Take Your Emotion Out of Nix/Gailey Firing (or Not) Decision

[ghz in pittsburgh]

Football is an emotional game. But running it is not an emotional business. The sign of people yelling Fire them all, clean house, etc. is just that - on emotion. The anyone but crowd.

If you want to run a business properly, you look several steps ahead. You better ask yourself who you are going to replace them with, what kind of chance you have in getting someone you like, etc., etc.

Nix, for example, you can list Troup, Wang, even Williams, Graham (though it is really not fair) as misses. I ask you, without the 16-48 records emotion, how many GMs in NFL misses first 3 round picks as often as Nix did? Is everyone else perfect?

Honestly, I did not see the Steelers do better than Nix the last 3 drafts. To me, under Nix, the philosophy has changed to more mainstream drafting: they like certain measurables, prototype bodies for positions, bigger size, and battle tested players. The result is average in drafting, maybe a little better than average actually.

Do I wish for a top 5 GM running in Buffalo? Certainly. But what are the chances you get one. You have people like Modrak running the show before, always trying to hit one of the rare ones (small sized, small school product etc.) and you wind up with a terrible talent level after so many years. The thing is Buffalo just needs to be average in drafting, the bad results over missing 13 years of playoff should allow the Bills to get better talent over time than most of the other teams. And that's how NFL draft suppose to work.

Nix may very well be gone next week. But I don't have a big problem of his talent acquisition record. I will accept an average GM and hopefully we hit a homerun once in a while.

Gailey on the other hand is clearly below average in my opinion. He's NOT the OC but he acted like one. Having this team with terrible defensive records despite consistent investment is clearly the fault of the HC, not the GM. If you are only interested in one side of the ball and want to be a HC, you either get yourself defensive coaching skills up really quick or you need a sharp eye for defensive coaching talent. Gailey has proven he's a giant failure on both. In hindsight, this maybe Nix's inexperience as a GM in hiring Gailey, not investigating enough in Gailey's defensive side skills before giving him the HC job.

[Night Train]

It's not emotion. It's changing a front office culture of accepting below average results, which had gone on far too long.

[BertSquirtgum]

Take the stupidity out of making worthless threads.

[Ginger Vitis]

What about 3rd Round picks Alex Carrington And Kelvin Sheppard? They dont look like quality starters in the NFL..More on the backup level.

And using the Steelers not so great drafts to defend Nix isnt helping your argument because they are on a fast downward slope. And why should we accept average out of the Bills GMs draft record?

[ServoBillieves]

What about 3rd Round picks Alex Carrington And Kelvin Sheppard? They dont look like quality starters in the NFL..More on the backup level.

And using the Steelers not so great drafts to defend Nix isnt helping your argument because they are on a fast downward slope. And why should we accept average out of the Bills GMs draft record?

What's depressing is that you're serious. No plus out of Urbik? Carrington is in no way shape or form a mountain of a man and can't get his hands up when it matters, and Sheppard wasn't thrown in to a terribad situation.

[OpIv37]

Football is an emotional game. But running it is not an emotional business. The sign of people yelling Fire them all, clean house, etc. is just that - on emotion. The anyone but crowd.

If you want to run a business properly, you look several steps ahead. You better ask yourself who you are going to replace them with, what kind of chance you have in getting someone you like, etc., etc.

Nix, for example, you can list Troup, Wang, even Williams, Graham (though it is really not fair) as misses. I ask you, without the 16-48 records emotion, how many GMs in NFL misses first 3 round picks as often as Nix did? Is everyone else perfect?

Honestly, I did not see the Steelers do better than Nix the last 3 drafts. To me, under Nix, the philosophy has changed to more mainstream drafting: they like certain measurables, prototype bodies for positions, bigger size, and battle tested players. The result is average in drafting, maybe a little better than average actually.

Do I wish for a top 5 GM running in Buffalo? Certainly. But what are the chances you get one. You have people like Modrak running the show before, always trying to hit one of the rare ones (small sized, small school product etc.) and you wind up with a terrible talent level after so many years. The thing is Buffalo just needs to be average in drafting, the bad results over missing 13 years of playoff should allow the Bills to get better talent over time than most of the other teams. And that's how NFL draft suppose to work.

Nix may very well be gone next week. But I don't have a big problem of his talent acquisition record. I will accept an average GM and hopefully we hit a homerun once in a while.

Gailey on the other hand is clearly below average in my opinion. He's NOT the OC but he acted like one. Having this team with terrible defensive records despite consistent investment is clearly the fault of the HC, not the GM. If you are only interested in one side of the ball and want to be a HC, you either get yourself defensive coaching skills up really quick or you need a sharp eye for defensive coaching talent. Gailey has proven he's a giant failure on both. In hindsight, this maybe Nix's inexperience as a GM in hiring Gailey, not investigating enough in Gailey's defensive side skills before giving him the HC job.

