Sure he is... assuming the question was "How can the Buffalo Bills disappoint their fans this time?" Just about every Bills fan I've had any contact with since yesterday when the rumors heated up that Gailey was going to be hired has had a similar response, and joy wasn't any part of it. Well today it's going to be made official and even those clinging on to some desperate hope that the Bills still had an ace of sorts up their sleeve can no longer pretend. For argument's sake, I'll try and present both sides of the case when it comes to making Gailey the next head coach in Buffalo, but from my point of view, the facts come down pretty heavily on one side of the coin.

Perhaps the biggest feather in the cap of Chan Gailey is the simple fact that he has some head coaching experience. Granted, most of it is at the college level where he spent 6 years at the helm of Georgia Tech. During his tenure with the Yellow Jackets, Gailey amassed a record of 44-32 and never had a losing season. Despite those numbers, he was let go and had his contract bought out in 2007, due in part to 6 straight losses against main rival Georgia, and perhaps for a subpar record in bowl games. Before that time, Chan spent 2 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys, going 18-14 and making the playoffs in both years. Both seasons ended with first round losses however, and owner Jerry Jones had seen enough. Jones now claims it was a mistake to let Gailey go for what it's worth. Gailey has had stints as offensive coordinator in Denver, Pittsburgh, Miami, and most recently Kansas City, but has never spent more than 2 seasons in that position with any team. Reports also claim that Bill Cowher had tapped Gailey as his offensive coordinator, if he were to return to the sidelines. When meeting with the Bills, Cowher seems to have given Gailey his recommendation.

Apparently, since the Bills couldn't convince Cowher to come back and take the job, they figured they might as well get the guy he spoke highly of. Honestly, I see little other reason the Bills would make this hire. In Gailey's most recent job with the Chiefs, he failed to make any impact with the offense, which to be fair, was about the worst in the league when he took them over. He was one of the 3 OC's relieved of their duty in the preseason this past year. It concerns me a great deal that the guy wasn't good enough to be the OC for Kansas City, yet the Bills think he has the ability to turn around a franchise mired in a decade of futility. According to Adam Schefter's story on the hiring, the Bills are supposedly impressed with Gailey's ability to take franchises to the playoffs, despite having a subpar quarterback, citing seasons with Mike Tomczak, Kordell Stewart, and Jay Fiedler. I'm not sure whether to cry or laugh hysterically at that last sentence. Instead of fixing the problem of not having had any stability or outstanding skill at the quarterback position since Jim Kelly left, the Bills choose to hire a guy who has had some luck getting teams to the playoffs with bad QBs!

If the Bills were hiring Gailey as on offensive coordinator, I'd probably be alright with it. He does have a decent enough track record in that position (although the 2 year stints everywhere he's gone concern me) to warrant giving him a chance. Especially when you consider how truly awful the offense has been in Buffalo the past few seasons. It's very clear that somebody with a mind for that side of the ball is a necessity. However, this guy has never impressed as a head coach. When this entire process started for the Bills, I was in the group that desired a proven head coach over any other candidates, with the key word being proven. Gailey has a little experience, but I find him far from proven at the NFL level. Now, I understand that the Bills were being backed into a corner after numerous potential candidates declined the offer to even interview for the job, but that doesn't change the fact that it was still the only current vacancy in the league. Buffalo seemingly had all the leverage in this situation, yet still seem to have found a way to mess things up. Once Shanahan, Cowher, and any other proven NFL winning head coaches were clearly out of the realm of possibility, the next logical step would be to go after a coordinator who had proven themselves at that level, but hadn't yet had the chance to take over the big job. Once again, Gailey doesn't fit that bill.

Leslie Frazier seemed the front runner of those candidates, having interviewed with the Bills and by all accounts being impressive. On top of that, his Viking defense has been outstanding all year and just finished dominating a red hot Dallas Cowboys squad in the playoffs last weekend. No, Frazier isn't one of these 30 something hot shots who could revolutionize the game like Sean Payton or Josh McDaniels, but that would never fit the Bills mold anyways. Sure, Frazier wasn't the ideal candidate to most Bills fans, myself included, but out of those still left standing, he seemed like the best choice. A proven commodity at his current job, looking to get a chance to do more. Instead, we're getting Chan Gailey, a man with moderate success as a coordinator, and a proven "middle of the road" head coach, who has struggled with everything he has done lately. Yup, that sounds like a Buffalo Bills move.

