All-Time Bills Head Coaches Ranked - Part 1

Somebody asked me recently if I like Sean McDermott as a coach. Well, as a Bills fan for the past 45 years, I have to say, yes, he's certainly been been better than a lot of our coaches. Then, today I came across one of those links on ESPN for "The Worst Head Coaches in NFL History" and was expecting to find at least Harvey Johnson and possibly Jim Ringo represented, but, alas, neither appeared, likely forgotten in their 5-45-1 ineptitude - and the fact that it occurred in Buffalo. Yes, younger Bills fans, if you think your team is bad these days, fathom that winning percentage (it's .100 for the mathematically challenged). It was achieved in four seasons over 10 years - luckily only two were consecutive. Of course, Lou Saban, who is actually one of the most remarkable coaches in Bills history, appeared smack in the middle of all that.

Anyhow, this all inspired me to come with an all-time ranking of Bills head coaches over the years. I feel like I have some familiarity with all of them except the initial guy - Buster Ramsey - as I became a Bills fan in 1974 - during "The Second Age of Saban" (Lou, not Nick) and as Saban started with the Bills in their third year (1963) I feel connected to everything that came after him.

I grouped these in tiers, starting at the top:

Championship Winners
1. Marv Levy: Well, so, Levy didn't win a Super Bowl, so no NFL championship, but he did win four AFC titles, which I guess is technically the same as Saban's AFL championships, because in 1964-65 there was no Super Bowl, and who's to say that the Bills could have beat the Browns or Packers anyway, although the '64 team was pretty awesome. We'll also get to Saban's baggage, but Levy was simply great as a Bills coach with a 112-70 (.615) regular season record and a 19-11 playoff record - not to mention a place in the Hall of Fame. The only argument against Levy is that his teams were stacked, but it's important to note that he was the one who first discovered Bill Polian, the architect of the great '90s teams, when Levy hired Polian as a scout back in his days with the Kansas City Chiefs, so the two are inexorably linked.

2. Lou Saban:  Lou's record with Buffalo was 68-45-4 (.605) in the regular season and 2-2 in the playoffs (smaller tournament back then) but those two wins produced two titles for the Bills in 1964 and 1965. After leaving Buffalo following the second title, Saban returned seven years later and built the  Bills back up into a playoff team again. Saban is known as a coaching nomad, having made something like 20 stops in a long and winding career as a head coach at the high school, college and professional levels. But, his biggest successes came in Buffalo, where he turned a fledgling franchise into a champion, and after the team crumbled in the wake of his departure, returned and coached them up again. Of course, the Bills once again crumbled after he left the second time and Ralph Wilson wouldn't even put Saban on the Wall of Fame due to bad feelings over it.

Defensive Gurus:

3. Chuck Knox:  Chuck Knox was a very good football coach - especially in the regular season. In 22 years as an NFL head coach (with three different teams, including the Rams twice), Knox was 186-147-1 (.558) and this was somewhat tainted by his last four seasons, when he failed to record a winning record. Unfortunately, he was 7-11 in the playoffs, so he was kind of like an old school Andy Reid, but Knox's specialty was defense. He began his head coaching career in 1973 with the Rams and proceeded to go 54-15-1 in six seasons but couldn't make it past the NFC Championship game, falling to the Cowboys or Vikings every year. So, in 1978, he ended up in Buffalo, taking over a team that had gone a combined 5-23 the previous two seasons. By Knox's second season, the Bills were 7-9 and had the eighth ranked defense in the league. The 1980 and 1981 teams featured top six defenses and both made the playoffs, losing in the divisional round. In the strike-shortened 1982 season, the Bills struggled to a 4-5 record, dropping their last three games to miss the playoffs. Knox and Wilson then had a disagreement over salary and Knox ended up going to Seattle, where he turned around the Seahawks and took them to the playoffs in the four of the next six years.

4. Sean McDermott: Yes, I am going to place Sean McDermott here, even though he arguably took over a mediocre team from Rex Ryan and made it, well, mediocre - so far at least. Sure, McDermott has yet to win a playoff game, but either has anyone else on this list after Knox (and he won one Wild Card game). I am basing this ranking on what I see as McDermott's potential. He seems to have a plan and has certainly developed a top notch defense. Now, if we can just fix that offensive thing...

5. Wade Phillips: Speaking of defense, Wade is regarded as one of the all-time great defensive coordinators , his reputation cemented when the Broncos shut down the Panthers to win the Super Bowl a few years back. Last year, he helped the Rams make it to the Super Bowl. With Buffalo, Phillips also had a top 10 defense that peaked in 1999, when the Bills went 11-5 before falling in the Music City Miracle game. Overall, Phillips had a 29-19 regular season and 0-2 playoff record with the Bills, so he really didn't do a bad job, but you still felt he was riding the wave of those great Levy teams. And, of course, he oversaw the whole Flutie vs. Johnson fiasco. Phillips was fired after an 8-8 season when he showed loyalty by refusing to fire some of his assistants (as I remember it, or maybe it was refusing to wear a headset on the sidelines).

Coming next:  A Parade of Mediocrity.

10 Greatest Fiction Books

Currently reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and re-realizing what an amazing piece of literature it is. Really sums up an interesting time in American history - from my perspective at least - that hasn't been covered very well in our traditional history books - at least from what I've seen with my kids. Or, I haven't even seen many TV specials or anything that really cut the the heart of the matter like the great Hunter S.

