Fewell takes over as Jauron's tenure ends
Bills' interim coach left to pick up the pieces
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Dick Jauron's final campaign with the Buffalo Bills was like a long Hail Mary pass that never came remotely close to being completed.
After three straight 7-9 seasons, Jauron already had the odds stacked against him entering this season. The attitude of Bills owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr. last January was "I'm giving him one more year." Everyone knew Jauron needed to have a strong season to last beyond 2009.
Maybe that's why Jauron spent the past 10 months acting like a desperate coach.
Jauron's desperation came to an end Tuesday when he was fired by Wilson.
Defensive coordinator Perry Fewell was introduced as the interim coach Tuesday evening.
Fewell, 47, has been defensive coordinator the past 3½ seasons. He said he thinks the Bills (3-6) will be ready to play well when they take the field Sunday in Jacksonville.
"I think we'll be focused," Fewell said at a news conference. "I think we'll go out and practice with a purpose. We'll all get on the same page, and our focus is Jacksonville. We're professionals. That's what we do."
Fewell said he will continue to serve as defensive coordinator and call the defensive signals. He said he would announce who will start at quarterback today.
The firing of Jauron ended a 3½-year tenure that saw the Bills go 24-33 and 5-14 in their last 19 games.
Jauron's biggest offseason coaching decision — to switch to exclusive use of the no-huddle offense — ultimately hastened his demise. From the start it looked like a dubious fit for the Bills' personnel.
The Bills have a defense predicated on speed. The more well-rested the defense is, the better the Bills' front-seven defenders can play fast and get after the opposition. But a no-huddle offense is almost always going to lose the time of possession battle. Even in Jim Kelly's career, the Bills lost the time of possession battle every season in which they ran the no-huddle. The no-huddle was bound to wear down this year's defense, and that's exactly what it did.
On offense, the Bills were trying to run a no-huddle with an offensive line that had five players playing in new positions and three of them (at the start of the season) who never had played a down in the NFL. Expecting such a group to be efficient from the start in the no-huddle was a stretch at best.
Yet Jauron said before the season he always had wanted to run the no-huddle since he became a head coach, and felt he had the personnel this year to do it.
"The faster the better," Jauron said in preseason. That's where the rub came with offensive coordinator Turk Schonert. To run the no-huddle at high speed, you need a small package of plays. Schonert believed the small package was too easy to defend. You better have elite talent to run a small package well.
So Jauron fired Schonert 10 days before the start of the season. Jauron, in effect, was saying, "If I'm going down, I'm going down exactly the way I want to do it."
After nine games, he went down.
The offensive results, as all Bills fans know, have been a disaster. Seven straight games of fewer than 300 net yards, a first since the 1968 season. They rank 29th on offense. They have had 14 straight games with fewer than 230 yards passing.
Plenty of other factors influenced Jauron's demise. He signed off on the idea of handing the left tackle job to Langston Walker, who didn't even last until the season opener. His first offensive coordinator, Steve Fairchild, didn't work out very well. He has not had the benefit of a strong quarterback. J.P. Losman failed, and Trent Edwards has not produced as hoped this season. Jauron had trouble winning in the AFC East, going 8-13 in those games. He had trouble beating good teams, going 2-21 the previous three seasons against teams that finished with a winning record.
Jauron did have success in getting production out of his defenses, which frequently kept the team in games. The defense ranked fourth in red-zone efficiency in 2007 and 2008. This year's defense ranks 26th in yards allowed and 22nd in points allowed.
The Bills might have fired Jauron on the bye week following a Nov. 1 home loss to Houston, but the fact the Bills won at New York and at Carolina the two previous weeks probably earned him a reprieve. The fact that midseason changes rarely have a big effect on a team's win total made Wilson reluctant to relieve Jauron of his duties. But after consecutive ugly losses to Houston and Tennessee, Wilson decided he could not wait any longer.
"It's the toughest thing I ever had to do personally because he's such a great guy," Wilson said. "But nothing ever seemed to go right."
The move comes in the wake of Sunday's 41-17 loss at Tennessee.
"He's just a great guy, and I feel very bad about it," Wilson said. "But I think it's best for the team and the fans and everybody."
Jauron, 59, benefited from what might be the most fortunately timed contract extension in the Bills' 50-year history. He agreed to a three-year extension shortly after the Bills' 5-1 start last season. The guaranteed deal was worth about $3 million a year.
The Bills last year became one of only three NFL teams in the past 31 years to start 5-1 but finish with a losing record. They were 7-9. Jauron also was only the 14th coach since 1970 to survive to start a fourth season despite three straight losing seasons.
The Bills' collapse last year, along with questionable in-game management decisions, made Jauron a target of fan displeasure. At the end of last season, fans favored Jauron's dismissal by a 90 percent to 10 percent margin, in a Buffalo News poll.
Fewell, meanwhile, said the philosophy he aims to bring to the team is simple.
"Play like hell and win," he said.
He said he did not plan any major strategic changes on offense, which has been the main source of the team's problems.
"No. We are who we are," he said. "We have that identity. We're going to try to get a little spark, but we are who we are."
He said his emotions were "up and down." But he called the interim job "the chance of a lifetime."
Asked how the team can turn its performance around, Fewell said:
"We just need to go out and be successful. We need to have some success, get excited about what we're doing and just win a football game, win one football game. Then I think that will take care of itself. That's the best cure, win one football game, Jacksonville on Sunday."
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