Of Course, Fitzpatrick Should Look Over His Shoulder

We realize the Bills' bye week has made their disintegration against Tennessee fade into what seems like the distant past.


And that other than updates on Mario Williams' balky wrist and the alleged defensive savior's return to practice, there has not been much news coming out of Orchard Park in the interim.

But is Buddy Nix talking about the team's need to draft a quarterback of the future really earth-shaking news?

Or news at all?

Now, if Nix had drawled something like, "Dang it, if there's one thing we've learned from Fitzpatrick's performance over the last couple years, it's that we're not even sneaking into a wild-card spot with that scattter-arm giving the ball to the other guys all the time," then you'd have a story worth a media frenzy.

You can certainly read that sentiment between the lines of the Buffalo general manager's comments on WGR's morning show Friday, or to reporters later in the day,

"Listen, we have said from day one, that we want to draft a good young quarterback," Nix told morning hosts Howard Simon and Jeremy White on the team's official radio station. "I don't want to leave here without a franchise guy for the future in place. I have not said that before but I'm saying it now because its fact."

But even teams with decent quarterbacks draft their potential successors. To not do so, to go into a season with, say, Tyler Thigpen and Tarvaris Jackson as the only alternatives to the starter in the short or long term, could be considered downright negligent.

Had Nix said, "Ryan has proven that he deserves to be this team's quarterback for the next decade -- in fact, I just signed him to another contract extension," then that, also, would have been a pretty big story. As well as legal grounds for court-mandated psychiatric evaluation.

Potentially more significant was Nix's insistence that Chan Gailey will remain as head coach beyond this year, his third in Buffalo, no matter how the 3-4 Bills fare the rest of the way, starting Sunday in Houston.

"You change every three years and you never quite get there," Nix said, according to the Buffalo News.

Significant, but not especially surprising.

Front-office types simply do not speculate on future firings, especially when the coach in question was their hire in the first place. And Nix is probably being honest when he says he has no plans to replace Gailey.

If the humiliating nature of Buffalo's four losses -- three abject blow-outs, including two historically pitiful defensive efforts, and a fourth-quarter collapse against one of the NFL's feeblest offenses sealed by perhaps Fitzpatrick's worst decision yet -- continues, though, that decision may not be Nix's to make.

Buffalo's start has thoroughly stifled the team's preseason buzz, both locally and nationally. Bills CEO Russ Brandon has done a remarkable job selling a stunningly mediocre on-field product over the past few years, but not even another Williams-level signing is going to cut it if the teams continues skidding towards another 5-11 or 6-10 finish.

If anyone can sell Ralph Wilson on a front-office overhaul, it would be Brandon. Especially with rumors about Bill Polian, architect of the Bills' Super Bowl teams -- as well as the remarkably quick respectability of the expansion Carolina Panthers and the Indianapolis Colts' ascension to the NFL's elite -- shopping himself and his son, Chris, as a package deal floating around.

Polian split with Wilson over personal differences after Buffalo's third Super Bowl loss, stepping down in January 1993. Such a move would not be without precedence, though. Wilson got over getting jilted by Lou Saban following Buffalo's second straight American Football League championship in 1965, bringing the wandering coach back before the 1972 season.

That move, along with the presence of O.J. Simpson, produced three winning records and a playoff berth in four full seasons before Saban quit again. Compared to what the Bills have done since their last postseason appearance following the 1999 season, that would rate as a relative Golden Age.

He may have just turned 94, but Ralph Wilson -- who has never suffered embarrassments of this sort quietly for very long, might just have at least one more fresh start in him.