Is history on Chan Gailey’s side?

[Jim Gehman]

Granted, Dick Jauron is an exception and didn’t enjoy a lot of good days at the office while with the Bills, but three of the team’s most successful coaches arrived in Buffalo with NFL head coaching experience. Lou Saban, Chuck Knox, and Marv Levy shared their stories in my book: “Then Levy Said to Kelly…”

 

Saban Goes to Work

 

Lou Saban is synonymous with Bills’ firsts. He was on the sideline when the team earned its first victory on September 23, 1960, in Boston. He was, however, the head coach of the Patriots at the time. He joined Buffalo as the director of player personnel on October 27, 1961, and replaced Buster Ramsey as the head coach less than three months later. He was instrumental in turning the team around, guiding it to its first winning season in 1962.

 

"I’ve always felt that you’ve got to be a good trader, be able to understand the market. I think we did," says Saban. "I had a very good coaching staff. Almost every one of them became head coaches. We could understand talent. Taking it from (my former coach) Paul Brown, I kept saying, ‘You win with talent and you have to make sure you coach them properly.’ That was what we were able to do. I didn’t want the players to lean on the coaches. I wanted them to feel the coaches were leaning on them. When they’re out on that football field and they’re in trouble, they’ve got to help themselves. The men I coached were an experienced group. You’re talking about Tom Sestak, Billy Shaw, Cookie Gilchrist, Jack Kemp, Daryle Lamonica, right down the line. As a group, they were tough to beat. They were my pride and joy."

 

Saban’s “tough to beat” group were indeed tough to beat. In 1964 the Bills recorded a 12-2 record and won the AFL championship. In 1965 they were 10-3-1 and won the league title again. Yet, surprisingly, he resigned a week after that second championship-game victory over San Diego.

 

"In a person’s own life, there are certain adjustments you think you have to make," said Saban, a two-time AFL Coach of the Year. "At that stage, because of my family, I thought maybe this might be a chance to make one of those adjustments. I tried to see if I could put a very difficult atmosphere, tied in with what I thought was a very congenial situation at home, and keep pressure off my family. That was impossible to do. Youngsters who happen to be children of head coaches in professional sports don’t have it easy. I just couldn’t fathom how difficult it was to make changes in that type of an atmosphere. But I gave it a try."

 

Knox Landing

 

Chuck Knox’s reputation for success preceded him. Hired for his first head-coaching job by the Rams in 1973, he guided Los Angeles to the penthouse of the NFC West division. And so with the goal to move into the AFC East’s top floor, in 1978 the hard-working Knox was hired by the Bills as their vice president in charge of football operations. In other words, he was the new head coach.

 

"Ralph Wilson came out and visited with me and told me what he wanted to do," explained Knox. "I’d just finished five years within which we won five straight divisional championships. Fifty-four wins, 15 loses, one tie. And that was playing a 14-game schedule. So the Bills’ job appealed to me because they had won like three or four games [actually five] over a two-year period, and I felt like we could go in there and turn the program around."

 

Knox’s willingness to tackle such an adventuresome project, considering that the Bills had only played in a single playoff game since the leagues merged in 1970, no doubt shocked at least a few around the league. "Anytime you leave a team like the L.A. Rams," says Knox, "where we were winning big, and going to situations like that, where they were having a lot of problems, I think it surprised a lot of people.

 

"The goal always is to win the Super Bowl championship. But in light of that, you’ve got to put a competitive team out on the field, which they obviously didn’t have those last couple of years before we got there. We had to change the attitude of the team. We had to completely redo the scouting department, which wasn’t much of anything. So we hired some scouts. We brought Norm Pollom in [as the director of college scouting], who had been with me with the Rams. And then we also went and got some veteran players to bring some toughness. We became a pretty good football team. We were competitive that first year."

 

"When Chuck took over it was like a breath of fresh air," said third-year defensive end Ben Williams. "We hadn’t been very successful. What Chuck did when he came was he brought the team together and showed us a lot of unity and how to win. Nobody ever taught you how to win early in my career."

 

A Marvelous Hire

 

When a team loses 13 of 15 games dating back to the previous season, a coaching change is not surprising. Dropping seven of their first nine games in 1986, the Bills replaced Hank Bullough with Marv Levy, who was the director of football operations for the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes. Levy arrived in Buffalo to take over the struggling team with an open and curious mind.

 

"I knew the names of the players in the room, but I couldn’t have pointed out Jim Kelly or Bruce Smith or any of those guys," laughed Levy. "I know what I said initially: ‘What it takes to win is simple, but it isn’t easy. Run, throw, block, tackle, catch, and kick better than your opponent. We’re not going to do it with a bunch of Xs and Os. We’re not going to do it with a bunch of talk. We’re going to go to work on fundamentals.’ And I did point out to them, ‘I’m going to ask three questions for you to answer. I know mine. Where are we now? Where do we want to go? How are we going to get there?’"

