Have the Bills learned their lesson??

[Ed_Formerly_of_Roch]

First off the reason the Dick Jaurons of the world are hired by the Bills is because RW for all his charity giving, never seemed to want to pay much $$ for coaches or at least that was preception. He is now out of the picture as is his money man Littman. Even Tom Donahoe could only spend the money on a coach that those two would allow. All these year the front office folks could only go along with what those two said. Yeah Buddy Nix, and Marv, and Brandon were GM's, but thee were GM's that were given allowances, and from everything stated were not allowed to exceed.

 

As to hiring the Marrones, Mularkeys, and Williams of the world, as was pointed out Carroll, both Harbaough's, Garrett, to name a few were all unknowns until given their first HC position. So the three new guys the Bill's hired had the same chance of success or failure as anyone.

 

There are two groups of established winning coaches out there, those currently working for a team which kind of hard to get one of them unless you want to give up a ton of draft picks or something. Once every ten years or so there may be a good established coach who doesn't want to work anymore for his current team and they mutually agree to part ways, but those are rare. (John Gruden, Jim Harbaugh)

 

So that leaves one other group, established coaches who have "retired" either by their own choice or the teams choice. The trouble with many of those is while they had one or even two good runs, they are usually living off past achievements, and no promise that they can do it again. Their prior success as a HC makes them feel they can now ask for additional power, coach/GM etc and their prowess as a GM never got them where they got to in the first place. (See Bill Parsells.)

 

So unless you get a guy who just got out of football and still has the passion, the chances of these guys doing well is likely about as good of odds as finding the next Bill Cowler with a brand new HC choice. And usually if you get the guy who was just fired, then he's maybe no better than a Marrone, Williams, etc. as he was fired because he didn't win.

[billykaykay]

Don't tell me, let me guess...you want Shanahan

 

I think the TBD'ian who posited Shanahan wants San Francisco and will interview with the Bills to leverage that interest, is probably correct.

 

But to address some of your points:

1) Everybody wants a Superbowl winning HC. None of us are the same people we were 10 years ago. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

So if you're hiring a guy who proved he could do it 10 years ago, are you hiring a Superbowl winning coach of today, or are you hiring a guy who won Superbowls 10 years ago?

2) You do have a point about hiring people who haven't accomplished a damn thing in the NFL. But that point also applies to a lot of today's Superbowl winning HCs. What had Harbaugh accomplished in the NFL before the Ravens? Nothing! He wasn't even an OC or DC - he was a ST and DB coach! What had Carroll accomplished before the Seahawks? Nothing! He was a failure as a HC with the Jets AND The Patriots. What had Belichick accomplished in the NFL prior to NE HC? Some success as the DC for the Superbowl winning Giants, but he was unimpressive as the HC in Cleveland with only one winning season. So if they followed your mantra, none of these organizations would be enjoying the success they currently have.

 

I would like to suggest that knowing history or being doomed to repeat it may not be the straightfoward task you portray.

Agree. I would like to add that almost all of the perceived very good to great coaches had very good to great QB's. Fox & Belicheck are very good coaches but what were their records before Manning & Brady? I'm a little too lazy to look it up, but I bet their records were around 500%. Go Bills.