My Buddy?

I’m not sure how I should greet the news of the Bills hiring Buddy Nix. When I first got the email from the Bills that they were hiring from within, I almost spit out my lunch. I wasn’t happy at all! Then I thought about where Nix has come from. Normally when you hire a new GM, the guy is usually the second in command of another organization. Nix being the assistant GM for the Chargers for six seasons is a great accomplishment. Had it been last year and Buddy Nix wasn’t yet on the Bills payroll, I’d like the move maybe a little more. However this move still reeks of a status quo within the franchise.

Nothing like cleaning house and promoting someone from within as your GM. It still tells me that Ralph Wilson is scared to work with someone he is not familiar with. It kind of sounds like the Marv Levy hiring all over again. I’m already hearing fans being happy about the hiring because Buddy is a part of the 90’s tradition. Honestly, from Thurman Thomas and Jim Kelly owning the team to Levy being the GM, I’m sick and tired of fans and this organization trying to dig up skeletons from the old 90’s closet as an answer to the fan’s prayers. Now is it a better hiring than Levy? Of course. Hiring Tom Donahoe again would be better.

This is nothing against Buddy Nix, his resume isn’t bad at all. Seven years with the Bills from 1993-2000 as a scout, then going to San Diego to be an assistant GM till 2008. The problem I have with it is that the Bills didn’t even go out of the organization and interview other potential candidates. Not even a phone call to Floyd Reese or a two day meeting with Greg Gabriel in Chicago. Nothing! To make matters even more peculiar was the fact that John Guy and Tom Modrak were finalists in the GM search. Are you kidding me?! Those guys should be cleaning Wilson’s toilets or scouting Division V schools. Why on earth would you be talking to them?

It just tells me that this team isn’t serious about making as many changes as fans would hope. It tells me that the Mike Shanahan talk was nothing more than damage control by the Bills organization. Further more, what took you so long to decide to make this decision? Promoting from within shouldn’t take you two months after Dick Jauron was fired.

This move is all on Ralph Wilson. It also proves the notion that Russ Brandon is nothing more than Wilson’s puppet. What president would want to hire from within after a decade of losing? Hell, was Brandon even at the press conference today?

There’s also the problem of who exactly is going to be calling the shots, is it Brandon? Wilson? Modrak? Nix? Larry Quinn? It’s one thing to have too many cooks in the kitchen, it’s another to have cooks who will burn the kitchen down. Something tells me that this is it as far as front office moves go. If that’s the case, it means that the Bills are going to be putting up with the same brain trust they have had for the last four years.

If there’s a silver lining in all this, it’s that he’s better than Marv Levy and Russ Brandon. I would get more on board with this move if the Bills were to fire Modrak and Guy. It also wouldn’t hurt Nix if he can somehow convince Marty Schotenheimer, who worked with him in San Diego, to take the Bills head coaching job. If all of this happens then sign me up. However, that’s a lot of “what ifs.”

Do I like the move? Eh, it’s incomplete as of now. If the Bills do the moves I mentioned above, then maybe I could live with it. If it’s the same situation when Levy became the GM and had Donahoe’s flunkies (Modrak and Guy) making personnel moves still, then it’s going to be another long decade.

BTW- Nice call from the Bills on making the decision on New Year’s Eve. Call me a cynic, but having the press conference today means less media coverage because of the Holiday. In other words, less time for backlash from the media.