Yesterday's announcement of former Bills' defensive coordinator Mike Pettine as the new Browns' head coach resounded with various thuds and shrugs and yawns and eye-rolls as Haslam and the brass assured everyone that Pettine was by far the finest candidate they'd interviewed, etc. etc.
The reaction in Buffalo was predictably icy:
The year is only three weeks old, and the Buffalo Bills already have suffered a major loss. Mike Pettine, the coordinator who oversaw a fiercely entertaining defense, is gone. Pettine on Thursday signed a five-year contract to coach the Cleveland Browns.At his introductory news conference, Pettine called it his “lifelong dream to be an NFL head coach.” He wore an orange tie. His lapel pin was a Browns helmet.
“Looking back on my year with the Bills, it’s a bittersweet thing for me to leave there,” Pettine said. “I had such a tremendous year there with that organization.”
Pettine said Bills coach Doug Marrone helped him prepare for the Browns interview.
Lordy, the anger! "His lapel pin was an orange helmet." These people are seething.
The story's headline led not with Pettine's hiring, but the "raiding" of the Bills' coaching staff. Pettine, after all, has already identified Bills' linebackers coach Jim O'Neill is his top choice for defensive coordinator and intends to brings some of his assistants on board in Cleveland as well.
This Bills are surely getting sick of this shit. Last March, Cleveland basically stole the film "Draft Day" from the Bills because of Ohio's lucrative tax incentives for filmmakers. That film, starring Kevin Costner as a Browns GM, is set to release in April of this year and had been originally conceived as a movie about the Bills.
The trailer, you'll notice, still features Bills' colors (red, white, blue) in its title cards.