Before I continue to just run this hiring into the ground, let me say that Chan Gailey might not be awful. I don't want to completely write him off before he has even had a chance in Buffalo, because that's not exactly fair. The problem is that his hiring is a complete symbol of what is so wrong with the organization as a whole at this point. 10 years with no playoffs and just one winning season in that time. 5 different head coaches in that time frame and no quarterback that has been able to stick for more than 3 years since Jim Kelly. The problems run very deep and everybody knows it. Hell, even owner Ralph Wilson appears to know it since he recently stated that some serious efforts had to be made in order to turn things around. Folks, Chan Gailey is not a serious effort. He's another guy in the Dick Jauron mold who comes in with mild previous success, and more recent failure. A guy that is just looking for his last chance to make it as a head coach in the NFL. A guy that more than likely isn't going to rock the boat in Buffalo and is just another warm (hell, next to Jauron he probably seems quite lively even) body to fill the job for a few more years. The best I see out of Gailey is some flirtations with .500 for a year or two, but no ability to take us any further because he doesn't have the talent on the team to make it happen. In other words, even more of the same.

Is Chan Gailey the answer? I highly doubt it, but then again, I'm not sure there is an answer right now. So many things have to change for the Buffalo Bills to even be taken seriously by the rest of the league at this point that the list is growing about a mile long. Splashes need to be made, and I don't mean signing one big name free agent with a risk factor in order to sell more tickets like this past season. This team needs a real head coach that knows how to win, a quarterback who isn't frightened by his own shadow and knows how to lead, and perhaps... an owner that actually gives a damn.

The recent decision by Jets Offensive Coordinator Brian Schottenheimer to reject a job interview with the Buffalo Bills has a large majority of the Buffalo fan base up in arms. As in, who does this guy think he is? What's wrong with the Bills coaching position? What does this say about our organization? But I'm here to assure the loyal Buffalo fans, this is actually a good thing. You wouldn't be happy with this guy as a coach. Seriously, he did us a favor. Don't believe me? Fine, let me explain.

Schottenheimer served as the Quarterbacks Coach in Washington and San Diego from 2001-2005 working underneath his Dad Marty, who was the Head Coach of those teams at the time. While my main intention was to research these seasons to see how well Schottenheimer did, it would be far too hard to judge the effects that the QB Coach had on those teams. For the sake of argument, during that time, those teams made a grand total of one playoff appearance (2004 Chargers). That same season featured a Pro Bowl season from Drew Brees, while under the tutelage of Schottenheimer. While this might not seem especially impressive, it was good enough to land him his current position, Offensive Coordinator of the Jets.

This season marked Schottenheimer's fourth with the Jets. His first season in New York started out well enough, as the Jets finished 10-6 and qualified for the playoffs. However, it didn't last long as they were ousted by the Patriots in the first round. The Jets offense finished 25^th in the NFL that season, averaging 19.8 points per game. Chad Pennington was the QB that year and finished with mediocre numbers, 17 touchdowns and 16 interceptions. The Jets leading rusher was Leon Washington, who had a pedestrian 650 yards on the ground. On the surface, nothing to write home about.

The following season was a disaster for the Jets, as they finished 4-12 and were even swept by the Bills. Ouch. As you can probably guess by now, the Jets offense was about as good as their record. In fact, they finished 26^th in the league as Pennington and Kellen Clemens split the QB position. Combined, the two players threw for 15 touchdowns and 19 interceptions. The scoring for the Jets decreased as well, only averaging 16.8 points per game. The lone highlight for the Jets that season was running back Thomas Jones, who finished with 1119 yards, but only one touchdown.

The 2008 season was a marked improvement for both the Jets and their offense, as they finished 9-7 but well short of the playoffs again. At one point in late November that season, the Jets were 8-3 and in clear control of their playoff destiny. Of course, I'm not going to hang that on Schottenheimer. He was merely a victim of Brett Favre being Brett Favre. Oh that's right, didn't I mention that? Favre was on the Jets that season. Replacing Pennington and Clemens with a first ballot Hall of Famer had to improve the offense, and it clearly did, as they finished 16^th in the NFL. The Jets had their best season in terms of scoring, averaging a solid 25.3 points per game. Of course it helps the average when the NFC West allows a combined 103 points in two games.

