The reality of dysfunction within the Buffalo Bills arises in part from the perception that team president Russ Brandon has finagled the ultimate cake-and-eat-it arrangement where he has influence over the football operations without the same kind of harsh accountability that goes with football operations that consistently go wrong. In an interview with Tim Graham of the Buffalo News, the team’s owners essentially confirmed that Brandon has accomplished just that.
“Coach and G.M. report to the owners,” Terry Pegula said in outlining the power structure. “And Russ is running the business side. It can’t be any simpler. I don’t know where this confusion is coming from.”
It’s coming from the fact that Russ, while running the business side, remains involved in the football side.
Consider this question from Graham: “You mentioned Russ Brandon not being involved in football, but [he] has been on the scene with myriad football matters such as Rex’s hiring, in the draft room, at the Scouting Combine, where he meets with agents about player contracts. We even hear he breaks down film with scouts. . . . How is Russ’ role defined?”
“Russ might like to look at how scouts break down film for the same reasons I do, because I find it fascinating and I enjoy it,” Terry Pegula said. “I’ll be there while they’re watching film, but that doesn’t mean I’m evaluating players. But inside the football tower are the owners, the coach and the G.M., working tightly together. We help them with whatever they need. They work in unison, and if Doug Whaley wants to walk down the hall and ask Russ Brandon a question, he’s totally free to do that. If Russ wants to come down the hall to talk to Doug or the coach, we encourage that. That’s a good, healthy organization. . . . [T]here’s a perception that Russ is involved and running football operations and everybody thinks that’s dysfunctional. I mean, that’s just crazy. It’s support, as all good organizations do.”
Pegula is right, as it relates to an organization that isn’t inherently split into two parts, from an accountability standpoint. On the business side of a football team, which Brandon runs in Buffalo, success occurs when the budget is balanced and the profits are pouring in. Given the popularity of the NFL and the realities of revenue sharing, a team has to literally try to not make money.
On the football side, the evidence of success and failure is far more stark and immediate. Wins and losses add up, and if there are more losses than more wins over a period of multiple years, changes get made.
One of the (few) things I’ve learned through running this business for nearly as long as the Bills’ playoff drought has lasted is that employees of the football operation deeply resent the involvement of people from the business side of the operation because those employees are not accountable with their jobs if the team fails to win enough game. Put simply, business employees can give input and guidance and support and ask questions and suggest answers without having to worry about being fired if their ideas fail.
It’s one thing, for example, for the owner to be watching scouts break down film. It’s quite another for an employee who can’t and won’t be fired due to football failures to be sitting in the room and periodically blurting out thoughts to the employees whose jobs are riding in part on the proper analysis of the film and the proper making of decisions based on it.
In other words, all of the employees are walking on the same high wire, but only the business-only employees have a net.
The Pegulas, having owned the team for less than three years and needing to have someone in the building whom they can trust to oversee the operations, either can’t or won’t acknowledge the problems that can and will arise from having Brandon involved in the football operation without a sense that he’s as accountable as G.M. Doug Whaley, coach Sean McDermott, or anyone else. And if the owners believe that Whaley and McDermott need someone else to provide support and input other than the owners, than the Bills should have hired Tom Coughlin or some other football executive to oversee the entire football operation, making him as accountable as the rest of the football employees.
That’s not to say Brandon should be fired or reassigned. He should be treated by ownership as being “inside the football tower” -- because he already is, and he’s the only one who has the keys to the safe room.
[audio mp3="https://nbc-sports.go-vip.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2017/01/mike-florio-rips-the-bills.mp3”][/audio]