Two years ago Marv Levy returned to the Buffalo Bills with a dual purpose -- restore some cohesion to a franchise that had disintegrated into chaos under the malevolent rule of Tom Donahoe and get the Buffalo Bills back to the playoffs.
Levy's success in the first area was reflected at the box office -- Ralph Wilson Stadium was sold out for all eight regular-season home games, as a scrappy team endured an early-autumn tsunami of season-ending injuries and stayed in postseason contention until mid-December.
The way the Bills pulled together after Kevin Everett was temporarily, as it turns out, paralyzed on Opening Day, the emergence of Trent Edwards at quarterback, the Monday Night near-miss against Dallas and the hot streak that followed, the speed with which Marshawn Lynch erased any memory of Willis McPaternitysuit, or whatever his name was -- the arc of the 2007 season spoke to Levy's emphasis on stocking the roster with players who cared about winning and each other. His Bills didn't achieve the ultimate goal, though, and spent this Wild Card Weekend much as they had the previous seven -- watching on television, wondering what needs to be done to get back into a tournament to which entry seemed a given during Levy's coaching days.
Good feelings, which peaked when the Bills traveled to Cleveland for a game both long-suffering Lake Erie franchises needed to remain in the running, don't last long. Buffalo's ugly, snow-smothered loss to the Browns started a season-ending three-game losing streak, a stretch of abysmal football that created new doubts about the team's direction. Within an hour of the clock running out on the 2007 season in Philadelphia on Dec. 30, word got out that Levy was leaving, his two-year contract completed and his 82-year-old ambitions turning to other pursuits.
Wilson had not named Levy's replacement as of press time and doesn't seem in any hurry to do so, indicating that the post-Donahoe power structure will remain in place and ultimately responsible for his legacy.
Whether the Bills build on the twin 7-9 records of the last two years or backslide into the double-digit-loss wasteland to which they were becoming accustomed under Donahoe will depend largely on what those decision-makers do over the next few months. As much progress as Buffalo made in 2006 and '07, it has some glaring flaws to address heading into '08. The run defense couldn't be much worse if members of the front seven lined up for each snap with their backs to the ball. The emphasis on smaller, quicker linemen and linebackers works pretty well against lousy and mediocre teams, but Buffalo was repeatedly trampled by decent-or-better offenses that were serious about running the football.
Remarkably, seven teams gave up more rushing yards than the Bills, including the Browns. Not one of them made the playoffs, either. The run defense actually improved by 16 yards per game over the season before, though you wouldn't have known it from watching the likes of Jamal Lewis, Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw run free in the season's final weeks. Season-ending injuries to a pair of high draft picks -- defensive tackle John McCargo two years ago and linebacker Paul Posluszny in '07 -- didn't help, but there's little question that more beef is needed up front.
Offensively, Buffalo's results didn't match its talent. The back-and-forth between Edwards and J.P. Losman, caused by injuries to both and the ineptitude of the latter, didn't do much for continuity. Neither did the reluctance of offensive coordinator Steve Fairchild to creatively use weapons like Lynch, Lee Evans and Roscoe Parrish. Fairchild's strategic meekness was particularly painful to watch on the road, where his game plans worked quite well -- if the ultimate goal was to avoid the opposing end zone. His offenses scored all of five touchdowns in eight games away from Orchard Park, none of them in the final three contests.
Fairchild is gone, off to Colorado State, where the alumni apparently hate touchdowns. His replacement, who the Bills aren't in any hurry to pick, either, will have the above-mentioned weapons to work with, as well as an offensive line that congealed with Edwards under center before left tackle Jason Peters, who qualified for his first Pro Bowl, was lost for the year early in the Giants game.
True, Edwards looked like a rookie during the final skid, particularly in the brutal weather at Cleveland and at home against the Giants. But up to that point, he showed more consistency and awareness of what was happening around him than did Losman in more than two years as the anointed quarterback of the future.
Losman's agent, Gary Wichard, made noise last week about moving his unhappy client, and the Bills figure to oblige, since they should be able to pick up a more experienced, and stable, backup for the $2 million he would cost them in the final year of his contract.
It is perfectly understandable that Losman would want out of Buffalo. Wichard's suggestion that Losman feels somehow betrayed shows how incredibly myopic professional athletes, and their representatives, can be.
Losman had his chance in Buffalo. In fact, by BillStuff's count, he got at least four of them over the past three years, while enjoying two full offseasons in which he was the undisputed, heavily coached No. 1 guy. And still, in his last three starts, he played like a frightened, confused rookie as the Bills narrowly avoided becoming the first team to lose to Miami, then got gutted by the Patriots and Jaguars by a combined 92-24.
While upgrades are needed in several areas -- the defensive front, tight end and wide receiver, to name three -- the Bills have the luxury of making changes by choice, rather than out of necessity. Among the starters, only safety Jim Leonhard, who cracked the lineup only after injuries shelved Ko Simpson and George Wilson, is due to become an free agent.
Where free agency will rock the Bills is on special teams, which made the difference in several games and kept Buffalo competitive in others, where core kicking-team specialists like Sam Aiken, Mario Haggan and Josh Stamer all completed the final years of their contracts.
Parrish and Terrence McGee, two of the league's most dangerous return men, will be back. And special teams coach Bobby April specializes in molding players not good enough to start on offense or defense into units that annually rank among the league's best.
April's ability to do it again will have a lot to do with the job security of his boss, Dick Jauron.
Jauron deserves credit for keeping the Bills in contention late into two seasons during which they ranked near the bottom of the league in both offense and defense. But he and his staff can hardly be held blameless for the need to overcome those obstacles.
Defensive coordinator Perry Fewell's defenders, as mentioned earlier, had terrible trouble stopping opposing ground games. Statistically, they were even worse against the pass, finishing 29th in that department. Overall, only the Detroit Lions gave up more yards than Buffalo, which also allowed opponents to convert an atrocious 45.1 percent of their third-down situations.
Those numbers should also improve with added help up front, since the lack of a consistent pass rush was often too much for a generally decent-or-better secondary to overcome.
But while the Bills played meaningful December games in each of Jauron's first two seasons, so did nearly every other team in the NFL, thanks to widespread mediocrity beyond the likes of New England, Indianapolis, Dallas, Green Bay and whoever else is playing particularly well during a given stretch.
Buffalo played seven games against playoff teams and lost six of them, five of them in blowouts. The twin humiliations against New England showed both how far the Bills need to go and how bad they have the potential to be. As you watch the postseason, see if you can find a team they would beat other than Washington, the lone qualifier they bested during the regular season.
So Levy departs with the franchise with which he is so closely identified on the verge of one of two things -- returning to true playoff contention, or plunging back into irrelevance.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Jan. 8 2008 |