Which Bills Decision Infuriated You?

[DaBillsFanSince1973]

12 minutes ago, Utah John said:

Here are more:

Firing Bill Polian because he wouldn't be pushed around by Ralph's daughter.

Firing John Butler for no apparent reason.

Bad drafts are too easy a target, but some were so stupid they stand out.  Drafting Al Cowlings in the first round so OJ would have his buddy to hang out with.  Aaron Maybin -- seriously, what were they thinking?  Trading two firsts and a fourth for Sammy Watkins, when we didn't have a QB to throw to him. 

Treating Lou Saban like crap, twice.

There was only one week between the playoffs and the SB against the Giants.  Maybe if there had been two weeks like there had been before, the Bills would have gotten the partying out of their system and buckled down.

 

I stand corrected.

 

and doubtful.

[Utah John]

Letting some new coach (Mularkey, I think) come in and fire Rusty Jones.  The Bills won a lot of games because Jones had them better conditioned than the other teams.

[BADOLBILZ]

15 minutes ago, /dev/null said:

When the Bills cut Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas, and Andre Reed on the same day
Hiring Rex Ryan

 

 

Cutting Ted Washington a year later was the one that mattered.

 

That pulled the drain plug on their mid-nineties minted organizational identity as a dominant 3-4 defense and set the entire drought in motion.

 

At that time he was one of the most impactful players in the NFL..........and he went to the Bears and was first team All Pro and transformed their defense into a unit that allowed the team to somehow earn homefield advantage throughout the playoffs and then went to the Pats and was their best defensive player in the playoffs during that SB run.

[aristocrat]

Constantly drafting rbs in the first. Switching from 4-3 to 3-4 and then back. Hiring Rex. 

[Utah John]

More:  Not paying Antoine Winfield.  Not keeping Pat Williams.  Of course, not paying Jason Peters largely because his agent was such a rotten guy to deal with.  Not keeping Ted Washington. 

[McBean]

I remember when they gave Dick Jauron an extension and refused to fire him. Those were some dark dark days.

 

Hiring Buddy Nix.

 

Hiring Chan Gailey.

 

Hiring Russ Brandon and Marv Levy to GM positions.

 

I mean this organization has done some really stupid **** over the years looking back on it.

[HalftimeAdjustment]

Letting Rex Ryan hire his brother.

[BADOLBILZ]

17 minutes ago, H2o said:

Trading instead of paying Jason Peters

 

 

That's the on-paper doozy because Peters is a lock to be Canton-bound..............but as recently as 5 years ago there would have been a very vocal group here declaring you wrong.........because the Bills "weren't going to pay him and he didn't want to be here".    

 

He's since proven to be not only a great player but an absolutely beloved teammate.

 

I excoriated that deal and the Marshawn Lynch deal the same way I have the Watkins deal............I suspect ALL THREE will look like horrendous deals for the Bills in retrospect.

[JMF2006]

When Marrone walked away and they hired Wrex instead of promoting Schwartz.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

25 minutes ago, klos63 said:

 

Firing Butler

 

Iirc butlers contract expired.

[transient]

23 minutes ago, DaBillsFanSince1973 said:

losing the first superbowl...then the second, third and fourth. have to say it pissed me off and even to this day I'm pissed that marv was inept (poor decision making on his part) to the importance of discipline and did not restrict the players from boozing it up for two weeks leading up to the game(s).

 

I would add with respect to Marv that I was always so frustrated with his philosophy in big games. The Bills were the class of the AFC and won with talent and execution, but when they faced similarly talented teams coached by big game coaches in Parcells, Gibbs, and Johnson they were consistently caught with their pants down and couldn’t “out-execute” them. Also the Walt Corey read and react BS with a loaded defense was a criminal waste of talent. Marv may have been a master motivator and manager of giant egos, but he was plagued by philosophical hubris and I’d argue his coaching skills were widely overblown. You have to wonder if Marchibroda wasn’t on his staff if the offensive talent wouldn’t have been similarly wasted. 

[1st Ammendment NoMas]

1 hour ago, ShadyBillsFan said:

Rex ruining a great defense 

The whole Rex decision had scratch marks on the wall at my house.  And all of you ARE RIGHT!
Every single one of these bonehead call was a major f'kup  Thank you for helping me realized why I am so emotionally damaged as a Bills fan for 40+ years. Some of you old-timers go way back on our ineptitude. It helps me realize my Father's damaged football psyche much better too. 

 

Edited May 13, 2018 by BillsRdue

[BADOLBILZ]

8 minutes ago, Utah John said:

More:  Not paying Antoine Winfield.  Not keeping Pat Williams.  Of course, not paying Jason Peters largely because his agent was such a rotten guy to deal with.  Not keeping Ted Washington. 

 

Russ Brandon has since sung the praises of Eugene Parker...........essentially admitting that he was just entirely out of his depth dealing with a good agent as a GM.     Russ blew that situation up when he initiated negotiations thru the media.    Peters and Parker had a point........the Bills signed him as a RT knowing they intended to let Jonas Jennings go and move Peters to LT.    That was a dishonest move.    That's fine with JAG's but you don't pull that with your superstar players.    Parker dying was a break for the Bills because he found the locker room beneath the Bills unprofessional and antiquated front office to be fertile recruiting ground.       

[frostbitmic]

1. The hiring of Tom Donahoe - I knew coming in that he was nothing but a cap cutter and that's what he was. Bad decisions on coaching hires, draft picks and players he let go, he was awful as I knew he would be. We the fans also embarrassed him and he told us so.

