| December 18, 2003 | « Previous Story | HOME | Next Story » | Posted at 01:43 AM |
You should always be careful what you wish for. The Bills fans are understandably tired of Gregg Williams and Kevin Gilbride. Fans probably would not be so down on Williams if they saw some improvements from his first year, but they haven’t. They still see players making mistakes, poor game time decisions, poor play calling and some pretty uninspired play at times. So with the assumption that a new coach is in order to jump start a fairly talented team, the voting begins.
Surprisingly to me, one of the leading candidates among Bills fans is Jim Fassel from the NY Giants. Myself, being a "Gint"s fan, I am perplexed why Buffalonians are calling his name at all. I can tell you what you will probably get, considering I have been burdened by Fassel’s era for the last 7 years. Would Fassel be an improvement over G.W.? Probably. Should I be satisfied that the Giants at least got to the Super Bowl under Fassel? Maybe I am a spoiled Parcells fan. But, maybe I have seen some of the same things with the Giants that Buffalonians have seen with G.W.’s team.
Fassel’s offense is complex with many shifts, pattern adjustments and the like. Offenses like the Bills and Giants are prone to mistakes being made. That’s exactly what we saw with the Giants offense, especially as we got closer to the endzone. While the "Gint’s" offense was ranked very high the last two years, they were one of the worst redzone offenses and only a mediocre scoring team. The Giants offense also revolved around the pass, so the Giants had a hard time protecting leads in the fourth quarter. The Giants under Fassel were not able to run when it counted. In Fassel’s 7 years, I can remember once when they were able to run the ball to keep it away from the other team.
In fact, being a "Gint’s" fan, I have been privileged to many (many) close games, regardless of the opponent, because Jim Fassel’s offense could never find away to put a team away. This was partially a function of Fassel’s passing offense and partially a function of Fassel’s coaching style. I am of the belief there are two types of coaches; the ones that coach “to win” and the other coaches “not to lose”. Coaches like Parcell’s, Jim Johnson, and Dick Vermeil pull out all the bags of tricks in big games. They play with confidence in their players and the players respond. Fassel typically tightens up in big games. His play calling gets more conservative. Fassel’s teams usually won against the teams they were supposed to beat, but the assumption is that good teams will break even against each other. Fassel obviously won some games against winning teams but his overall record against winning teams is abysmal.
Another pattern Gints fans experienced during the Fassel era was a pattern of when his teams did well for the season and when they did not. When the expectations were high the team ended up with a .500 or lower winning percentage. When expectations were low, the team made the playoffs. The last three years are a perfect case in point. Three years ago the Giants had come off a Super Bowl loss with a young team, not a huge turnover of players and poised to make another run for the playoffs. The team fumbled. The next year they had some big turnover in their offensive line and a couple of other positions. With low expectations the team performed well and went 10-6 with a loss to San Fran in the first round of the playoffs (it’s to bad they couldn’t run in the fourth quarter to run out the clock). So going into this year the expectations were high again that the team would build off of last year’s success. Buffalo had a better record then the Giants this year.
I could go on, I could tell you how on second down if the Giants get an incomplete pass on first down – they run the ball 87% of the time on second down, I think you get the point. Don’t bemoan Donahue if you doesn’t pursue Fassel, Buffalo deserves better. Tom Coughlin and Dennis Green are also winning coaches that have made the playoffs. So be careful what you wish for.