There are a lot of flaws in here and I'm not going to take the time to address them all. But the major fallacy is this: using the Steelers over the last 2-3 years as a point of comparison. Historically, the Steelers have been one of the best in the NFL in terms of how they have run their organization. But they didn't make the playoffs this year and are aging. They are on the way down. So, saying the Bills are equal to the Steelers over the last 3 years doesn't mean a damn thing. The Steelers didn't draft well during that period. You need to compare the Bills to the teams that are winning, particularly the teams that are winning now that weren't winning 3 years ago. You can't just randomly pick an 8-8 team and say that Nix should be kept because his drafting was equal to that of the 8-8 team.

That's just completely illogical on every level.

[YardRat]

I have very little problem with Nix's player acquisitions, he's certainly done better than at least a few of those that held the post before him, but if he is insistent on keeping Gailey and his crew of numbnuts one more season than he needs to go also.

[IAG]

We should have kept Tom Donahoe years ago.

[THRILLHO]

Chan: You spend a first round pick on a RB when we already had a good RB combo going. You then trade the better of the two original RBs for next to nothing. That RB goes on to do great things as a strict #1 back. You then take that first round RB and deny him the carries, even though he has proven he can do great things with them. Did I mention YOU drafted him in the first round, with another RB that was just as good, and maybe better? Im glad you are getting fired. Let someone else clean up this mess.

[Novacane]

Thread rating=Terrible

[imbondz]

are you kidding me? If I take my emotion out of it I want them fired even more.

[psubills62]

The Bills already drained all the emotion out of me with this rotten season.

[THE END OF ALL DAYS]

Any team can have an average draft IF THEY HAVE A STAR QB! Get a dad gum quarterback dadgummit!

[EDS]

Football is an emotional game. But running it is not an emotional business. The sign of people yelling Fire them all, clean house, etc. is just that - on emotion. The anyone but crowd.

If you want to run a business properly, you look several steps ahead. You better ask yourself who you are going to replace them with, what kind of chance you have in getting someone you like, etc., etc.

Nix, for example, you can list Troup, Wang, even Williams, Graham (though it is really not fair) as misses. I ask you, without the 16-48 records emotion, how many GMs in NFL misses first 3 round picks as often as Nix did? Is everyone else perfect?

Honestly, I did not see the Steelers do better than Nix the last 3 drafts. To me, under Nix, the philosophy has changed to more mainstream drafting: they like certain measurables, prototype bodies for positions, bigger size, and battle tested players. The result is average in drafting, maybe a little better than average actually.

Do I wish for a top 5 GM running in Buffalo? Certainly. But what are the chances you get one. You have people like Modrak running the show before, always trying to hit one of the rare ones (small sized, small school product etc.) and you wind up with a terrible talent level after so many years. The thing is Buffalo just needs to be average in drafting, the bad results over missing 13 years of playoff should allow the Bills to get better talent over time than most of the other teams. And that's how NFL draft suppose to work.

Nix may very well be gone next week. But I don't have a big problem of his talent acquisition record. I will accept an average GM and hopefully we hit a homerun once in a while.

Gailey on the other hand is clearly below average in my opinion. He's NOT the OC but he acted like one. Having this team with terrible defensive records despite consistent investment is clearly the fault of the HC, not the GM. If you are only interested in one side of the ball and want to be a HC, you either get yourself defensive coaching skills up really quick or you need a sharp eye for defensive coaching talent. Gailey has proven he's a giant failure on both. In hindsight, this maybe Nix's inexperience as a GM in hiring Gailey, not investigating enough in Gailey's defensive side skills before giving him the HC job.

So you are using a team, the Steelers, that has been drafting in the bottom half of the first round, and comparing their draft results to Buddy's - who has been drafting in the top 10?

Compare Buddy's work to what has been done in Cinncinati the past three years:

Geno Atkins
Carlos Dunlap
A.J. Green
Andy Dalton
Kevin Zeitler
Vontaze Burflict

Note that Atkins and Green are among the very best at their respective positions in the entire NFL.

Look at some other teams who have consistently been drafting in the top 10: Either their front offices are being fired because they have are in the same place they started or they have improved, mostly through drafting. Let's look at Seattle and who they have drafted in the past three years:

Robert Wilson
Bruce Irvin
Russell Okung
Golden Tate
K.J. Wright
Bobby Wagner
Earl Thomas
Richard Sherman
Kam Chancellor

And they traded a fourth round pick for a 1600 yard rusher.