I grew up in 1970s - I was born in 1967 and really came of age during that time period. So, I remember the '60s hangover that the '70s was and the way that Thompson depicts what really went down. I think the '70s, which spilled in into the '80s, were a very selfish time - of course, I was a kid, so I was naturally selfish as well - in the aftermath of a very community-oriented period. The '60s kind of ushered the spirit of individualism in America, but I think it went too far in some ways in rebelling against authority. Authority is often designed to maintain a communal spirit and that spirit I think got lost.

Thompson does a great job chronically all this in the form of a very entertaining story about a few days in Las Vegas. I am reading the book now after reading his Hell's Angels portrait that kind of broke Thompson into the mainstream. While that may have been a revolutionary book at the time, it doesn't really hold up that well. Fear and Loathing on the other hand, I think I could continue reading for the next 100 years at least. It's Thompson's perfect book. After that, he manages to get through about three quarters of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and then apparently has a breakdown of some sort and last quarter is just dictated and not nearly as tight or strong. After, that he seems to show intermittent brilliance in his column writing but nothing as sustained as his first two Fear and Loathing efforts.

So that's sort of a long prelude (in honor of Hunter) to my current list of 10 greatest fiction books I've read. Off top of head, here's what I got

1. On the Road - holds up on every read through
2. Brother Karamazov - so much depth
3. Catch 22 - black comedy as its finest
4. The Ginger Man - also great black comedy - kinda of a favorite theme for me
5. Sun Also Rises - Hemingway's best
6. Fear and Loathing....
7. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest -gotta have some Kesey
8. Crime and Punishment - I am a sucker for Dostoevsky
9. One Hundred Year's of Solitude - this should probably be higher
10. The Shining - great American Horror Story. I am thinking I am missing something that should replace this...

10a. I knew I was forgetting something - the Odyssey by Homer clearly needs to be placed near the top of this list.

but I have read all these books multiple times and will likely read them again and that is why they make my list.

Please share some I am missing and I will hopefully get a chance to check out.

Why Trump Needs AI

There's a great Dilbert strip that ran today. In it, our favorite jaded engineer is discussing the "breakthrough" he had in developing AI technology. Basically, he realized he was trying to duplicate something that doesn't exist: "rational human thought."

I think that fairly explains the current situation in the White House. Very few people who thought about it rationally would vote for the Donald as our president. At least that's what us Dems like to tell ourselves. But, there is more to the human make-up than rational thought. Unlike Dilbert, I haven't despaired completely, but I do realize that rationality only makes up part of our "intelligence." There are definitely things like "gut" and instinct that also come into play when making decisions. Trump has always understood this and capitalized on it vs. Dems who want to intellectualize everything.

And until the people that make AI understand this...well, maybe they already do. Check out this article that recently ran in The Atlantic on Why Technology Favors Tyranny. I mean look at what Facebook is being accused of doing to the U.S. elections.

Perhaps the bottom line is that Trump doesn't need to be smart, he's got tools (computers) he can leverage for that.

Quarterbacks Going the Way of Running Backs.

Here's an interesting little tidbit I found on the Web when searching to see who the NFL's highest paid quarterbacks are: None of the top six paid quarterbacks in the league willmake the playoffs. That's right, Rodgers, Ryan, Cousins, Stafford, etc., not to mention Roethlisberger and Flacco, who both carry a cap hits of more than $20 million, led their teams to the playoffs this year.

On the other side of the ledger, you had Mahomes, Trubisky, Goff, Deshaun Watson, and Dak Prescott (I'm not sure how you want to count Wentz and Lamar Jackson) - playing on their rookie contracts - take their teams to the promised land.

Here is what I believe: Quarterbacks are coming out of college more ready than ever and getting better coaching when they reach the pros. I had the opportunity to go to the Bills game last Sunday and watch Josh Allen throw three TD passes and run for two more, for which he was named AFC Offensive Player of the Week. Allen has certainly struggled at times this year, as was to be expected as he was considered the most "raw" of the any of the top QBs in last year's draft, but by the end of the year, he certainly looked like he could compete on an NFL level. More improvements should be expected next year, as well as from Baker Mayfield, who was great this year, leading the Browns to practically more wins in 2018 than they've had in the last decade, Sam Darnold, who showed flashes of brilliance, Josh Rosen and Lamar Jackson, who's team is already in the playoffs.

My point is, why pay a veteran quarterback $20 million per year, when you can draft a top rookie, pay him on his initial contract for 4-5 years and then, if you did it right, draft another, in the mean time paying people around him, like the Bears and Rams have done, to create a strong overall roster? This Bills, for example, apparently have $86 million cap space (not sure if this includes Shady's contract) available for next year, which potentially enables them to sign some serious free agents to build around Allen (assuming they can attract them to Buffalo). Could the Bills be a contender in 2019 and/or '20? Why not?

After that, you have to make a decision on Allen. How good will college QBs coming out be in three years? I know this year seems like a thin year for QBs in the draft, so maybe what I am proposing is a fallacy and the last two years were anomalies, but I am thinking it may be a trend.

Here's my theory: No more taking several years to develop quarterbacks and then paying them big money when they mature. Bring them out of college, let them run all they want to (ala Allen and Jackson), use them up, and move on to the next college phenom. In the mean time, use that $20 million (probably $30 million in a couple years) that you had earmarked for you QB and pay your defense, lineman, receivers, etc. Seems to have worked for the Seahawks for a few years and is working for multiple teams right now. Perhaps this is the next blueprint for success in the NFL.