Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

[ParanoidAndroid]

Bills coaches pay for errors by front office

Bob DiCesare

Perhaps the problem isn’t Dick Jauron any more than it was Mike Mularkey, any more than it was Gregg Williams, any more than it was Wade Phillips. At some point you have to look at history repeating itself and wonder what it is that perpetuates the sad and exasperating status quo that drapes the Buffalo Bills.
http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/co...809.html?imw=Y

I didn't see this posted which is surprising. Of all the articles attempting to sort out the problem, I think this one resonates best. We have a mediocre personnel department hired by an owner who has always hired second tier and hoped for an overachiever. We have a lot of young talent on the team, but how good is that talent? We have viryually no impact players on defense and one on offense (Evans).

[Typ0]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

these arguments sound very familiar...

[ParanoidAndroid]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

these arguments sound very familiar...

I have seen it discussed, but the article really puts it in perspective.

I've seen a lot of threads blaming the coaches, but very few blaming it on lack of talent or simply blaming it on the players.

[Typ0]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

people seem to think the OC sends in the play and says "thow an interception" or "option fumble" or "drop back to pass but don't look downfield".

[Jan Reimers]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

With our no-blitz, play-five-yards-off-the-receiver, arm tackling defense, our horrible red zone playcalling and brutal run blocking offense, plus our generally pitiful game management, I'm not about to give the coaching staff a free pass for our woes.

[shelby]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

"The typical Bills response to this year’s slide would be to dump a coach, a coordinator, to create an illusion of change. But almost a decade’s worth of knee-jerk reactions have gotten them nowhere. This is an organization that needs to assess itself from head to toe. What the Bills need more than anything is a sense of direction."

Amen.

[yordad]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

Heck, I'm down to fire everyone. No need to find the exact problem. Just fire them all. Too bad Ralph can't be fired too.

[Night Train]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

With our no-blitz, play-five-yards-off-the-receiver, arm tackling defense, our horrible red zone playcalling and brutal run blocking offense, plus our generally pitiful game management, I'm not about to give the coaching staff a free pass for our woes.

Precisely.

Slice the rasberry failure pie among the owner,front office,coaches & players. They ALL share the blame.

This is why we need a Parcells type to come in and take over. The "Tom D. failed" excuse doesn't work anymore, Ralph.

Blow it up and it CAN turn around quickly.

[ddaryl]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

I have seen it discussed, but the article really puts it in perspective.

I've seen a lot of threads blaming the coaches, but very few blaming it on lack of talent or simply blaming it on the players.

personally I believe if you have a real head coach who is putting his foot in players asses on a regular basis, demanding perfection, and working these players until they achieve it would make the biggest immediate difference.

Yes, upgrades at key positions like DE, OLB, TE and C would be huge too, but the players we have looked lost and uncoached to me to often.

[JJamezz]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

This argument always makes me angry.. Since when are coaches not involved in talent acquisition - particularly in this organization as of late, where the entire process has been rebuilt and redefined around the Marv Levy 'laws of consensus' decision making..

Taking it a step further, isn't a coach's job to take raw-er talent (from various sources), refine it and thereby increase it? Then to utilize the talent to it's fullest potential and highest potential benefit to the team?

Nobody is saying the coaches are the ONLY problem.. But like the old saying that a fish rots from the head down, we need to cut off the rotten part and start over (again!). Obviously, the major problem with that scenario is the rotting begins in Ralph's crusty old ass.. so until he is somehow coherent enough to make a decision where he sees past his own ego and pocketbook, this team will continue its need for a procedure every 3 years or so, to lop off the rotten parts..

I just hope that some unprecedented combination of Ralph's age, tiredness, lack of coherency, envy for what the Dolphins have been able to accomplish in a single offseason, one fell swoop.. and maybe throw in a pinch of vengeance against Donahoe, the man he apparently in large part blames for many of our current woes.. all this comes together, the stars align, he finally sees beyond his own motives (which have obviously never been W's) and makes A BIG MOVE - in my case the preference being Cowher as HC and having final say in personnel decisions.

