FanPost

If Jauron had any integrity, he'd simply quit

So Ralph Wilson and his inner circle are completely okay with the direction of this team?  That's understandable, I suppose.  Wilson's $25,000 investment in this franchise is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  Despite a decade of missing the playoffs as well as a brutal export of one of its home games to a foreign country, the team hit lofty season ticket sales goals last year and has managed to sell out all of its regular season home games the last two years.  Business at OBD is remarkably good.

Bills fans are obviously remarkable in their fierce loyalty to this team and Western New York is on par with a minimal number of places around the league like Colorado, D.C./Northern Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as one of the best collections of fans in the nation.  Take it from someone who has lived in the Philadelphia area for almost 30 years and cohabitates with a fan base that uses their football team as nothing more than an excuse to drink at socially unacceptable times of the week and commit petty street crimes; Buffalo fans are phenomenal.  Unlike Eagles fans, Bills fans are remarkably astute about their team.  The merits and drawbacks of the 7th linebacker on the roster are fiercely debated at all times of the year as evidenced by this blog.  So when something like 90% of the Bills' fans in polls from all over the place including "The Buffalo News", espn.com, this web site, etc. believe that Dick Jauron is completely over-matched as a head coach in the NFL, they certainly have a degree of credibility that some fan bases probably wouldn't deserve. 

Wilson, his marketing guru GM, and his inner circle can't sell the fans Jauron's merits as a coach at this point.  We've all seen how he manages a game, constructs a coaching staff, and constructs a game plan these past three years.  Even Wilson himself has reportedly been irked by the game day management of his franchise under Jauron (regardless of who he chooses to direct the blame at).  Instead, Wilson and his inner circle seem to be selling the Jauron renewal by claiming that Jauron is some sort of saintly human being that "deserves" a chance at redemption.  Dick Jauron's "loyalty" has apparently earned him a 4th try to win an 8th game, a 7th chance to beat the Patriots (who Jauron reminds us all that we "don't match up" with - especially in terms of the head coach matchup), another crack at mustering one win in our six rivalry games against the Jets, Patriots, and Dolphins in 2009.  Well here's a question: why doesn't Dick Jauron's supposed honesty, integrity, and loyalty qualities extend to the fans of the franchise he has helped run into the ground?  Dick Jauron has to know somewhere inside of him that he's overmatched as an NFL head coach and really, he's just coming back in 2009 to steal another paycheck.  If Jauron had any of the supposedly virtuous qualities that Wilson and his ragged players are trying to sell us, he'd be honest enough to walk away and give the 2009 a chance before it begins.

Reading all the Bills articles around the web this morning, nothing irked me more than reading the ringing endorsement of this decision from Jauron's players.  People like Robert Royal, Chris Kelsay, and Trent Edwards are all just thrilled to stick with the status quo.  The lead article on the Bills' official web site today is in fact entitled "Players excited Jauron retained".  To me, that's the real problem here.  As Wilson said after the Toronto disaster, it's really all about the players.  Well, these are Jauron's hand-picked players who haven't experienced anything better than 7-9 these last three years.  Do they want to try something different?  No.  They're perfectly fine with how things are.  Today, they're excited, but where was this excitement in Foxboro this October with the division lead on the line against a team that ran up the score on them on national television in their own building the year before?  The Bills didn't even put up a fight that day and simply took to Jauron's belief that beating New England would be nice, but really isn't all that plausible when you look at it honestly.  Well, I'd like to make that plausible someday soon.  If Dick Jauron can be as honest about the odds of his players playing with the Patriots, he should be as honest about the work he's done with this team.  He should simply walk away because he's proven not to be good enough.  While he's at it, he can take his excited December vacationers like Chris Kelsay and Robert Royal with him.

Just another great fan opinion shared on the pages of BuffaloRumblings.com.