Stop me if this starts to sound familiar.
A loud and proud football coach is taking over an AFC East team that has a past history of competitiveness–but not a lot of actual winning. This team currently finds itself enduring a prolonged dry spell, the product of bad drafting, questionable personnel decisions and of course a juggernaut down the road in New England. The team has a stout defence, particularly in the front seven, but has been hamstrung by an offence built around a one-dimensional rushing attack and a constant search for a quarterback who can make the defence respect the passing game.
By taking the head job in Buffalo, former Jets coach Rex Ryan has jumped out of the frying pan and…into an exceedingly similar but more lucrative frying pan. In a league built on innovation and adaptation, this all feels a little too comfortable to actually result in success. What Ryan and the Bills each needed was a shakeup in philosophy, but what they’ve found in one another is an enabler, a team and coach that will spend the next few years convincing one another that their approaches–each failures in their own way separately—will somehow succeed when combined.
Ryan has run up against Bill Belichick’s Patriots before, with a great defensive line and a mediocre and untested quarterback. In his second season in New York, with his defence still fresh to opposing offensive coordinators, and quarterback Mark Sanchez operating at peak efficiency, Ryan took out the Patriots in New England and advanced to the AFC Championship game. And that early 2011 playoff victory was the high-water mark.
After that game, as Rex kept pushing ahead with a strategy that had been largely sussed out by his rival, the Jets were 1-7 against New England. Either it was luck the first time, or Belichick adapted and Ryan could not.
And here’s the rub: the personnel in Buffalo are so similar to what Ryan had in New York—barring a total makeover in the off-season—that it’s hard to see the Bills’ new boss finding a different approach.
The Bills of 2014 were a team that, with Fred Jackson, Bryce Brown and CJ Spiller, relied on the run game–but too often were unable to use it to move the ball; a team that turned away from their recently drafted “franchise” QB in favour of a Kyle Orton cameo; a team that won just a single game (and lost six) when their opponents scored more than 20 points.
So it’s fair to ask what the Bills think they’re getting that will change them for the better. The defence under Jim Schwartz was already one of the best units in the NFL and should be even better next year—not because of Ryan but because 2013 defensive rookie of the year runner-up Kiko Alonso should be back holding down the middle of the linebacking corps. Ryan’s biggest weakness in New York was his inability to find and develop a viable quarterback. That also happens to be the Bills biggest weakness of the past half-decade or so.
Rumours abound that the team plans to pursue 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman to innovate on that side of the ball. Which would be great, if his strength wasn’t also based in the run game. In a vacuum, Ryan has the qualities and pedigree to be a successful head coach, Roman has the skills to build a contending offence and the Bills have enough pieces in place to improve on a 9-7 season that saw them fighting tooth and nail for a wild card spot.
But the NFL isn’t a vacuum. It’s a passing league, moreso every year–and while the Bills seemingly have a solid young stable of pass catchers, they lack even one semi-reliable pass thrower. The AFC East isn’t a vacuum, either. It’s the domain of the one coach who has seemingly got Ryan’s number and has proven he can combat Ryan’s biggest strengths effectively. And finally, the Bills offence isn’t a vacuum. It’s a one-dimensional unit that, if anything, got more one-dimensional this weekend. In philosophy, if not in personnel.
Ryan is an excellent motivator, and the Bills players’ reactions to the move seem genuinely enthusiastic. He’ll bring a lot of fun to Orchard Park, and that’s not nothing. In a larger context though, something about this whole process smacks of a gathering of yes men, each backing up one another’s outdated ideas.
Sure, all you need is a great defence. Definitely, we can rely on our ground game to pound teams into submission. Of course, we’ll find a competent quarterback somewhere and just rely on him to hand it off and manage games for us. You keep telling yourselves that gentlemen. Bill Belichick is counting on it.