Is Doug Whaley The GM The Bills Have Longed For?
In order to get the full perspective, let’s go back a couple of years.
The year is 2010.
Buddy Nix is in the tail-end of his career. He’s nearing the point in his career where he is ready to retire. The man has been in and around the football field for nearly his entire life.
Willing and eager to take on a new challenge is Doug Whaley. A defensive scouting guru that influenced the drafting of Lamarr Woodley, Troy Polamalu, and many others while in Pittsburgh.
Whaley had spent nearly eleven years collectively within the Steelers organization. An organization with a strong foundation, a no-nonsense attitude, and a defense that has been feared for decades.
The Bills had just come off a disappointing season. They fired their head coach and wanted to ship out the pieces of another failed attempt to have a playoff team.
Doug Whaley becomes the Bills Assistant GM and Director of Pro Personnel in 2010.
People close the situation knew what the plan was. Let Buddy Nix groom an experienced scout into the next GM of the Buffalo Bills. Show him the ropes and allow him to use his skill-set to flourish.
Whaley and Buddy helped wrangle in one of the top defensive free agents of the 2012 offseason into Buffalo, a place that many free agents skip over when surveying the field of potential fits. Buffalo, a place riddled with low salaries, cold weather, and a recent history of losing seasons.
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Fast forward more. The year is 2013. Doug Whaley is named the GM of the Buffalo Bills to no surprise of people closely following the Bills.
That offseason, Doug Whaley was thrown into a fire of contract negotiations, uncertainty at quarterback, and a slew of tough decisions to make.
We drafted EJ, lost Fitz, and lost so many other key pieces that were holding the team together. At the same time, Whaley was building the future.
He made what some would call a risky decision in trading a promising young linebacker in Kelvin Sheppard for a sometimes rambunctious Jerry Hughes. The upside to Sheppard’s career was evident at the time but Whaley saw something in Hughes and pulled the trigger to trade for him. He saw the potential and saw someone who could thrive in what he was building in Buffalo.
The 2013 season came and went but you could feel the promise that was starting. The potential to have success was evident at One Bills Drive.
The next offseason Whaley pulled the trigger on an unprecedented move by the Bills. Whaley traded the 2014 1st round and 2015 1st and 4th round picks to the Cleveland Browns to move up to the 4th spot in the NFL Draft. The Bills drafted Sammy Watkins, an extremely talented receiver that Buffalo had needed.
Moving forward to the next offseason, Whaley made an abundance of moves. He picked up five starting players in the offseason to fit the mold of what they wanted to build. He acquired Tyrod Taylor, LeSean McCoy, Jerome Felton, Charles Clay, and the notorious Richie Incognito.
My point in showing these offseason moves is to make you aware of what Doug Whaley has done. He has taken calculated risks that have been ridiculed by the fans at times and he has seen success in the majority of those risks.
He has acquired players that we didn’t think we would be able to acquire in the past and turned them into chicken wing eating, snow loving Buffalonians.
People will argue that this is not because of Doug Whaley but simply because our new ownership has deeper pockets. I don’t buy the notion that deeper pockets had much of anything to do with his calculated moves. When you can negotiate and acquire players that want to be here, the price doesn’t play a factor.
If you look at the players that he has drafted and signed, they are players that want to be in Buffalo. They are players that will take a pay cut if that meant winning more. These are players who are passionate at what they do and have fallen in love with the fanbase bestowed upon them.
To answer the question I have to answer with a resounding YES.
Doug Whaley is the GM that not only the Bills but the fans have longed for. He has started something great in this city. He is building a championship caliber team that will uplift the franchise to a new level.
It’s time that we stop worrying and start watching the brilliant puzzle come together that is the Buffalo Bills.