Whenever it comes to blogging, I always want to be able to give the reader options when it comes to the Bills/Sabres. I usually will give my opinion and then in the same breath give you different scenarios on the sports scene. Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d rather the Bills look for an offensive coordinator as the head coach.
But fans should realize that it shouldn’t be just a black or white when it comes to what you will get with head coaches with an offensive or defensive mind. Mike Tomlin was a defensive coordinator in Minnesota, yet his offenses in Pittsburgh were better than any of Bill Cowher’s offenses. Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick were defensive minds, but have had some pretty decent offenses as head coaches. Brian Billick was a offensive genius with the Vikings, yet his defenses were the ones that stole the show in Baltimore. I could go on.
The Bills biggest criteria for finding their next head coach should be A) Be good teachers. B) Bring in good assistants. C) Don’t put up with Ralph Wilson’s nickel and dime treatment of the team.
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One has to wonder how much will money come into the Bills search for their next head coach. I know some (Yours truly) felt that the Bills may have done the courting of Cowher and Shanahan just to say they at least went for it. It still befuddles me that they haven’t contacted other Super Bowl winning coaches (Brian Billick).
It’s not going to come cheap for the Bills to promote a promising coordinator to a head coaching job. Jason Garrett for instance makes 2.5 million dollars as an assistant for the Cowboys. That’s almost what Dick Jauron made on his second contract with the Bills. So I’m sure he’s going to want a little bit of a raise. Don’t forget, Ralph will be paying 6 million dollars the next two years for Jauron’s terminated contract.
I don’t want to sound like a cynic or jackass, but if Ralph is inclined to low ball a coach for salary, he may pick Leslie Fraizer. Think about it. Fraizer has been the token “Rooney rule” interview for the last two years. Fraizer may feel desperate and think that this would be his only shot to be a head coach in the NFL and would be willing to take less money.
Look, I don’t want to get hate mail, Fraizer is a legit candidate and should be a head coach. But we all know that Wilson for the last 10 years has been extremely cheap when it comes to hiring coaches. Wilson may view Fraizer and other candidates in the same way and let money be a deciding factor.
I know, I’m getting ahead of myself, but I’ll just say this, if Fraizer gets hired and makes less money than another coordinator getting a head coaching job, it will be black eye for the NFL and the Bills organization.
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Is it just me or do Sabres fans and the hockey media really hate the NFL? First, we get Mike Schopp saying how much he despises the NFL product and that hockey is better. Then we get members of the Buffalo News stating the same thing, with Bucky Gleason giving a game recap of Brittany Murphy dying, instead of a Bills/Patriots game story.
Look, if you want to say that you like hockey more than the NFL, ah salute. But don’t tell me that the NFL is terrible. Go watch the Packers vs Cardinals game. The stars of the NFL always shine more than the NHL stars. It’s just the nature of the sport.
I’ve said it before, I think a lot of the local media members who take shots at the NFL are sick of covering such a bad franchise like the Bills.
But I’m going to take it a step further, I think hockey apologists disdain towards the NFL and love towards the less watched NHL is equivalent to that click that we all went to high school with. The ones who’d denounce listening to commercial music and would shove underground music in your face. The ones who would say you were a bandwagon fan for cheering on Michael Jordan. The ones that would cheer for the Seattle Seahawks just to be different from the overload of Bills fans.
I also think hockey fans hatred towards the NFL stems from the majority of the USA not giving a crap about the NHL, which goes back to my music click metaphor.
I’ll be frank, I sometimes laugh when people talk about the city of Buffalo being such a hotbed for young hockey players. That may be all true, but I wouldn’t throw out the notion that it’s such a hotbed because not that many kids play hockey in the central and southern states of the USA. Just saying.
I always thought that Bills fans always wanted the Sabres to play well, but I don’t think the feeling is mutual. It may have to do with the Bills coaching front is bigger news than the Sabres first place start. Jealousy is an ugly thing. Don’t worry hockey purists, I still love you 🙂
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How pathetic is the CBS’ NFL Today show? I’m not talking about the stupid jokes they tell or Dan Marino swearing. I’m talking about how Charlie Cassidy, your so called NFL insider, doesn’t even speak about Bill Cowher wanting to coach or not. I don’t care if Cowher works for you. You have to have some journalistic integrity to ask him or report it.
I know, he said he wouldn’t comment on jobs till the season ends. But you could have asked him about the billboard in Buffalo or the rumors about him wanting to coach in Carolina.
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Just to get back to Jason Garret. I really like the way he designs the Cowboys offensive plays. If you saw the game against the Eagles on Saturday, you would’ve noticed the misdirection running plays and the screen passes that Dallas was running.
Watching the execution of the plays was like entering the world of color in the Wizard of Oz in comparison to the black and white approach the Bills offense has run over the last 5 years.
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I know, I haven’t written about the Sabres in a while, but I was very impressed with their latest winning streak. You can learn a lot from a team when they are down by a couple of goals in a game. The Sabres didn’t give up against the Thrashers, Penguins & Colorado.
The most important thing to me about the winning streak was that it wasn’t all about Ryan Miller. It was about having guys like Connolly and Stafford step up. I’ve also been very impressed with the Sabres defenseman becoming active in the offensive zone.
And what can you say about Tyler Myers that hasn’t been said. We all knew that he was suppose to be the second coming on defense, but did you think he was going to be this good on the offensive front?
I still think the Sabres have to look into finding a play-making center. CNN.SI said it best, the Sabres are a number one center away from being a favorite. I concur.
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