can play the D he wants to implement. Should he have been happy playing the same style defense as last year rather than what he wants, sure sounds great, but hat's not the way life in the NFL works. And even if he had, with injuries and some players a year older, (i.e. the Williams brothers) really doubt we'd have had the same level of success as last year anyway. The only person in NY who wanted to run him out of town was the ex GM who did a real good job of setting him up to fail, the owner supposedly wanted him to come back So yes as fans most of us will be more disappointed this season as we all had much higher, probably unrealistic expectations, admittedly fueled in large part by Rex himself.

While certainly this year has not worked out the way anyone expected in regards to coaching, of the last four people to coach the Bill's which drew more excitement that Rex's hire. Rex made one huge mistake in thinking he could take the players we had and adapt them to his system and immediately be just as good if not better. As has been pointed out last few games things have got better. Will be shocked if you don't see other styles of players brought in this off-season. Think you need to give it another year before ready to give up. If you and many others are really correct and Rex truly is a terrible coach, got to give him credit for one thing, pulling off the greatest charade to get hired using smoke and mirrors.

Schwartz declined, admittedly not sure how hard Rex tried to convince him to stay. But that's all part of bringing in a new coach, not often do other coordinators stay, biggest reason is often they interviewed for the HC position and were turned down so they tend to have a chip on their shoulder, and more often the style of the new HC clashes with the old coordinators scheme. From Rex's side I'm the new HC if things go south here in Buffalo, I want to know it wasn't because I let someone else run the show. When you factor in the injuries, key D line a year older, not to say they would have been as good as last year. When you were as good as they were, the odds are higher you'll get worse than better. For the people arguing that Rex should have kept Schwartz, a better argument could be if the Bills' loved the defense so much, they should have made Schwartz the HC

Agree, that is the biggest area he needs to improve on. Getting physically stronger wouldn't hurt either. Could the Bills do better at QB, sure, but the odds are stacked against them just because there aren't nearly enough true franchise QB's around. So you have to make the best of what you have. Also unless you really get a Brady Rodgers, Manning type, the next level while good, command to much $$ to be able to afford the pieces around them, but aren't quite good enough to win consistently with less than stellar talent.

I think that's the issue, Rex looked at all this talent he was getting and figured how even better they will be in his brilliant scheme. His ego told him that he could easily get the players to adapt to his ideas and the D will be even better. To be honest not sure his ego is bigger than others in this respect, think all coaches think they can solve all of teams issues, otherwise they'd never have taken the job. Positive thinking is great, but also need to be realistic.

Don't forget too, we did just cut Mulligan. (Was trying to think of a cleaver way to work it in that we took a mulligan) He often was in for blocking, at a minimum likely would have had a much bigger role on Sunday once Clay went down. Instead we had Gragg, was O'Leary even active? don't recall??