Bills' "Rebuilding" Strategy

August 29th, 2007

Based on a string of e-mail correspondence with Gerard: 
 
Weiler: My biggest beef with this FO that few if anyone else have picked up on is that last year we embarked upon one rebuilding strategy while this year we ditched that one and went with another altogether that if we were going to engage in the first place it would have made a hell of a lot more sense to start w/ it last year.

One more nail in Levy's coffin in my book.

Q: Explain what you mean about the rebuilding strategy.

Sure. I've done this in print on numerous occasions. Last year the ILDD charged in here and insisted that "the future is now" as if merely by the merits if his being "Marv Levy," HoF head coach, that the team would automatically turn itself around. Just as fully predicted right here, it turned out to be all sizzle and no steak. After Levy's failed power grab for GM/HC, the entire ball of wax, he hired Jauron.

The two insisted that they were not rebuilding. Probably to keep fans interest. Fine. Not what I would have done, but fine nonetheless. They franchised Clements and promised to not do it again with the assumption that they could resign him otherwise. They pretty much kept everyone else relevant.

In essence, they were trying to keep some of the "old" momentum. This year they traded Spikes, let Fletcher and Clements walk, and traded McGahee and pretty much therefore had to announce a complete rebuild. They essentially got nothing but a day-2 pick for Spikes who will prove to be much better than that this year adding yet another nail into the coffin of this crew.

But if they were going to rebuild, then why utterly waste one season proving what exactly? That they can PO a handful of players and that those players were so eager to leave Buffalo and the Bills that it hurt whatever little was left of any appeal for players to come here to the extent that we now must overpay players significantly just to attract them? To reveal to the league how much players actually wanted to leave Buffalo and the Bills?

If we were going to rebuild, they should have let Clements walk last year and get some experience for someone on the team at CB. But these guys thought so much of themselves that they truly "BILL-ieved" many of their own press clippings that they might be competitive enough to sneak into the playoffs. So what does that signify? It signifies that they truly had no idea what this team was in terms of talent or potential. Sure, we went 7-9, but just as I've laid out even since during last season, it was a house of cards built on luck, individual big plays, amongst the worst, literally the worst fundamental level of football in the entire league otherwise. I stated the same exact thing about the '04 season when we went 9-7 at the hands of the weak and feeble on the schedule and while I was doing that, Wilson was busy extending Donadope behind closed doors and away from the public eye. Of those actually paying any attention, only a fool or someone tremendously naive would expect more this year based on that. Yet there are, or at least were, plenty of them. There still are, particularly the ship of fools in the national media that haven't a clue either.

One case in point is that one of the rallying cries for this season is that "the Bills lost five games by three points or less," last season. Yeah, we also got utterly schooled in the fundamentals in each and every one of those games getting hammered in time-of-possession, plays run, plays allowed, rushing yards in particular based both on gained and allowed. In essence, that's as far as that goes. Forget the fact that two of those teams were Detroit and Tennessee. That has been laid out fully in this piece; http://www.afceastreport.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=254

Meanwhile, going completely unnoticed is that we also won three games by 3, 3, and 5 points, against two poor (Houston, Minnesota) and one very average (Jax) teams, and struggled to do so.

In essence, it's an extremely reasonable assumption that for every "game that we may win this year that would qualify as a 'close loss' last season, that we lose one of the ones that we won due to poor fundamental play as was the rule with this team last year and appearing as if that has only gotten worse, not better. As expressed here over and over again, it was half a miracle that we won 7 games playing as fundamentally unsound football as we did. Had Lee Evans not been on the team we would likely have one only a game or two, perhaps three.

Regardless, I digress somewhat here. Getting back on track, if these guys knew they were going to rebuild, then we should have done several things last season. Spikes' value would have been somewhat higher last season prior to a season of well below average performance. A, we would have gotten more in a trade for him. But as we all know, that doesn't fit with the "pay more for lesser talent" and "buy high, sell low" mentality prevalent at One Bills Drive. B, as already stated, we should have allowed Clements to leave giving some of our youth some experience at the position. What did retaining him for a single season do for this team moving "ahead?" Nothing, absolutely nothing but generate perception problems. That also led to the prior dissertation suggesting that the Ivy League Dynamic Duo clearly thought that they had talent much better than they were. That's one knock on them.

C, they would have quit with the nonsense of "trying to make the playoffs" and begin building this team for this season instead of trying to keep up an indefensible facade and fools game. That didn't happen because of their sheer and utter inability to properly, accurately, and responsibly assess exactly what talent this team had and where it was relative to the rest of the league, coupled with such high unsubstantiated opinions of their own capabilities. If I could/can do that just via normal channels, then certainly with all of the film and other information at their disposal that I don't have access to, they should have easily been able to do the same. Yet they failed, miserably. Sadly, it appears that this season is poised merely to pour salt into the open wound and to push things from the frying pan into the fire. What kind of support will these clowns have next season? What are they going to do for an encore after pushing the team backwards fundamentally this season? Perhaps that goal is the NFL's first winless season.

So now here we are, after a season of openly telling us that we weren't rebuilding, now they tell us that we are in fact rebuilding and call for patience due to youth and inexperience. I will throw in a lack of talent, which, AHEM, is entirely their own fault. I won't rehash the details of which I've gone over a good dozen times and which you are fully familiar with. So who then takes these guys seriously? Fools?