2. The hiring of Rex Ryan - I remember laughing at him when he was HC of the Jets, I didn't want him here and when he left the team was worse than when he was hired.

3. Letting Russ Brandon do anything other than sell tickets. He had no place in being the GM, even though he was thrown into that roll. He was terrible at everything else.

4. Letting Pat Williams leave in free agency without as much as making him an offer or even calling him. Pat wanted to stay in Buffalo. Thanks Donahoe.

5. Trading Sammy Watkins - I'm probably wrong on that one but time will tell.

[The Now Moment]

40 minutes ago, BADOLBILZ said:

 

Watkins trade was the most recent of many.

 

Just an awful decision and a garbage return...........he and Tyrod were clicking.

 

With the possible exception of OBJ,  Watkins is the best deep ball tracking WR in the NFL.....he catches them with the same ease as a short throw......no slowing down or leaving his feet to simply catch the ball.     Basically the ideal WR to matchup with young QB's Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen.    IDEAL.

 

Got extremely lucky in 2017 and broke the drought without him but it was one of the least watchable seasons of that time period......mostly due to the worst WR corps in team history.    It was ghastly and looks no better on paper right now despite trading similar draft capital to acquire Kelvin Benjamin........whose November arrival proved too little/too late for helping the pass game.

 

People who say "they weren't going to re-sign Watkins" are likely wrong........they likely would have.......and had the franchise tag at their disposal.     He liked Buffalo he had just gotten soured a bit by the environment and they should have let Bolden work with him for more than 2 days before trading him.

 

The incoming WR talent has dried up since the 2014 draft and the Bills are feeling that crunch.  

 

The upside is,  as Belichick would say,  you almost have to be constantly making mistakes in the NFL to remain uncompetitive.

 

Even 50% bad decisions shouldn't keep you from still being in contention for a wildcard in December.    

Least watchable?  Some fans don't just watch the games to see their team score.  I loved watching our defense last season.  I thought last year was easily the most exciting year over the last ten. You must like watching only offense if you thought last year wasn't watchable.  Do you only like watching teams that throw for 300 yards a game?  Serious question.  

Edited May 13, 2018 by Buffalo30

[CommonCents]

Drafting EJ

[Domdab99]

There have been a lot that confused me - Chan Gaily, Dick Jauron, etc. But only one infuriated me: Rex Ryan punting against MIami with the season on the line. 

[stuvian]

I didn't become a Bills fan until adulthood (cue your maturity insults here) and I didn't really pay attention to the teams inner workings until I became a season ticket holder (2003). 

 

The hiring of Chan Gailey begat a mild depression. There were so many other better candidates out there. It looked like Chan was hired for the sole reason that he didn't present a threat to the status quo at OBD. 

 

The hiring of beloved Marv Levy as GM was an Al Davis move - an admission that the game had passed Ralph by and that only a name from the glory years could bring us back.

 

Jauron's firing of his OC one week before the start of one of his seasons only amplified the clown show state of affairs at the time.

 

Allowing Jauron to over ride our scouting department and select Maybin over other more worthy players was another sign of deep organizational incompetence and disunity.

 

The selection of CJ Spiller wasn't as bad as Maybin but was the equivalent of taking a long snapper at #1.

 

The continual trotting out of Fitzpatrick as an NFL starting QB was profoundly insulting to any fan not incapacitated by alcohol. 

 

The mishandling of Jason Peters and Marshawn Lynch reinforced our image as the farm team for big market teams. Especially that we got a bag of Doritos in exchange for each. 

 

The signing of Mario Williams was exciting but only served to reinforce our having given up any hope of building  a legitimate football culture and instead become a country club for the overpaid and undermotivated. If we can't build a team, let's buy one!

 

Signing TO was the triumph of marketing over roster management. Rex Ryan's hire was more proof that our front office was a group of naifs capable of being had by a huckster after one more big payday.

[JohnC]

1 hour ago, Kirby Jackson said:

 

These are both good ones because they didn’t make sense at the time. These weren’t bad decisions in hindsight; they were bad decisions immediately. 

 

I’ll throw another one out there, not paying Jason Peters. He was a young star at a premium position. That’s the exact kind of guy that you throw money at. It was a stupid decision to play hardball with him.

What made the Jason Peters scenario even more of a fiasco is that the Bills brought in Derrick Dockery and Langston Walker to shore up the OL at hefty prices when both players were slow and sluggish players. What made the situation even more stupid is that they then forced Langston Walker, an adequate RT, to move to the left side where he admitted was unfit to play. Of course that didn't work out.  I believe that this was during the peculiar Levy era. 

 

Let me add to the list of notorious weird decisions is the drafting of Torrell Troup with a high pick. He was an undersized nose tackle who had a history of back problems in college. In the pros he was an undersized nose tackle with a history of back problems. He failed because he was an undersized nose tackle with back problems. Shocking!!!!

[BarleyNY]

Hiring Rex and watching him dump Schwartz. I tried to give him the benefit of doubt that he’d be smart and flexible enough to continue to run an attacking, one-gap 4-3 with Cover 2 but as soon as he said he was installing his read-and-react, 2-gap 3-4 with Cover 0, well, I knew we were screwed.  The defense went from top 5 to garbage and we got to watch him change out half the personnel that would again have to be swapped out since that style of defense doesn’t work anymore.  Super.  An underrated sign of quality ownership is that they really need to choose a style of play for their offense and defense and hire only coaches who are consistent with that.  Changes can happen, but not unnecessarily. 

 

Watkins over Mack is runner up.