This is a picture of Dick Jauron when he was hired to coach the Buffalo Bills in 2006.
Partial hair loss.
This is a photo of him during their 2009 season opener at New England.
...more partial hair loss.
Normally, it takes four years in the White House for someone to age that fast, not three and a half in Orchard Park, but that pretty much sums up the Dick Jauron Era for you. Read the rest of this entry →
Continuing the recent trend of firing key assistants a week before the season, Buffalo Bills OC Turk Schonert has officially been canned. Can’t wait to hear about how the team would be better if only it had a deep throwing QB or how they have the worst coach ever. I’d like to just panic at this point and declare the season over but frankly this preseason has been such a mess it’s hard to tell how accurate a picture of the team’s potential this preseason has painted. With teams like the Raiders and the Lions, when chaos inevitably breaks out before the season, fans can at least be certain that their team will blow the season the same exact way they always have (well, the Raiders anyway). With most NFL teams, you can be certain that they will either tank, undergo a regime change, and secure a top 10 draft pick or wind up playing deep into January and maybe even into February. As dismal a preseason as the Bills have had, there’s been so many mixed signals coming out of Orchard Park that I don’t even know what to expect as a Bills fan. I don’t have a decent idea whether this team will go 10-6, 7-9, or 6-11. Somehow, that feels even worse than knowing your team’s doomed to the bottom of the division cellar.
Ah, happier times.
As you may or may not know and probably don’t care, Bills safety Donte Whitner was arrested this morning on charges of “resisting arrest” which developed after a “near riot” at a party held by Whitner’s high school and college teammate, Dolphins wideout and draft flop Ted Ginn Jr.
Whitner’s arrest follows similar legal troubles concerning Bills running back Marshawn Lynch, currently suspended for the first 3 games of the season, and a decidedly less talented safety, Ko Simpson. The arrest also comes slightly less than two years after another Bills player, Anthony Hargrove, was arrested at a Rochester nightclub.
One more arrest and we will officially have enough Bills players for another Rookies Fantasy Draft.
More details available at ESPN.
I was just going to wait for the men who do RANT best, Rovitz, Samer, and Rock, to put up a RANT later tonight but I just had to point something out before the conversation turns to the impending Selection Sunday.
As you no doubt already know by now, (I mean Shakey just did a post on it so it’s not like you have an excuse to not know) Terrell Owens has signed a $6.5 million, one year contract with my beloved Buffalo Bills (I think my keyboard just exploded). While I’m acually hopeful this will work out, but it was definitely what I will call, politely, an OOLF or Out Of Left Field moment, a moment where your team of choice makes a signing or trade for a player that blows your mind with its incogruity. Needless to say, yesterday’s move takes the cake for me but I’m interested to hear what moments of this ilk you readers and random passers by have experienced with your favorite teams. Post your thoughts in the comments below.
I'm in Buffalo. BUFFALO!
The Terrell Owens experience has arrived in a most improbable location: the Buffalo Bills. Owens has signed a 1 year $6.5 million deal in his latest attempt at destroying an NFL franchise. Will he take JP Losman’s position of village idiot? Will he blame his failings on Roscoe Parrish? Only time will tell. It’s safe to say nobody expected this outcome. The one year deal is a low risk venture by the Bills as if the experiment ends badly, they have no commitment to the hell raiser. If it’s a good combination they have a chance to give him another contract or let him explore greener pastures on a team with a better chance of winning a championship or a place with a bigger market. Read the rest of this entry →
Being fairly new to this blogging business, this is my third attempt at posting this piece. Hopefully, it’s worth it.
I will be the first person to admit that the Bills’ GM. Russ Brandon, isn’t exactly the second coming of Bill Polian and that Dick Jauron is, as of right now, on the other end of the Bills Coaching Popularity list from Marv Levy. If the Bills screw up during a game, I’m not all that quick to defend him. As anyone who’s recently read the Buffalo News will tell you, its sportswriters, who include Jerry Sullivan and Bucky Gleason, are even more critical of the brain trust at One Bills Drive.In and of itself, this is OK. I don’t trust the media when it blindly fawns over one sports figure, whether he’s a mensch, or to use one of the best words my fellow Jews ever gave the English language, a schmuck, (see Teebow, Tim for the former as far as I know and Favre, Brett for the latter.) But it’s a little maddening to see Gleason and Sullivan, both writers leagues above the more (wrongly) celebrated likes of Jay Mariotti and Norman Chad, tear into the Dark Lord Jauron when he doesn’t have a solution.Maybe I missed a couple name drops but when the News colmnists were calling for Jauron’s head on a platter, I didn’t hear any ideas about who would be a good replacement (tossing out superstar names who would be a bad fit with the team like Eric Mangini and Bill Cowher does not count.) This frustrates me because I really enjoy the News columnists and hearing what they have to say. IThis is not an attack on them or their years of experience covering both the best and the worst minds in the history of Buffalo sports. They have brilliant minds. But then again, so does Dick Jauron. In fact, he’s a Yale alumnus. That hasn’t always guaranteed solid results either. At some point, offering pessimistic arguments without real solutions just gets old. And while a lot of changes need to be made with the Bills, I can’t accept their argument that the management of Ralph Wilson will always prevent the team from being champions. Maybe it’s preposterous to suggest that the Bills could make the playoffs next year without a massive overhaul. But frankly it’s more preposterous to me that the owner of the newest NFC champions, the Arizona Cardinals, Bill Bidwill, suddenly started drafting that much smarter this year than he did before or that he went on anything resembling a free agent shopping spree. Maybe Brandon is a yes-man, maybe Ralph Wilson is a cheapskate, maybe Jauron is a chump. But even the chumps get lucky sometimes.