Anyway, through all of this the team has actually gotten worse from last year to this one and according to many is the worst team in the league or at least in the running for it. I will tell you that Detroit is the only other team that will fight us for that distinction this season and even their fundamentals were not as poor as ours on average last season.

Either way, no matter where a new staff comes in, they are typically allowed a year of regression after which steady improvement, minimally, is expected. Year 2 is a year for new regimes for which some results of their methodologies should already begin taking at least some root. For poorer teams upon their entry, playoffs are not expected, but clear indicators that the team has "stopped the bleeding" are fully required. Yet, this team appears only to be prepared to reveal that they've regressed in those most important ways. In year three playoffs are expected, or at least a serious bid for them. Does anyone believe that this team under this leadership has a shot even next season? Again, only the naive and fools. Yet many want to extend the benefit-of-the-doubt. For how long? 5, 10 years? What?

In year two here, with us, the Bills, it looks more as if a hurricane came through and uprooted what little we did have growing. Every decent thing about this team now was already in place prior to the Ivy League Dynamic Duo's arrival. Lee Evans was here, Aaron Schobel was here, Jason Peters was here, and our special teams were a top-ranked unit already. In fact, I hope that they just leave the special teams alone given their "everything they touch turns to dung" specialty. In short, this crew, the Ivy League Dynamic Duo has only taken, and given absolutely nothing to the advancement of this team. This year all they did was squander a draft by grabbing a slate full of backups besides Lynch and Poz, when starters were needed in numerous positions. Competence? Hardly!

No matter how you slice it, what we have here now is the following, factually:

An 82-year old GM.

A coach with absolutely no established record of winning or even being able to produce a fundamentally sound football team and one with a proven track record of attempting to build teams from the outside in and not from the inside out as anyone that knows anything about football fully understands is the way to do it. So why not them? See, they think that they're brighter than everyone else which is precisely why they "see something in Langston Walker" that others don't see, for good reason since it's not there, while the rest of the league and fans just laugh at them. They're too smart by half and know more than anyone that has ever known about football, including all those that have won Super Bowls.

So soon, already a history of overpaying players that most analysts and other NFL people know were not worth that money. (Most notably Kelsay, L. Walker, Robert Royal, Peerless Price, Dockery to a lesser extent, and now even arguably Schobel indirectly due to their paying a far lesser player much more, Kelsay,
A continued track record of not only not having improved in the fundamentals (rushing, ability to stop the run, time-of-possession, tackling, penalties, ball/clock control, etc.), but a regression in those areas as well due to failed personnel moves.

A team that has as its only proven offensive weapon and reliable scoring threat, a deep pass to Lee Evans, down the left sideline.

Reasonable assumptions:

Levy is simply too old and mentally incapable of being a GM, not to mention that his lack of experience in clearly and utterly a major factor in what is now going on, and was clearly installed by Wilson, who will turn 90 midway through next season, in a move to buy the good graces and faith of Bills fans faithful. That rang up as a "No Sale" here.

Jauron is and always will be a losing coach.

This team, generally speaking at all levels, simply has no clue what it is doing. You cannot entirely reverse your methodology after a season of a completely failed attempt and expect to retain much credibility going forward. Sorry, but you just can't. It's just like the kid in the group bragging that he can "do it on the first try" whatever it is. He tries and fails, and says "wait, let me try again" and does it a different way. Then he continues to repeat that procedure. Well, that's now what we have in Buffalo. What's next for the '08 offseason? We gonna cut Tripplett and McCargo and start talking about going to the 3-4? This isn't a "hey, sooner or later we'll get it right exercise. We merely need the fans' patience until after the team plays in Toronto."

While Wilson may not care about what slop hits the field in the Stadium bearing his name, most of us do. Since we're the ones paying for it, or at least used to pay for it in speaking for myself. The reality of this all is what most knew going in; that Levy doesn't know what on earth he's doing, that the same personnel office that was in place throughout the Donadope era and installed by him, is still acquiring our "talent," that Jauron is what he is, a loser as a coach, and most sadly, that Ralph Wilson does not give a hoot whether his team wins games and is competitive in this league or not while he wiles away his remaining years as the owner of this team with the rest of the league's owners eager to move the team out of Buffalo. In fact, it leaves one seriously questioning whether he ever cared about winning given that he personally fired the architect of the only NFL Bills team that had any record of consistently winning and one of the most successful GMs in the history of the NFL. Meanwhile, Levy's "coaching ability" seemed to lag Polian's departure by exactly the one season that it began taking root. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Lastly, what we have in place at One Bills Drive, is an entire organization so utterly clueless in terms of understanding what builds NFL franchises into proven winners and an organization that refuses to be educated on that as if education should even be required at that level. That would be fine if these guys did this part-time as their second jobs and for fun, but they get paid millions each or at least hundreds of thousands. Yet, the halls of One Bills Drive reek of incompetence, ignorance, and apathy.

This is a very, very, very sad end of the end for this franchise which will leave Buffalo one season after Wilson dies and the team is sold. Until then, if this is the product, then my attentions will turn to college ball and pro football more informally.

Mweiler@afceastreport.com