This is part 1 of a four part series reviewing the recently completed regular season of the 2014 Buffalo Bills. This segment will discuss the front office and coaching staff, with 3 other posts to follow covering the offense, defense and special teams, and what the team needs to do to improve in 2015. It’s a whole new ballgame as far as management and the coaches are concerned, as the team enters its’ first off-season under new owners Terry and Kim Pegula. My personal opinion is this – team president Russ Brandon, who has done a great job holding down the fort after taking the reins from Ralph Wilson, should remain with the team in a role similar to that of Ted Black with the Pegulas’ other team, the Buffalo Sabres. The other two management faces, general manager Doug Whaley and head coach Doug Marrone, both have their pluses and minuses but deserve to return to try and complete the job they’ve started. Whaley gets credit for adding veteran free agents who improved the club and added a winning dimension to the locker room. Those players include Brandon Spikes, Corey Graham, Anthony Dixon and Dan Carpenter. He also worked hard to add pieces during the season, and MarQueis Grey, Marcus Thigpen and Bacarri Rambo all contributed to late-season wins. It can be argued that Whaley gave up far too much to the Cleveland Browns in the 2014 draft to try to move up and get Sammy Watkins. Personally, I believe in the long run that will turn out to be a positive in Whaley’s corner. But still, the team will go into the 2015 draft minus both a first and fourth round pick, which has to hurt the club. Although Pegula got burned with the Sabres when he initially spent a lot of money on free agents who didn’t work out, it would be a good idea for Whaley and Marrone to convince him to try to sign a couple of useful players on the market to help replace those lost draft picks. Whaley’s draft in 2014 produced not only Watkins but two other starters in Preston Brown and Seantrel Henderson, while the jury is still out on the rest of the picks. Whaley’s biggest negative is the fact he has left the roster cupboard bare at the quarterback position for two consecutive years now. The team has to settle that position, especially with Kyle Orton announcing his retirement, prior to training camp, so they don’t spend the preseason auditioning guys off the street at the most important spot on the team, as they have the last 2 years. That brings us to Marrone, who also has both positive and negative qualities. On the plus side, he reacted to the loss of Mike Pettine as defensive coordinator with the quick hire of Jim Schwartz, who molded a solid unit into an even better one. He coached the team to their first winning record in a decade, a 3 game improvement over his first year. He made a bold move in benching EJ Manuel after 4 games and going to Orton, who wasn’t even with the club in preseason. He also handled a tough situation in the snowstorm-cancelled game that was switched to Detroit. He got his team focused, despite missing valuable practice time, and they played one of their best, most inspired games of the year there. On the negative side, Marrone, to me, still has to separate himself from his predecessors in the Bills’ coaching ranks. Too many winnable games got away from the team due to mistakes, turnovers and penalties. In short, they still haven’t completely changed the losing culture. Marrone needs to set the bar higher and refuse to accept repeat mistakes, making the players accountable to him and each other. To use a historical reference to make my point, go back to the first full season Marv Levy had as coach of the Bills. Levy systematically removed players who gave inconsistent efforts – Fred Smerlas (who played hard but routinely and unapologetically jumped offsides), Ronnie Harmon, Joe Devlin and Chris Burkett to name a few. Those players were guys who were decent players, but the type who made 2 or 3 mistakes or bad plays for every big play they made. Marrone may have to identify and replace those types of players. In our next 2 segments, I’ll give my opinions on who those players are and what shape the team is in going into 2015.
Archive for December, 2014
Classic Team Logo of The Day
Logo of a major college football program, the Brigham Young Cougars, used from 1969 until 1998. The school, owned by The Church of Latter Day Saints, first fielded a team in 1922 and has been aligned with various conferences, most notably the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), which they were part of when this logo was used. The Cougars, who compete as an independent now, won the national championship in 1984, and had a Heisman Trophy winner in 1990 with Ty Detmer. Former BYU players who played pro football include Jim McMahon, Steve Young, Todd Christensen, Ryan Denney, Virgil Carter, Trevor Matich and Bart Oates.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1986 Topps football card of former pro football quarterback Bruce Mathison, who had a brief NFL career with 3 different teams. He was drafted out of Nebraska by the San Diego Chargers in 1983 and played there for 2 years before hooking up for a season with the Buffalo Bills, where he started for a short time before Jim Kelly took the reins there. Mathison returned to the Chargers for a year, then finished his playing days in 1987 with Seattle.
