Dear Mr. Wilson,
Hope this holiday season finds you and yours well.
Glad to hear your people and ours came to a deal to keep your football team in Buffalo for at least a while longer, sparing everyone months of speculation and angst.
While I wish we lived in a world where owners of multi-million-dollar businesses paid all their own expenses, the fact is we do not. Especially when those businesses are guaranteed to turn a healthy profit and involve grown men playing games with balls for the benefit of tens of thousands of people who buy tickets, and millions more watching at home.
So I'm not writing to complain about the cost to in taxpayers to refurbish the stadium in Orchard Park that you so generously allowed us to name for you in the last lease deal, as opposed to selling to a corporate sponsor for a few million or so.
And it is worth mentioning that, unlike the last lease, you are kicking in 25 percent of the construction costs AND paying rent. A cynic would point out that your contributions are little more than semantics, since you'll be receiving far more than you're contributing over the life of the deal, but, again, I'm not here to gripe.
I would, however, like to talk about a term with which you are certainly familiar -- return on investment.
According to what I've read, Erie County and New York State are kicking in $226 million, $95 million of which goes toward stadium renovation. I understand that part of the deal requires formation of a committee to study the siting and construction of a new ballpark for your team to move into when this deal expires in 2023.
Given the contracts awarded to Mario Williams, Fred Jackson, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Stevie Johnson over the past year, you can't be accused of going cheap on the roster. But with the lease deal completed, you have another pretty important decision coming up fast. Who is going to run the team that plays in that fixer-upper?
Chan Gailey seems like a nice enough man and has shown admirable loyalty in continuing to believe that Fitzpatrick is an adequate quarterback for a National Football League team, despite voluminous and incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
Coming up on the end of his third season here, though, there is just as much evidence that our team (and, let's face it, if we're ponying up roughly 12 percent of the Bills' appraised value, we can justifiably claim partial ownership) is not going to get much better while he is the head coach.
There certainly has not been much tangible improvement this year. Even if they win today in Miami and next week at home against the New York Jets, all those big contracts and one of the league's weakest schedules will have added up to a one-game improvement over 2011, when the Bills lost eight of their last nine games to finish 6-10.
Worse yet, four of Buffalo's nine losses -- the first games against the Jets and New England and the disasters in San Francisco and Toronto -- have been among the most putrid performances in recent memory, afternoons on which the Bills were thoroughly outclassed.
This happens to even pretty good teams once in a while. But even the worst professional squads rarely look like amateurs four times in one season.
Neither of us needs to go through the aggravation of assigning blame for the other five losses, so let's just say there's plenty to go around. Finding unique ways to lose on a weekly basis is not a sign of a well-coached team, either.
As has been discussed before in this space and elsewhere, not one of Buffalo's five wins this year has come against what anyone would call a good opponent, with the vanquished combining for an overall record of 20-50 at this writing.
Don't get me wrong. Like I said, Gailey seems like a decent guy, and has shown far more candor than his immediate predecessors. He has gotten some decent production out of pretty average offensive talent, and I'm thankful he doesn't project the pseudo-drill sergeant demeanor that permeates the NFL.
As with Fitzpatrick and your general manager, Buddy Nix, I like Gailey. I just wish he was a better coach.
Three years into an organizational rebuilding program that has yet to achieve mediocrity, there is an argument to be made for a complete reboot. But with the exception of quarterback and cornerback, the roster has improved during Nix's tenure, so keeping him in place wouldn't be the worst decision you've made in the last 53 years.
If Nix insists on giving Gailey and Fitzpatrick for a fourth shot at getting it right, though, he needs to go, too.
You may have noticed that there are a lot of other ways that $22 million per year for the next decade could be spent around here, ways that would have an impact much greater than hosting seven very big parties every fall. But we, by way of our elected officials, have chosen to use it to keep the Bills in town.
Please don't make us regret it.
Merry Christmas,
David Staba
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