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The one thing you're never going to hear from the mouth of Bills coach Dick Jauron is a premature concession.
Unlike one of his predecessors in Buffalo, Wade Phillips, who famously discounted the Bills' playoff chances — slim as they were — a couple of weeks before the team was officially eliminated in 2000, Jauron refuses to give up hope on this pitifully failed season.When asked the other day how he can possibly get his slumping squad motivated to play today's game in New York against the Jets, Jauron said, "We haven't been eliminated at this point. We're not out of it, so that is a motivator for them; it always is in our business."
Of course, the reality is that you need to go about three places to the right of the decimal point to find the percentage of a chance that Buffalo now has to earn a playoff berth.
Let's put it this way: The far-fetched scenario includes Miami and New York having to play a tie game in the final week of the season (no, Donovan McNabb was not consulted on this computation), so even the hard-boiled members of Bills Nation would probably see fit to giving Jauron a pass if he were to say the playoff carrot is not dangling.
But Jauron won't do it. He's not going to stop believing until there is nothing left to believe in, and besides, the paychecks aren't going to suddenly stop just because the Bills can't make it to the postseason. There are three more to earn and Jauron said his players are going to be prepared, they're going to play hard, and no one is going to quit.
"Maybe as important as anything in our business, and maybe any business, is that it's not the only motivator," he said of the playoff chase. "The integrity of us, of all of us, and certainly the integrity of the game and our business, is effort.
Unlike one of his predecessors in Buffalo, Wade Phillips, who famously discounted the Bills' playoff chances — slim as they were — a couple of weeks before the team was officially eliminated in 2000, Jauron refuses to give up hope on this pitifully failed season.When asked the other day how he can possibly get his slumping squad motivated to play today's game in New York against the Jets, Jauron said, "We haven't been eliminated at this point. We're not out of it, so that is a motivator for them; it always is in our business."
Of course, the reality is that you need to go about three places to the right of the decimal point to find the percentage of a chance that Buffalo now has to earn a playoff berth.
Let's put it this way: The far-fetched scenario includes Miami and New York having to play a tie game in the final week of the season (no, Donovan McNabb was not consulted on this computation), so even the hard-boiled members of Bills Nation would probably see fit to giving Jauron a pass if he were to say the playoff carrot is not dangling.
But Jauron won't do it. He's not going to stop believing until there is nothing left to believe in, and besides, the paychecks aren't going to suddenly stop just because the Bills can't make it to the postseason. There are three more to earn and Jauron said his players are going to be prepared, they're going to play hard, and no one is going to quit.
"Maybe as important as anything in our business, and maybe any business, is that it's not the only motivator," he said of the playoff chase. "The integrity of us, of all of us, and certainly the integrity of the game and our business, is effort.
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