Chan Gailey: Player Evaluation Most Important Off-Season Function

The Buffalo Bills still have one more regular season game to get through, but Chan Gailey has already lent insight into the Bills' process of getting better this off-season. Gailey was asked Wednesday about whether the entire season, a specific set of games, statistics, a gut feeling, or a combination of those factors was important to making player evaluations once the season ends.

"Yes. The answer to that is yes. All of that," Gailey said. "You make a mistake if you try to look at a microcosm of the season and say 'that's the season.' You can't discount the first half of the season. You can't discount someone's progress or someone's demise. You have to look at the whole thing and see how people have done. We evaluate our process, we evaluate practice schedule, we evaluate everything at the end of the season to see how we can improve our product."

Gailey was then asked if one of the aforementioned factors - game evaluation, practice evaluation, or process evaluation - was any more important than the others. The head coach gave a general (and obvious) answer: the Bills need to evaluate their own players correctly.

"Making sure you get player evaluations correct is the biggest thing, so that when you head into free agency, draft, all of that, you have a good idea of the direction you're going and how you're going to get there," Gailey said.