Buffalo Bills Still Have Holes To Fill On Coaching Staff

The Buffalo Bills hired a new quarterbacks coach in David Lee last week, but their work is not done in filling out their coaching staff - and more moves may be on the horizon beyond what is expected.

The team's wide receivers coach, Stan Hixon, left to take the same position - with the added title of Assistant Head Coach - on Bill O'Brien's staff at Penn State. Therefore, the team will need to hire a receivers coach. There is an internal candidate: Kevin Patullo has worked with the receivers while serving as the team's offensive quality control coach for the past two seasons. The team could also look to hire from outside, as well; in fact, that may be the likely route.

Dave Wannstedt's promotion to defensive coordinator could cause some shuffling on the defensive coaching staff, where he seems unlikely to retain his previous role of coaching the inside linebackers. The scheme he eventually settles on may affect how Chan Gailey goes about filling that position.

Rather than hiring a new inside linebackers coach, the Bills instead added William Inge to its coaching staff as an assistant defensive line coach. With two defensive line coaches on the staff, it's possible that the team transitions outside linebackers coach Bob Sanders to a more traditional linebackers coach role to fill Wannstedt's shoes. Sanders was originally hired to coach the defensive line by Dick Jauron in 2009, but he has experience coaching linebackers from his time at Richmond, Florida, and with the Miami Dolphins - where, ironically, he worked under Wannstedt.

Then again, the team could just hire a replacement for Wannstedt at inside linebackers coach - or perhaps promote quality control assistant Adrian White, a former pro defensive back - and keep rolling with the status quo, as well.

Last week, our sister site, BigCatCountry.com, reported that assistant offensive line coach Bobby Johnson was scheduled to interview Monday for a position on Mike Mularkey's staff with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Were that move to come to fruition - it's still a possibility - the Bills could again be in the market for an understudy to Joe D'Alessandris.

UPDATE: Johnson has, indeed, left the Bills to become the Jaguars' tight ends coach. [Source]

Finally, there has been speculation for two consecutive off-seasons now that defensive backs coach George Catavolos could leave the Bills to join Jauron and the Cleveland Browns in the same role. The Browns, as expected, looked into that possibility recently, as current secondary coach Jerome Henderson's contract was up; Henderson has since re-joined Rob Ryan on the Dallas Cowboys' coaching staff. All signs for now, however, point to Catavolos staying in Buffalo to finish out the final year of his current contract.