Howard Simon of WGR 550<\/a>\u00a0to discuss fan reaction to the Ryan hiring, Marrone opting out, and the Bills’ offense under Chan Gailey during his time as head coach. \u00a0Simon has been covering sports in Buffalo since 1989 and was kind enough to take the time to shed some light on what Jets fans can expect from Gailey, and what Bills fans are expecting from Ryan, as well as a couple of words on pending Bills free agent running back CJ Spiller and the success he had under Gailey in 2012.<\/p>\nGlenn Naughton:\u00a0<\/strong>Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today Howard. \u00a0I’d like to start off in order of events and cover Doug Marrone’s departure. \u00a0How surprised were you, the fans and the organization by his decision to step down?<\/p>\nHoward Simon:\u00a0<\/strong>I think people were pretty surprised. \u00a0Even when word came out that there was this opt-out clause and that the window had opened up, I still think most people figured he’d be back. \u00a0There was some dissatisfaction with him from the fan base but not from ownership. \u00a0They had been talking about continuity, not changing coaches every two or three years, so when he opted out I think it caught a lot of people by surprise.<\/p>\nGN:\u00a0<\/b>What was his relationship with his players like prior to the announcement and what was their reaction after the fact?<\/p>\n
HS:\u00a0<\/strong>The only reaction we had from guys was like the fans and looking at Twitter. \u00a0A few guys tweeted angry reactions because he was a guy who spent so much time talking about loyalty and trust and all these things, then uses the opt-out clause after going 9-7.<\/p>\nGN:\u00a0<\/strong>What were you guys hearing or thinking in Buffalo with his situation and being linked to the Jets? \u00a0Was there any speculation in Buffalo that Marrone would end up with the Jets?<\/p>\nHS:\u00a0<\/strong>That was pretty much it once the opt-out happened. \u00a0When the story broke, it was being portrayed as a done deal. \u00a0We were thinking that one of the reasons he opted out was that his agent got a feel from the Jets that his hiring would be a formality.<\/p>\nGN:\u00a0<\/strong>With Rex Ryan coming on board to replace Marrone, what has the fan and media reaction been thus far?<\/p>\nHS:\u00a0<\/strong>Well, it’s been pretty positive. \u00a0Not all positive because of his last four years with the Jets, but let’s face it, the Jets team that faced the Bills this year was awful. \u00a0Some of the fans who were concerned about the hiring probably were concerned because of what they saw from the team Rex fielded against the Bills this year. \u00a0I think most people were happy with that. \u00a0He’s boisterous, and I think people like that swagger. I think some people were unhappy about it but other people were very happy to see Doug Marrone leave. \u00a0I think Ryan, his experience in the division, and his history against the Patriots\u00a0being better than what the Bills have done is\u00a0another reason why people are happy with it.<\/p>\nGN:\u00a0<\/strong>Have the fans expressed any concern about the Jets’ inability to field a good offense over the past several seasons? \u00a0Mark Sanchez and Geno Smith aren’t much to get excited about, but consistently failing to show progress on offense may worry some people.<\/p>\nHS:\u00a0<\/strong>I think that’s pretty much where the Bills have been for the past ten years. \u00a0They can pretty much only go up from here because their offense has regularly been in the bottom five or ten for years. \u00a0A lot of people wanted to know who was going to run his offense. \u00a0With him, the defense will be fine so there were no worries there so really the second part of the Rex hire was “what is the plan?” and I think Greg Roman eased some of the fears or concerns people had because Rex will keep the defense at a high level.<\/p>\nGN:\u00a0<\/strong>You’ve been in Buffalo long enough that you covered the Bills during the Chan Gailey era. \u00a0Those teams struggled on defense, but Gailey seemed to do quite a good job with the offense and developing Ryan Fitzpatrick. \u00a0What do you remember most about his time there and those teams?<\/p>\nHS:\u00a0<\/strong>Well, that was the best offensive stretch they had since Drew Bledsoe was here so relatively speaking it was great. \u00a0Gailey was the opposite of Rex. \u00a0The offenses were good but the defenses were bad. \u00a0George Edwards, Dave Wannstedt, it didn’t seem to matter who the coordinator was, they just didn’t play well. \u00a0If you look at 2011, they started out really well at 4-1, they beat New England, Philly, they beat Oakland and were averaging over 30 points per game, but that year the offense was really good. \u00a0He had Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback and not a lot of other talent. \u00a0They got a lot out of Fitzpatrick, and for CJ Spiller, that was his best year and he used him well in the screen game. \u00a0I liked Gailey because he was a nice guy, he was really popular, but by the end he made some strange in-game decisions that came under fire. There were some decisions he made at the end that had people scratching their heads but I mean, he was a great guy, but it was time.<\/p>\nGN:\u00a0<\/strong>That was going to be my next question. \u00a0CJ Spiller did have his best season under Gailey. \u00a0With him being a free agent, is he a player you could see coming to the Jets to play for Gailey?<\/p>\nHS:\u00a0<\/strong>I think so. \u00a0For whatever reason when Chan left and Marrone came in, they weren’t able to get the same production out of Spiller. Don’t get me wrong, some of it is on CJ because at times he can be too tentative. \u00a0A lot of times he’ll run east\/west instead of north\/south so a lot of it is on him. \u00a0But…when he had his big year with Gailey, he was running north\/south, he was running outside getting big gains and going between the tackles, getting him out in space in the passing game. \u00a0He was ripping off big play after big play after big play. \u00a0I would assume Spiller is interested in playing for Gailey again just because they had so much success, whereas things seem to have fallen apart for him here.<\/p>\nGN:\u00a0<\/b>What about his injury history? \u00a0I feel like he’s a guy we’re always hearing about being banged up.<\/p>\n
HS:\u00a0<\/strong>I know he was hurt this year with the shoulder injury but he’s not a guy who has had durability issues. \u00a0I think the problem people have with CJ was his vision on the field and would sometimes have a lot of negative yard plays.<\/p>\nWith free agency and the draft just around the corner, JetNation.com is looking forward to see how things transpire with Spiller and other potential free agent signings. \u00a0Once again, we would like to thank Howard Simon of WGR 550 for taking the time to speak with us today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Glenn Naughton To say that this off-season has been an eventful yet intertwining one regarding the past, present and future of the New York Jets and their division rival Buffalo Bills would be an understatement. Following their season finale in Miami on December 28th, Jets owner Woody Johnson announced to the fans that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":27455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1337],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured-editorials","8":"category-home-slider"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Doug_Marrone.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-7dP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27765"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27773,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27765\/revisions\/27773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}