Heading into the 2009 season, the Jets had just fired Eric Mangini and were searching for their next Head Coach. Having served as Offensive Coordinator for the previous three seasons, Schottenheimer got his chance to interview. However, in the long run the Jets decided to go with Rex Ryan and retain Schottenheimer as his usual position. Why is this relevant? Because Schottenheimer was interviewed by the team that currently employs him and the Jets felt at that point that he wasn't good enough. That fills me with confidence.

The Jets finished this season with the same 9-7 record that they had in 2008; however this time it was because they finished the season with two consecutive wins, rather than two consecutive losses. The offense as a whole dipped a little bit this year compared to last, but that is bound to happen when replacing someone like Brett Favre with an untested rookie like Mark Sanchez. The Jets offense finished the regular season 20^th overall in the NFL. To be fair, they did have the number one rushing offense, but the passing offense ranked 31^st, which was enough to drag down the overall rankings and put them on par with the previous three seasons. If there is one thing that stands out in Schottenheimer's tenure in New York, it's consistency.

Maybe that is why fans in Buffalo were so enamored with Schottenheimer. You say consistency and the Buffalo Bills come right to mind. Three straight 7-9 seasons followed by 6-10 will do that for you.

Since the only memory people have is the most recent memory, I feel inclined to bring up a very key point. Yes, the Jets offense was effective last week in defeating Cincinnati. Before that, not so much. I'm going to completely discount Week 16 and 17 since both the Colts and Bengals rolled over and played dead with the Jets and examine the first 15 weeks of the season.

One game that sticks out in my mind is Week Six, when the Jets hosted Buffalo in New Jersey. The Bills eventually won that game 16-13 in overtime, but that wasn't the real story. The real story was how the Jets racked up 318 rushing yards and still lost the game. How is that even possible? Well, you can thank Mark Sanchez and his five interceptions for the rare Buffalo victory. While I'm sure people will argue that Schottenheimer wasn't on the field and can't control Sanchez's erratic arm, he can control the play calling. In fact, last time I checked, that is the job of the offensive coordinator. Simply put, there is no excuse for losing a game in which your team runs for 300+ yards. Sanchez attempted 29 passes that game, connecting on just 10 of them to Jets players. Don't you think at some point Schottenheimer would've realized this and just pounded the ball on the ground to seal the victory? To me, this is awful coaching. Just plain awful.

Of course, if I'm willing to just ignore the one good playoff game and focus on the one bad game, I should be fair and look at the entire body of work. So without further ado, here are the other games in which the Jets offense accumulated 99 or more yards rushing and still lost the game by allowing Sanchez to throw the ball 20 or more times. Week Four at New Orleans. Week Five at Miami. Week Six vs. Buffalo. Week Eight vs. Miami. Week 10 vs. Jacksonville. Week 11 at New England. Week 15 vs. Atlanta.

In case you're wondering, that is all seven losses this season. The Jets had the number one overall defense and the number one overall rushing offense in the entire NFL, and still lost seven games because in all seven, they allowed their rookie QB to throw the ball 20 or more times instead of just pounding the run and controlling the clock. Amazing!

And before everyone chirps up about how the Jets might have been down a lot of points and were forced into throwing the ball, they weren't. The Jets were down 3-0 to New Orleans in the second quarter with the ball at the Saints 15 yard line. Sanchez promptly threw an interception that was returned 99 yards for the touchdown and a 10-0 Saints lead. Still, only down 10, Sanchez then dropped back to pass later that quarter and was sacked, which was resulted in a fumble and another Saints defensive touchdown. If you're scoring at home, the Jets were actually down 17-10 to the Saints late in the fourth quarter and had held the highest scoring offense in the NFL to three total points at that point in the game. Had they just run the ball when they were down 3-0 in the first quarter, this game probably goes a little differently.

Besides New Orleans, the only other loss all season that was by double digits was a 31-14 defeat at the hands of the Patriots. In this game, I suppose you could argue that the Jets were down so much early that they were forced to abandon their game plan and throw the ball often. Of course, if Sanchez didn't hand New England an early 7-0 lead via an interception return, the whole flow of the game could've gone differently. Still, once down 24-0 in the first half, the running game goes right out the window. I understand that one.

So that brings us to the playoffs. The Jets offense was very efficient and the Jets disposed of the Bengals to advance to the second round. New York ran for 171 yards and only allowed Sanchez to throw the ball 15 times total. Funny how that worked out. In fact, upon some further digging around, in five of their nine regular season wins, the Jets attempted 19 or less passes total.