 

Three of the team leaders who were at the meeting and would have to help Levy and the Bills ‘get there’ were Kelly, Smith and Darryl Talley.

 

"You always hope, you always pray that that’s going to be the case, but you really don’t know," said Kelly. "You just go with what you’ve heard about the man. You just hope that the owner, Ralph Wilson, gets the right players behind you and then it’s up to you to do your job. The coaches can only do so much coaching. When you get on the field, it’s up to the players to make the plays."

 

"We felt that it was the beginning of something special," Smith said. "We knew his personality was contagious and the fact that he had a great deal of integrity. And if any of that rubbed off on us, we felt that we were headed in the right direction."

 

Added Talley. "I didn’t know what really to expect. I just sat there and watched and just sort of looked at what he was doing. I was trying to figure out exactly which way I was going and what we were going to do as a team. How was he going to treat us, and how were we going to react?"

 

Levy would make team history during his first week on the job by becoming the first head coach to win his first game, topping Pittsburgh, 16-12. "I didn’t know that," said Levy, who was Kansas City’s head coach from 1977 to 1982. "I’m surprised because there have been some good ones. Lou Saban and Chuck Knox, to name a couple. I’m pleased to know that we won any games. That it happened to be the first one, great!"

 

Kelly agreed that the timing could not have been better and beating the Steelers – that was a personal bonus. "It might make me a little different than anybody else because I grew up in Pittsburgh, and I wanted to play for the Steelers, and here I am playing against the team that I grew up watching and cheering for. The Terrible Towel, Franco [Harris], [Terry] Bradshaw, [John] Stallworth, [Lynn] Swann, Mean Joe Greene, all those guys! So that was a memory from when I was a little kid, and here I’m playing against that team. It was exciting!

 

"We’d just come off of a heart-wrenching loss against Tampa Bay the week before, and here we’ve got a new coach and a new identity. I was looking forward to it. I was looking forward to the change. So for me, it was just a matter of waiting and seeing what happened. And it turned out being the best thing the Buffalo Bills ever did, hiring a guy like Marv Levy."

[San Jose Bills Fan]

Good stuff, Jim. Thanks for posting. Always good to examine the historical perspective.

 

I'm one of the optimists on the board so I'm glad the Bills hired Chan Gailey, although I was really hopeful for Jim Harbaugh.

 

As Buddy Nix said about hiring an experienced head coach, "I don't want to go through a guy having to learn the NFL. There is a learning curve. And everybody goes through it that hasn't done it. The head coach? There is no school for it."

 

FWIW, here are the records for the most relevant Bills coaches with previous head coaching experience before they coached in Buffalo:

 

Lou Saban 7-12 (2 seasons, 19 games, .368 winning percentage), basically unproven but advanced up the learning curve

Chuck Knox 54-15-1 (5 seasons, 70 games, .771 winning percentage), very proven, sterling track record

Marv Levy 31-42 (5 seasons, 73 games, .425 winning percentage), large body of work, middling results

Wade Phillips 17-19 (3 seasons, 36 games, .472 winning percentage), mixed results for good organization

Dick Jauron 36-49 (5 seasons, .424 winning percentage), largest body of work, mediocre organization, mixed results

Chan Gailey 18-14 (2 seasons, 32 games, .563 winning percentage), unproven, good results in limited body of work

 

In terms of ranking them by their pre-Bills records, I would say that the most attractive candidates at the time of their hire were:

 

Chuck Knox

Chan Gailey

Lou Saban/Wade Phillips tie

Marv Levy, Dick Jauron tie

 

I would add that Gailey's pedigree most closely resembles Saban's or Phillips' in terms of experience and stature as a football man.

[Wing Man]

Saban should be on the Wall of Fame, end of story. That's one injustice that will be resolved after Ralph passes, IMHO. When Knox was here, everyone complained about his run, run, pass, kick offense.

[Jim Gehman]

I appreciate both of your opinions and research.

 

I agree that Lou Saban should be put on the Wall of Fame. It will hopefully occur sooner than later, and with Mr. Wilson standing on the field and congratulating the Saban family during the ceremony.

[Green Lightning]

I appreciate both of your opinions and research.

 

I agree that Lou Saban should be put on the Wall of Fame. It will hopefully occur sooner than later, and with Mr. Wilson standing on the field and congratulating the Saban family during the ceremony.

 

This needs to happen. Saban deserves to be on the wall.