Roman’s firing comes less than 24 hours after the Bills fell to 0-2 with Thursday night’s 37-31 loss to the Jets.
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In 2015, Roman took a quarterback that had never started a meaningful regular season game before in his career to such a high level, that the Bills weren’t willing to go into the next season without that player signed to a long-term extension.
Though the offense floundered in Week 1, the Bills scored 31 points Thursday – including two touchdowns on long passes to Marquise Goodwin and Greg Salas. The Bills finished 13th in offense in 2015 but led the league in rushing yards. “The only thing I cared about was is my ACL all right and am I going to get the feeling back in my leg?”
“I thought he was down for the count for sure”, said quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, who tapped Marshall on the shoulder in condolence on the sideline before the receiver left to have his knee tested. He joined Rex Ryan in NY in 2009 after serving as a running backs coach for four other teams.
Roman did a lot more good than bad for the Bills, but Ryan has always utilized a run-first style dating back to his time with the Jets that wasn’t working with Roman and running back LeSean McCoy.
Rob Ryan, Rex Ryan’s brother, is the Bills’ assistant head coach/defense and Dennis Thurman is the defensive coordinator.
And while it is just the second week of the regular season, Ryan saw this as an opportunity to try to make a change now before it was too late in the season.
“It is.” Zimmer said after practice with mock suspense, “we’ll find out Sunday”. Now the Bills are staring down the possibility of starting 0-4, with the Arizona Cardinals (at home) and New England Patriots (on the road) up next. He’s brought in players that fit his scheme – and ones that he believed could help silence all the critics. So why would Rex decide to turn on his offensive coordinator just when it seemed that the team was gaining some momentum? The Bills, however, can opt out of the contract in each of the next two years.
That very well could be true, but maybe Ryan feels it’s the other way around and that Roman didn’t trust Taylor enough and was stunting his development.
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Buffalo managed despite miscues to hold the Jets to a Nick Folk field goal after 6 plays for 66 yards. He added that after Friday morning’s meeting with the Pegulas, the husband-and-wife ownership team was willing to back him up on his decision to shake things up by firing the offensive coordinator. The team also can not dwell on the past two games, and will have to trust in each other and the coaching staff to try and find a way to start putting up some numbers on the win column. “I’ve been around him for two years and he has a tremendous work ethic and ton of knowledge of this offense and what we’re trying to do”.
