This is the first section of a four part series reviewing the 2015 Buffalo Bills’ season. This post will cover the team’s front office and coaching, with three other segments reviewing the team’s offense, defense, special teams and a final one speculating on what the team needs to do to improve in 2016. In my opinion, the Bills’ front office, which includes general manager Doug Whaley and his scouting staff, has done admirable work in constructing a roster that should be capable of making the NFL playoffs. Whaley has been criticized for some of his moves, like trading up to draft Sammy Watkins and jettisoning Matt Cassel after he failed to win the starting quarterback job. The main argument against the Watkins trade is that the Bills could’ve stood pat and picked Odell Beckham Jr. and gotten themselves a better player. I would argue that the move was a good one, since Watkins is maturing into a top echelon receiver and a leader in the locker room, while Beckham, while talented, is a selfish prima donna. Meanwhile, Cassel proved in his starts in Dallas that moving him was no big loss. Despite trading the Bills’ first round pick in last year’s draft to get Watkins, Whaley still provided the team with some major contributors to the roster.
As far as coaching, there’s no way Rex Ryan gets anything but a failing grade for his efforts. Ryan raised the hopes of the fan base with guarantees of “building a bully” and playoffs (“Get ready, we’re gonna go”) and failed to deliver on anything. He retained special teams coach Danny Crossman from the previous coaching staff, but the bomb squads were anything but special . He spent the entire season trying to fit square pegs into the round hole that is his supposedly vaunted defensive scheme, and took a top-ranked unit and ran it into the ground. Players openly questioned the coaches all year. They say that teams take on the personality of their coach, and that appeared to be true with this year’s Bills. Ryan was undisciplined with his boastfulness and silly behavior all year, and the team followed suit. They picked up undisciplined penalties all year, and Ryan never fixed the problem. It was interesting to read a comment by a New York journalist who covered Ryan while he coached the Jets, that Ryan’s teams will “give you tremendous highs, inexplicable lows, and in the end, lots of mediocrity”. His career record indicates that this statement is accurate, so Ryan needs to figure out how he can tone down his personality and actually channel all the energy he exudes into coaching his team so they play with some consistency each week.