Inside The Bills

Bills DC “thrilled” with way staff was built

Bills head coach Doug Marrone was naturally pleased with the way he was able to assemble the coaching staff. He did it with a specific purpose in mind. It was focused more on the offensive and defensive systems that will be run rather than name power, and his coordinators could not be happier.

“I was thrilled that Doug wanted to build the staff that way,” said defensive coordinator Mike Pettine. ”That he didn’t want to play fantasy football with the coaching staff. Let’s bring in this guy and this was his resume and let’s bring in this guy, and all of a sudden it’s well his style is a little bit different.

“Instead he made a commitment to the coordinator and then said, ‘Okay let’s hire the staff based on that system.’ So again he certainly wasn’t interested in building the type of staff that was going to make a splash with big names. To me I’m thrilled with the way we put the staff together because it’s based on love of the game, the ability to teach and guys that are willing to put the work in for you.”

Marrone on what lies ahead for staff

Now that Buffalo’s coaching staff is together there is plenty of work that lies ahead. Head coach Doug Marrone provided a bit of a road map with respect to the ‘to-do’ list for the Bills coaches.

“We’re in the early process of looking at our roster, putting together schedules, communicating with our players, which we’re extremely excited to work with,” Marrone said. ”We have unrestricted free agents, restricted free agents to do reports on. You have college draft coming up working with our scouts and Buddy Nix on it.

“We have cut-ups to do, playbooks to put together, we have equipment to go over to see if it’s the right equipment we want to use to teach our players and help our players. It’s really an unbelievable dynamic as to what goes on. We’re excited about it.”

Buffalo’s offensive and special teams coaches were formally introduced today by coach Marrone. We’ll have full coverage later today on Buffalobills.com and in Bills Roundup.

Bills still need TE coach

The Bills filled a pair of coaching vacancies Monday on Chan Gailey’s coaching staff, but with Bob Bicknell now coaching the receivers after the departure of Stan Hixon, Buffalo needs a tight ends coach.

Bicknell coached the tight ends each of the past two seasons, but in sliding over to coach receivers there’s still one more vacancy coach Gailey needs to fill. That position is likely to be filled in short order as offseason plans with respect to scheme and such are soon to be formulated.