Buffalo Bills 13 Year Playoff Drought Has Destroyed Enthusiasm Of Bills Fans. Bills Will Make The Palyoffs

Corning, N.Y. —

The inner optimist in me yearns to be genuinely stoked about the 2013 NFL season.
Although it is still July, when the pigskin isn’t yet on everyone’s radar, I do recall a time when the start of training camp was reason enough to ramp up excitement for the upcoming season.
No doubt countless number of fans still do get geeked up during the dog days of July as teams prepare to open training camp.
I used to be one of them.
But as a longtime follower of the Buffalo Bills, 13 seasons of playoff-less football and one winning season during that same span has greatly sapped my enthusiasm as a fan.
Add a few significant life changes in that time (wife, two kids, house) to the mix and new responsibilities that come with, and as you may expect, my passion for everything One Bills Drive has certainly been tempered in recent years.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not, nor would I ever jump ship as a fan, at least for as long as the team remains in Western New York.
Instead, I remain a relatively despondent fan, numb to the organization’s many failures and conditioned to expect the worst, no matter how promising things may appear.
This Sunday, the Bills open training camp at St. John Fisher College, just outside of Rochester.
And yet another new chapter for the team is about to commence with new faces eager to take over in numerous key roles throughout the organization.
Russ Brandon is hardly a new face, serving as the team’s CEO since 2008 and in his 16th season overall with the organization. But Brandon will try on a notable new hat as the Bills’ president, a title that owner Ralph Wilson relinquished in January.
Although Brandon’s efforts to better expand the Bills’ regional appeal in both Rochester and Toronto have proven quite successful, how he fares as both the team’s president and CEO remains anyone’s guess. Considering Wilson didn’t exactly set the bar high as president (or owner), Brandon appears to be an improvement, if only by default. But that’s not to suggest things will change for the significantly better any time soon, if at all, under Brandon.
After Buddy Nix stepped down as general manager in the spring, Doug Whaley was appointed the new GM after serving as the Bills assistant GM/director of pro personnel since 2010. Prior to joining the Bills, Whaley worked for the Pittsburgh Steelers as the team’s pro scouting coordinator from 1999-2009.
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During that time, Whaley helped build a Pittsburgh team that won two Super Bowls. While Whaley was not calling the shots with the Steelers, you’d like to think he benefited spending a decade with one of the top organizations in pro football. But as much as I’d like to be optimistic about Whaley, Tom Donahoe’s stint in Buffalo – much ballyhooed at the time – provides a cautionary tale.
At head coach, former Syracuse boss Doug Marrone and an entire new staff will try to break the cycle – for the better – of a new coach every three years in Buffalo. Although Marrone was a surprise pick as head coach, his track record turning around a moribund program at Syracuse sold the Bills’ brain trust on the idea he could do the same in Buffalo. If nothing else, Marrone’s hire was at least a refreshing think-outside-the-box approach not seen with uninspiring retread hires like Dick Jauron and Chan Gailey. Conversely, though, the Bills also once thought they had diamonds in the rough in Mike Mularkey and Gregg Williams, but both proved to be duds like so many others.
Perhaps most fatiguing is starting anew once again at quarterback. Free-agent Kevin Kolb and first-round pick EJ Manuel will battle to become the Bills’ next starting quarterback. Obviously, the hope is that Manuel develops into the Bills’ first true franchise QB since Jim Kelly, while Kolb remains as a dependable, veteran backup. But even with some underappreciated talent at the skill positions – C.J. Spiller, Fred Jackson, Stevie Johnson – Buffalo’s quarterbacking situation in 2013 figures to be an exercise in patience.
Even in my perpetual overall pessimism to everything Bills, it’s probably safe to assume I’m among a super-majority who expects Buffalo’s streak of playoff futility to extend at least one more season.
There’s simply too much newness and inexperience in key spots throughout the operation – among other shortcomings – to expect an instant turnaround.
And while the hope is that the Whaley-Marrone-Manuel regime will turn things around over the long haul or at the very least, end the NFL’s longest current playoff drought, the organization has done little to inspire such blind optimism.