[Typ0]

Re: Cisare Article on Personnel Dept and Talent

it's hard to say who really is responsible for the talent. The coaches have a system they want to play so the players have to match the system. In that sense they are the source of the talent. They also spend a great deal of their time evaluating talent and they suggest the talent to the management. It's the managements job to get the players though. The coach can talk to the player and tell them how great it will be to play on their team but ultimately it's management that develops the relationships in the marketplace that acquire the talent.

This is where organizational culture becomes so important. The culture comes from a few different places:

history -- the tradition the organization has been molded in.

artifacts -- things that are left around that carry knowledge of the tradition forward or new things that shape the tradition.

facilities-- where the team plays. I think this is important because there are a lot of players that don't want to play here. It seems nice and exciting that we play outside in hell...but players want to perform at an optimal level and they can't do it here because of the elements. I believe this is one hinderance and a significant enough one that we should have built a retractable dome and used natural grass years ago.

current staff -- these are all the people that work in the organization. The people the company has hired make a significant impact on the mentality of the organization. For example, I applied for a job there once and didn't get hired. Big mistake!

owner -- I'm not even going to explain this section here it's been beaten to death and I don't like to beat down RW all the time here. He's an old human being and we don't just cast those people out into the cold like the Eskimo's do.

all of these things create the culture the organization has...and how the player fits into that culture is going to have a significant impact on that player deciding they would like to spend part of their career here. So the management has to impact the culture in such a way to make it desirable for the talent they want to acquire and then they have to work in the marketplace (ie with their agent) to contract the talent to play. Incidently, this is the part that really fired me up about Levy. He said he knew nothing about the cap! Come on, Donahoe did a lot of things here we are still paying for but ML was the wrong person for the job and was not prepared to work the marketplace to get the best talent. Things have been really screwed up at corporate headquarters for years.

And then there is the final fact that all of these people are suffering a disadvantage because they have less dollars to spend. This is not a free market economy. All businesses have limited resources. But this industry is regulated and expenditures on talent on the field are EQUAL amongst all teams -- unless they decide not to spend that money. So a team that spends more has a competitive advantage over the Bills. This is drastic both in signing the individual talent and to the culture itself.

So, Wilson tells us it's a circumstance of the marketplace. If that's true, all of these other people are suffering due to happenings in the overall economic environment of WNY. I think he really has a point here...but then he baffles me when he says a new stadium isn't a good idea. I have got to think he is just waiting for them to offer it to him. Or no, maybe it's that he doesn't want to sign a new contract with huge exit payments!

It's sad JJAMEZZ, but it's all because Wilson is old and nearing his death. It's not that he doesn't want to win, it's that he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. He's got to keep the team looking the best he can on paper in the short term and has zero long term vision whatsoever. He's gotten comfortable with having a lack of talent--it's business as usual. And the culture is no doubt as screwed up as the culture the ownership is creating with their attitude so it's less likely we can get the talent we need.

This argument always makes me angry.. Since when are coaches not involved in talent acquisition - particularly in this organization as of late, where the entire process has been rebuilt and redefined around the Marv Levy 'laws of consensus decision making'.. patent pending..

Taking it a step further, isn't a coach's job to take raw-er talent (from various sources), refine it and thereby increase it? To utilize the talent to it's fullest potential and highest potential benefit to the team?

Nobody is saying the coaches are the ONLY problem.. Like the old saying that a fish rots from the head down, we need to cut off the rotten part and start over (again!). Obviously, the major problem with that scenario is the rotting begins in Ralph's crusty old ass.. so until he is somehow coherent enough to make a decision where he see's past his own ego and pocketbook, this team will continue its need for a procedure every 3 years or so, to lop off the rotten parts..

I just hope that some unprecedented combination of Ralph's age, tiredness, lack of coherency, and maybe throw in a pinch of vengeance against Donahoe, the man he apparently in large part blames for many of our current woes.. all comes together, the stars align, and he makes a BIG move - obviously, in my case the preference being Cowher as HC and having final say in personnel decisions.