Bills hold price line on tickets
D-line coach Kollar leaves to join Texans
The Buffalo Bills displayed discretion with their fan base Tuesday by announcing they would not raise ticket prices for the 2009 season.
The timing would not have been good if the team wanted to increase prices, given the team’s disappointing 7-9 finish last season and the generally unpopular decision to retain head coach Dick Jauron.
The average cost of a Bills season ticket will remain $51.24, which was the lowest in the NFL last season.
In other Bills news, defensive line coach Bill Kollar left the team to accept the position of assistant head coach and defensive line coach with the Houston Texans.
The Bills had raised ticket prices after the 2007 season by an average of 10 percent. But that hike still did not pull the Bills up from the bottom of the league in average cost.
The Bills said Tuesday their average ticket is more than $20 lower than the NFL average for season tickets.
Several other teams already have announced they will hold the line on tickets. San Diego, Cincinnati, Washington, Detroit and Minnesota are in that group. Houston, which last year ranked 19th in average price, announced it is raising tickets 3.7 percent, up to an average of $67.37.
The Bills will play seven regular-season games and two preseason games in Orchard Park this year. They will play one regular-season game in Toronto as part of their five-year, eight-game series in the Rogers Centre.
The best lower-level sideline seats for games at Ralph Wilson Stadium cost $70 a game, or $630 for the season. There are eight different price ranges for the regular, nonluxury seats at the stadium. The lowest season- ticket price is $30 a game for “The Coors Lite Rock Pile,” located on the club level in the scoreboard end zone. Prices for individual-game seats, which are not yet on sale, also remain unchanged.
The Bills sold 56,011 season tickets last season.
Meanwhile, Jauron must find a replacement for Kollar, who spent the past three seasons directing the defensive line.
Kollar was under contract with the Bills, and they did not have to let him out of his deal. However, Jauron’s approach with assistant coaches is if you don’t want to stay, he generally doesn’t want to keep you. The Bills initially declined permission for the Texans to talk to Kollar, according to a league source, but then relented. The Texans presumably will be giving Kollar a pay raise, since he’s adding the title of assistant head coach, which he did not have in Buffalo.
Kollar spoke to reporters at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., about the move.
“Coach Jauron had said when we first got there that he wouldn’t hold anybody back if it was a move that you really wanted to make, and it was nice of him to give me that opportunity,” Kollar said. “They had to square it with the GM, Russ Brandon, and Ralph Wilson, and it went for quite a while. It wasn’t like it was a one-day deal. The Texans had been working on it for over a week and it finally came to be the other day.”
Asked why he wanted to leave for Houston, Kollar said: “I just thought it was a great opportunity to come down to be with an offense li ke they’ve got here. Hopefully — it’s always the same thing — you always want to get to the playoffs and hopefully end up making it to the Super Bowl, and I thought this would be a great opportunity.”
Kollar, 56, has 20 years of coaching experience in the NFL and has a strong reputation around the league. Before coming to Buffalo, he had long stints with the St. Louis Rams (five years) and Atlanta Falcons (11 years).
“Bill is an outstanding defensive line coach and we wish him the very best,” Jauron said in a statement released by the Bills.
The player who developed best under Kollar the past three years was defensive tackle Kyle Williams, had a strong season in 2008. Kollar has had more success in recent years with players who could be considered overachievers than with first-round picks. Bills defensive tackle John McCargo did not progress and never really connected with Kollar. When Kollar was in St. Louis, first-rounder Ryan Pickett flourished but first-rounders Jimmy Kennedy and Damione Lewis did not.
The Texans want Kollar to install a more attacking style with their four-man line. That’s how Kollar has coached for many years. Houston played more of a read-and-react style the past several seasons.
Elsewhere, Bills offensive tackle Jason Peters has withdrawn from the Pro Bowl due to a late-season knee injury. He will be replaced by Miami rookie Jake Long.
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