By: Noah Gould
The 2015 calendar year started with a huge shock for Buffalo sports. Doug Marrone, the Bills head coach, resigned. Head coach resignations in the NFL are almost unheard of except for retirements. The Marrone resignation was a huge shock to the Bills and combined with the retirement of prospective returning starting QB Kyle Orton it left the top Bills brass with huge decisions on their hands. Those decisions have evidently been mishandled. The team is now in another unnecessary cycle of management unrest and turnover as a result of the strange Doug Marrone resignation.
Doug Marrone should have been fired after the 2015 season anyway. It’s debatable whether he should have ever been hired. He had previously been employed as the head coach of a Syracuse team that was nowhere near the national radar and never had a big win or played a big game. The issue is more that it is rare for an NFL team to make such a completely off the radar hire, and it is rare for an NFL hiree to have been unknown at his previous stop.
It is important to note that Terry Pegula was not associated with the Bills when this hiring happen, but Rus Brandon and Doug Whaley (who also screwed up much more than just this coaching search) are still in their current jobs. The fact that he was such a weak candidate only makes it odder that he would leave to become the Jaguars assistant head coach for at least the next two years.
Marrone was an offensive coach, and one of the standing testaments to how bad he was is that the only part of his teams that were remotely good were the defenses. Those defenses weren’t just good. They were top of the league, but the Bills didn’t seem that interested in keeping everything the same when they made their choice to hire Rex Ryan. Rex did some great things in New York. It was his first job as a head coach and he managed to take a team with terrible QB play and locker room issues to back to back AFC Championship games. It does have to be pointed out that his last few years with the Jets were bad, but so were his players and he was still able to be at least competitive.
When Rex was hired the logic behind it seemed clear. He was a guy with a lot of proven success. The Bills might have gotten the best coach on the market. The fact that Rex would fire defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz and replace him was also immediately obvious. That meant the defensive would most likely take at least a small step back, but the team must have known that. The front offense must have discussed that during the interview process. The logic of hiring Rex seemed sound. The Bills were hiring the guy who might have been the best. Sure he was going to make changes because he was the best. He was the guy that could be the Bills head coach for a long time and finally get them where they wanted to go, so who cared if they took a one or two year step back.
The Bills could have gone a different direction. They could have retained Jim Schwartz to keep his outstanding defense, and they could have hired an offensive minded coach. Terryl Austin, Lions offensive coordinator, and Adam Gase, Broncos offensive coordinator, were both available and widely regarded as good candidates. Neither ended up getting hired. The Bills could have had either one. In theory a hire of either of those two would have been the best move if the Bills top priority was getting into the playoffs ASAP, but the Bills instead seemed to have played for the long term. That was smart. While a playoff appearance would have been great for Buffalo its not like the Bills were close to Super Bowl level.
Now up to this point it seems like the plan makes since, but almost immediately after the season Terry Pegula announced that Rex Ryan would be fired after his second season if the team didn’t reach the playoffs. To be fair to Pegula, he is the one that interacts with Rex everyday and knows exactly what his practices are, and he wanted to keep Marrone. He didn’t ask to be searching for the 2015 coach. But right now his logic behind hiring Ryan makes no sense. His treatment of this has been completely odd. The only real explanation is that Pegula is sending the team down a path of head coach turmoil. He will keep changing the coaching staff and therefore the team until he gets success. This kind of frequent turnover is exactly what former executives say is the reason why bad teams are bad. Bills fans can only hope that Pegula changes his plans.
