Bills fire Rex Ryan

Bills draw universal criticism in aftermath of Rex Ryan firing

Mike Florio

Bills draw universal criticism in aftermath of Rex Ryan firing

ORCHARD PARK, NY – The decision itself is understandable. The decisions surrounding it aren’t.

Rex Ryan is out after fewer than two seasons as the coach of the Bills. He has only himself to blame for making big promises publicly and privately about the team’s performance and then failing to deliver.

But the Bills also have failed as an organization, in numerous ways. And the media seems to generally agree that the Bills have handled the situation poorly.

The Bills handled it poorly by placing and keeping Rex Ryan on an island for multiple weeks, with leaks regarding the eventual terminations (leaks that undoubtedly came from the front office) forcing Ryan and the players to answer tough questions while ownership and management hid. The Bills handled it poorly by summarily dumping Ryan on a Tuesday, only five days before what will be interim coach Anthony Lynn’s on-the-job audition to be hired as Ryan’s replacement. The Bills handled it poorly by putting G.M. Doug Whaley in charge of the search for a replacement, a move that sends a clear message that the Bills won’t be looking for an A-lister who would want control over the roster and/or his own personnel executive. The Bills handled it poorly by making a smart business decision to bench quarterback Tyrod Taylor but by forcing Lynn to address it while continuing to hide.

Ultimately, ownership bears responsibility for the current state of the team. At a time when few if any media voices are praising the decision to fire Ryan, the decision to keep Whaley, and the decision to let Whaley shape the search for a coach who will accept working with and for Whaley, it’s fair to ask whether Terry and Kim Pegula truly understand what it means to run a sports team successfully.

“The people of Buffalo should be happy Terry Pegula got the team but I hope he does better w/the Bills than he has w/the Sabres,” President-Elect Donald Trump said via (where else?) Twitter in October 2014 after the Pegulas won the right to purchase the franchise over Trump and others. And Trump’s point remains valid. (The Sabres currently are faring better than the Bills, but not by much. The hockey team is 13-13, and the football team is 7-8.)

The football team won’t improve until it removes any and all dysfunction from the organization and develops a true sense of cohesion and unity. There can’t be separate tracks of accountability, and there can’t be an avenue for the likes of Whaley and team president Russ Brandon to blame the coach in order to preserve their own standing. Either everyone succeeds together or everyone fails together.

For now, everyone really is failing together. And that’s primarily because ownership either can’t or won’t realize that firing Ryan and letting Whaley find the next coach while Brandon pulls the strings from above constitutes the kind of half measure that will make it impossible to hire the kind of coach who will return to team to full prominence.

Ownership can continue to hide, but ownership will have a hard time running from the many voices who believe that the team quickly has become one of the most dysfunctional organizations in all of football. Especially since no coach will options will opt to become the next coach to potentially get jerked around the way Rex Ryan did in the final days of his time with the team.