Jumping the firing gun

Two years isn’t enough.

The Buffalo Bills are the latest professional franchise to make this mistake, but certainly won’t be the last.

The Bills fired head coach Rex Ryan on Tuesday after less than two years on the job.

Ryan is bombastic and brash and not everybody’s picture of professionalism. He’s also a decent football coach. In his two years as a coach in Buffalo, Ryan was 15-16 on a team with many of its star players injured for long stretches.

But, not seeing the progress they’d like, and mired in a 17-year playoff drought in a city with only one other professional team to divert its attention, the new owners of the Bills decided to pull the parachute on Ryan, sending him away for the franchise to start over.

Maybe it was the right decision. Maybe the next coach will come in and guide the Bills to the playoffs and to the top of the AFC.

Maybe that coach will have a realistic opportunity to do so. Because two years isn’t long enough to expect that.

Two years is barely long enough to establish a culture. Provided you find the right quarterback, or one is already on the roster, two years is long enough to announce yourselves as a contender.

It took three years for Pete Carroll to have a winning record in Seattle. Given the time to find a franchise quarterback, or luck into one (depending on your perspective), the continuity in the Emerald City has helped turn the Seahawks into one of the most dependable franchises in the NFL.

Mike McCarthy walked into a job with a Hall of Fame quarterback in Green Bay and had success in his second season.However, that was the only season of his first three that had a winning record.

The Packers didn’t make the playoffs in back-to-back seasons until year five of his regime, a year they also happened to win the Super Bowl.

There are only a handful of coaches that have won big by their second year and all have had a Hall of Famer under center.

Bill Belichick found Tom Brady in his second year on a miracle run to the Super Bowl. Mike Tomlin came into a situation ready made with Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback. After middling success in Houston, Gary Kubiak won in his first year in Denver with an all-time defense and Peyton Manning in his final year.

That guy isn’t quarterbacking in Buffalo.

The rest of the Super Bowl winning coaches needed time. Time to establish a system. Time to establish a culture. Time to get rid of bad habits and collect great players.

That doesn’t happen in two years on a typical team. It certainly doesn’t happen in two years in Buffalo, where the last successful coach, Marv Levy, retired in 1997 a year after his franchise QB.

If you were wondering, Levy didn’t have a winning season until year three in Buffalo, eventually turning the Bills into the class of the AFC.

Sometimes success takes time.