NFL – Bills’ Game Review
The Buffalo Bills ended their 2014 season on a winning note on Sunday, defeating the New England Patriots 17-9 in a meaningless game as far as playoff possibilities was concerned. The Bills were already mathematically eliminated, while the Patriots already had home field advantage throughout the playoffs sewn up. In an unlikely scenario, since Pats’ coach Bill Belichick goes for the jugular no matter the situation, New England played Tom Brady for only about a half before turning the game over to rookie backup Jimmy Garoppolo. Also, receiver Julian Edelman and tight end Rob Gronkowski, a Bills’ killer, were inactive for the game, along with starting offensive linemen Dan Connolly and Sebastian Vollmer, while several players played only sparingly. Bills’ coach Doug Marrone declared it was important to win the game anyway, and played veteran QB Kyle Orton for that reason, rather than giving EJ Manuel another shot to play. Orton, if not spectacular, has at least been consistent in his performances. In typical fashion, he led the Bills on impressive touchdown drives early in both the first and second quarter, and didn’t do much the rest of the way. He also coughed up a fumble while being sacked, squandering good field position. Buffalo’s defense, minus inactive starters Marcell Dareus and Stephon Gilmore, played another outstanding game, even though Garoppolo wasn’t exactly a Brady clone. They came up with four sacks, with Pro Bowler Mario Williams getting one, along with 1.5 for Jarius Wynn, subbing for Dareus, 1 by Stefan Charles and another half sack for Manny Lawson. Brady and Garoppolo combined for a meager 144 net passing yards. Although the game had no bearing on the playoffs, it did accomplish a few positive things for the Buffalo franchise. It allowed them to finish with their first winning record (9-7) in a decade, got them their first win ever in Gillette Stadium, and broke New England’s 35-game home winning streak against AFC East opponents. For the sake of continuity and for accomplishing the slight improvement in wins (+3), Marrone probably should keep his job, but like the rest of the organization, he has a lot of room for improvement, which I’ll get into in more detail in part 1 of the Bills’ season review later this week.
Classic Team Logo of The Day
Used from 1980 until 1984, this is the logo of the University of Colorado Buffaloes, a major college football team. They were long-time members of the Big Eight/Big Twelve Conference before moving to the Pacific 12 Conference this season. They won a national championship in 1990, and had one Heisman Trophy winner, Rashaan Salaam in 1994. Numerous former Buffaloes have gone on to play in the NFL, including Tom Brookshier, Boyd Dowler, Dick Anderson, Kordell Stewart, Cliff Branch, Eric Bienemy, Mark Haynes and Ted Washington.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1984 Topps football card of former NFL fullback Roosevelt Leaks, who played nine seasons in the league, for the Baltimore Colts and Buffalo Bills. He was known as one of pro football’s top blocking backs in his era. He had an outstanding college career also, at the University of Texas, where he became the Longhorns’ first African American All American. He worked in real estate after his playing days ended, and retired from a job at the Texas General Land Office in 2013.
NFL – Throwback Thursday: Miracle at The Meadowlands
The seventeenth and last week of the 2014 NFL schedule includes a contest between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants, so the final Throwback Thursday feature of the season will be a look at an unforgettable game played between these two teams on November 19, 1978 that forever became known in NFL lore as “The Miracle at The Meadowlands”. Both teams were mired in mediocrity that season, and the game wasn’t very artistic, but Giant quarterback Joe Pisarcik, who wasn’t exactly a darling of the Big Apple media (he was sarcastically dubbed “Off-Broadway Joe”), did enough to put his team in position to secure a win with a pair of touchdown passes early in the game. The Giants held a 17-12 lead and had possession at the two minute warning, thanks to an interception by Odis McKinney. New York ran a couple of plays with fullback Larry Csonka, including one that gained 11 yards and a first down. With the Eagles out of timeouts, all the G-Men now had to do was kneel down and run out the clock. Pisarcik did just that on first down, but Philly linebacker Bill Bergey burst through the line and hit the New York center Jim Clack, knocking him into the Giant signal caller. It was a desperate attempt to force a fumble that failed. However, in an era before the automatic “victory formation” kneel downs of today, Giant offensive coordinator Bob Gibson sent in a standard running play, with Pisarcik to hand the ball off to Csonka, the same play that had just been successful. Gibson’s explanation afterward was that he didn’t want to expose his quarterback to further injury, so in a way Bergey’s charge worked. Also, in that era many coaches considered the kneel down to be dishonorable.
