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It's Name Season.
That wondrous time of year when Bills fans re-emerge after weeks or longer of hibernation to call in and make their nominations for who should be the team's next coach. Some of the suggestions come from fans who call about everything, but most come from people that call only rarely. As this is the big tent.
Even though the Bills have a coach at present, not to mention two games left, Name Season is well under way. On Monday's show, Bulldog and I were asked about Josh McDaniels and Eric Mangini and whether they, two coaches a combined 20 games under .500 in the league, should be tabbed to resurrect the Bills.
Suffice it to say, I'm thinking differently.
The man pictured is the man I want. Well, it's Morgan Freeman acting as him. His real name is Joe Louis Clark. He doesn't have a losing record but before you give me too much credit for this I should point out that to my knowledge he's never coached a football game. (You won't catch me calling that a negative either, for the record.)
Who is Joe Clark? In the 1980s Clark was the controversial principal of Eastside High School in Paterson, N.J. He was, to put it in a stocking, a disciplinarian. While the movie made about him, "Lean On Me", was most assuredly a dramatization, it is thought to have served the truth well enough.
My favorite scene in the movie is when Clark introduces himself to the students. They've gathered in the school auditorium for the occasion, and by the time Clark arrives the scene is bedlam. Clark's staff has assembled the school's worst troublemakers on the stage. Amid the chaos, Clark embarks on his first act as principal: He kicks them all out of school.
"You are all expurgated," Clark says to them. "You are dismissed. You are out of here forever. I wish you well."
And there they went, out the door. In a moment life at that school changed. No one could erase all the prior years of failure at the school, but Clark came in to set a new direction. And, in the movie at least, it worked.
I wish you well.
A real-life transposition of "Lean on Me" to the Buffalo Bills does not have to be fantasy. But of course if it were to happen it would have to be authorized by the owner. And that, at this point, is at best a tremendous long shot. Now that this has been said we can carry on.
It should happen.
There is simply too little or no evidence to defend anybody with clout in the organization. The coach's record is 15-31. Spare me his defense. The general's manager record is the same. The best player he's drafted didn't fill a need in the slightest, and yet the argument Buddy Nix has made toward not drafting a good quarterback prospect in three years yet includes a point about how many needs the Bills have had. Russ Brandon once thought Terrell Owens a great idea and rushed to sign him, despite the league consensus being that no one else wanted Owens. Brandon also, as the organization's CEO, presumably signed off on the hiring of Nix after boasting of the Bills' "exhaustive search" for a new GM, a laughable phrase both then and now.
And here we are.
Incredibly, it can be argued that it has been at least seven years since the Bills chose a starting quarterback, coach or general manager that ANY OTHER NFL TEAM was interested in hiring. Nix, Chan Gailey, Brandon (as "GM" anyway), Dick Jauron, Marv Levy, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Trent Edwards, J.P. Losman. Maybe Mike Mularkey belongs on this list too, and if he does we're closing in on a downright amazing nine years since the Bills beat out ANYBODY in a hire.
Can you believe that?
Bring in Joe Louis Clark. You are all expurgated. We wish you well.
My Clark as a football fantasy starts by clearly demonstrating to the fans and whoever else that 13 years of missing the playoffs -- 12 years at least of never once finishing among the AFC's top eight teams, incredibly -- is unacceptable in every way. He brings a powerful personality, one magnetic enough to convince other men with sharp minds and serious appetites for overcoming challenges to be on his team.
He brings a disinterest, if not a disdain, for so-called conventional wisdom -- and for public perception. He is not about ego, but rather a serious desire for winning. He does what he thinks is right, not what exposes him to the smallest amount of criticism. (It's Buffalo anyway, it's not like anyone on the national scene will notice him.) If ever he were to cite strategic "percentages" as Gailey does, he would know them before talking. He spares us patronizing comparisons to past Super Bowl winners when the team is 3-6. He is OK with, as the numbers defend the thinking, a coach that never punts.
And so on.
One cannot assume that whatever the Bills do instead will fail -- and that's if changes are even made. What I can say is that I will not assume that whatever they do would work. We're way past that. If you let the same people chart this new path, you're a fool to not expect to end up in the abyss.
And I don't like being made to feel like a fool.
He brings a disinterest, if not a disdain, for so-called conventional wisdom -- and for public perception. He is not about ego, but rather a serious desire for winning. He does what he thinks is right, not what exposes him to the smallest amount of criticism. (It's Buffalo anyway, it's not like anyone on the national scene will notice him.) If ever he were to cite strategic "percentages" as Gailey does, he would know them before talking. He spares us patronizing comparisons to past Super Bowl winners when the team is 3-6. He is OK with, as the numbers defend the thinking, a coach that never punts.
And so on.
One cannot assume that whatever the Bills do instead will fail -- and that's if changes are even made. What I can say is that I will not assume that whatever they do would work. We're way past that. If you let the same people chart this new path, you're a fool to not expect to end up in the abyss.
And I don't like being made to feel like a fool.
Do you?