In the second round against San Diego, it was more of the same. The Jets ran the ball for a team total of 169 yards and relied on their strong defense to keep them in the game late. Sanchez only threw the ball 23 times total on Sunday.

Do you see a trend here? When the Jets offense runs the ball, controls the clock, and wears down the opposing defense, they usually win the game. When they get pass happy and starting chucking the ball down the field, they usually wind up losing the game. Reminds me of myself when I'm playing Xbox. Yet somehow it took almost the entire season for Schottenheimer to come to this realization and adjust their play calling accordingly. Hell, I don't even know if he fully realized it yet. I guess we'll see this weekend in Indianapolis.

So before everybody mourns the fact that Schottenheimer passed up the opportunity to interview with the Bills, maybe we should take a step back and be thankful. Not only will he not bring his erratic play calling to Orchard Park, but he is staying in the AFC East, where his offense is bound to give the Bills another one of their few wins.









   

I must say, I was quite surprised to pull up the "worldwide leader's" website this evening and see that Jon Gruden had gotten in the axe in Tampa Bay today. One more victim in what seems like an ever growing trend, not only in the NFL, but in pro sports in general.

Here's the list of coaches that have been canned so far since the start of the season:
Lane Kiffin - Oakland
Scott Linehan - St. Louis
Mike Nolan - San Francisco
Romeo Crennel - Cleveland
Rod Marinelli - Detroit
Eric Mangini - N.Y. Jets
Mike Shanahan - Denver
Jon Gruden - Tampa Bay

Obviously some of these aren't so surprising, teams like Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Oakland, and even San Francisco have performed quite poorly. New York is New York and Mangini was bound to have a short leash too, so you can maybe even lump that one is as well. Then you get to names like Shanahan and Gruden. How many people would have expected these guys to go, especially with respective records of 8-8 and 9-7 respectively? Yes, both teams missed the playoffs, but narrowly.

Shanahan was 146-95 in his career, including 8-5 in the postseason with 2 Super Bowl wins. Subtract out his early struggle in LA with the Raiders and you can bump him up to 138-86 with Denver, which is good for a .616 winning percentage. That ranks pretty high up there amongst the best in NFL history. However, 3 straight years of missing the playoffs seems to be more than the power that be in Denver can handle.

As for Gruden, his numbers are a little less outstanding at 95-81 between Oakland and Tampa, but he too has a Super Bowl ring on his hand. The last 6 years have only brought two playoff appearances however, and both were losses in the Wildcard Game. While there were at least mild rumblings out of Denver about Shanahan's job security, Gruden's firing today seems to come as a total surprise to most.

Personally, I fail to understand the logic of some of the coaching firings in the past few years in sports in general. Shanahan and Gruden both fall into this category for me. It would seem to me that you better have a replacement that you think can fair better if you're going to get rid of somebody, and at this stage in the game with more than half of the vacancies out there already filled, that seems fairly unlikely. It's a risky proposition at best replacing a known commodity like Mike Shanahan with a guy who has 3 years as an offensive coordinator under his belt. Sure, Josh McDaniels ran a prolific offense in New England during his stay there, but he also inherited quite a bit of talent while doing so. As for Tampa, the pickings are even slimmer, with only a few choice candidates remaining out there.

Perhaps the success of rookie head coaches Mike Smith in Atlanta, John Harbaugh in Baltimore, and Tony Sparano in Miami have embolden teams to go out and take a risk on a fresh face without the experience as a head coach. No doubt, those guys did remarkable jobs this past season, but this year seems exceptional in that fact. Looking back at the past seasons and many of the first time head coaches are the same ones now seeking employment. It is indeed a crapshoot at best, but in this "what have you done for me lately" environment, teams seem willing to gamble.

Only time will tell if these decisions pay off of course, but don't be the least bit surprised to see Shanahan and Gruden land elsewhere and likely be fairly successful within a year or two if given the chance. There is no denying that the trend is growing however with only 2 NFL coaches having lasted 10 years with the same team in Jeff Fisher (1994) and Andy Reid (1999), and only 4 others (Bill Belichick - NE, John Fox - Carolina, Marvin Lewis - Cinncy, and Jack Del Rio - Jacksonville) with at least 5 years in the same location. You can't help but wonder who might be next.