When the play was sent in, New York’s offensive huddle was in shock. Csonka begged Pisarcik not to give him the ball, and the rest of the players exhorted him to change the play and kneel down again. Pisarcik had gotten a lot of heat for audibling out of a play the week before, and being an inexperienced second year man, he demurred to the offensive coordinator. The play turned out to be disastrous, and forever took it’s place in NFL history. The Giants had wasted a lot of time in the huddle arguing over the call, and the play clock was running down when they lined up so Clack snapped it before his QB was ready. Pisarcik bobbled the snap but hung on to the ball, but his handoff glanced off of Csonka’s hip and wound up on the ground. Eagle defensive coordinator Marion Campbell called for an all out 11 man blitz on the play, and Herman Edwards broke into the backfield, scooped up the ball and ran it into the end zone to lock up the improbable win for Philly. The play was costly for the Giant organization. Pisarcik needed a police escort to get to his car after the game, and Gibson was fired the next morning. The stigma of that call was so bad that he never worked in football at any level again. Head coach John McVay and personnel director Andy Robustelli finished the season but were let go afterwards. Ironically, a couple of years later Pisarcik was traded to the Eagles for a draft pick.
Eagle DB Herman Edwards completes the “Miracle at The Meadowlands” deciding play
Classic Team Logo of The Day
Logo of a major college football program, the Baylor Bears. The school fielded its’ first team in 1898 as an independent, then joined the old Southwest Conference in 1914. This logo was used from 1969 until 1996, which was the last season before the conference disbanded and the Bears moved to the Big 12. Baylor players who went on to play pro football include Bill Glass, L.G. Dupre, Cotton Davidson, Shane Nelson, Jim Ray Smith, Robert Griffin III and Hall of Famer Mike Singletary.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1978 Topps football card of Hall of Fame fullback Larry Csonka, one of the hardest-running backs of all time. His most successful seasons came in the first seven years of his career in Miami, where he was a five-time Pro Bowler and key cog in a pair of Dolphin Super Bowl titles. Looking for a bigger paycheck in a non-free agency era of the NFL, Csonka jumped to the Memphis Southmen of the new World Football League in 1975 (along with teammates Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield), but lasted only one season there. He returned to the NFL the following year, signing with the New York Giants and playing there for three uneventful seasons. He returned to Miami for a year and had a decent season, but when the Dolphins failed to give him a new contract he retired.
NFL – Bills’ Game Review
The streak of consecutive non-playoff seasons will reach 15 this year for the Buffalo Bills, as they lost a must-win game on Sunday to the lowly Oakland Raiders, 26-24. It was a strange game in that, after starting off with a drive that ended with a 42 yard touchdown pass from Kyle Orton to Sammy Watkins, the Bills went completely flat in all phases and played nothing at all like a team fighting to qualify for the postseason. After shutting down a pair of future Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers the past 2 games, Buffalo’s supposed dominant defense got schooled by the Raiders’ rookie QB, Derek Carr. Oakland’s running game, ranked at the bottom of the entire NFL, gouged the Bills for 140 yards that included some long runs through gaping holes, especially after Pro Bowl defensive tackle Marcell Dareus left the game with a knee injury. The deciding play of the game came in the fourth quarter, when Oakland faced a 3rd and 22 situation and Buffalo proceeded to give up a 50 yard completion from Carr to Kenbrell Thompkins, a New England Patriot castoff, who burned Corey Graham on the play. The Bills didn’t force any turnovers, despite facing a rookie QB and a team that has been mistake-prone all year and had won only two games going into Sunday’s contest. The Bills’ front four did little to disrupt Carr or the Oakland rushing attack, and Mario Williams and Jerry Hughes were non-factors. It was just a completely discouraging game to watch considering the Bills were supposed to be inspired to battle for a playoff spot.
The Bills’ special teams did nothing, and the offense, except for the opening touchdown and a couple of late desperation drives, looked mostly lost. They ran for only 13 total yards in the game, on 13 attempts. While the Bills’ defense was allowing Carr to have his way, Orton was continuing his maddening habit of turning the ball over, as he had 2 more interceptions. Overall, Buffalo’s effort was mind-boggling, considering how they shocked the NFL world by defeating Green Bay the previous week. On this day, they never looked ready to play while the Raiders, playing out the string of a sorry season, were by far the more inspired team. In another amazing statistic highlighting the Buffalo franchise’s historic troubles, the loss means the Bills haven’t won in Oakland since 1966.
So the Bills are now reduced to playing for pride at New England next week to end the season, although the Patriots may have a lot at stake, with the possibility of gaining home-field advantage throughout the playoffs with a win. It would be great to see EJ Manuel play in that game, but I don’t see that happening, since the league will expect the Bills’ coaches to go all out to make the game competitive with playoff seedings at stake. My take on the game is this: Between the Bills’ mostly inconsistent play all year and the Patriots’ need for the victory, it could be one of the most epic run-for-the-bus efforts in Buffalo history.