http://rocnow.com/article/bills/20107290351
Buddy Nix was perfectly content living the life of a retired man in the winter of 2009. Then Ralph Wilson called and asked him if he’d like to come back to Buffalo and help the Bills with a little scouting.
What’s a lifelong football man going to do? That’s right — he said yes because once you’ve got it in your blood, you can’t resist.
“When I was in San Diego, I said this is my last stop, and I thought it probably would be,” Nix said recently. “Except for Mr. Wilson and this place, I wouldn’t have come back to work.”
Nix had worked in Buffalo from 1993 to 2000 as a scout under former general manager John Butler, then followed Butler to San Diego in 2001 and helped turn the Chargers into a perennial playoff participant.
Nix always liked Buffalo, and figured coming back to western New York would be a good way to keep him in the game, doing something he has always loved — scouting and evaluating players.
Nix did that for a year, and then a funny thing happened on the way to a nice, cushy existence: Wilson asked him to run the entire football operation.
On New Year’s Eve, Nix accepted.
So at the age of 70, Nix is in a job that he occasionally has coveted, never really needed, but is nonetheless thrilled to have.
“I don’t think I ever envisioned being in this position, and I never dwelled on it, either,” he said. “I liked what I was doing and I stayed busy at it.”
Nix never knew what busy was until he sat behind the big desk that was once occupied by Butler, Tom Donahoe and Bill Polian. Nix sat down and discussed his job, the challenges in front of him, and the status of the Bills as they come to training camp at St. John Fisher College.
Question: Is this job everything you thought it was going to be?
Answer: “I did know what it was, and it’s pretty much been exactly what I thought. That’s the reason I thought about it for about two weeks because I wanted to be sure. If you can’t make the commitment to this job, then you’re doing a disservice to everybody — the organization, the man that owns the club, the fans. I wanted to make sure I was willing to move and be a part of the community and also work seven days a week. That’s what it takes; you can’t do this job and be gone half the time.”
Q: Has anything in the first six months on the job caught you off guard or surprised you?
A: “I don’t think so. I was close enough to it for eight years. In scouting, you’re not around the decision-making as much, but in San Diego I was. So at least whether I was making the call or not, I was part of the process. I think I kind of knew what to expect.”
Q: Do you consider yourself a scout who just happens to have a fancy title now?
A: “Yeah, I think you’re always evaluating players. It’s like coaching; I coached for 31 years so I still like to watch practice, like to watch schemes and how coaches plan and how they teach. You still have some scout in you, too. And to me, that’s what this job is.”
Q: Who would you consider your primary mentors, or the people who really had an impact on who you became as a football man?
A: “A lot of people had a lot more connection with coach (Bear) Bryant than I did, but I think he influenced me early, and set my philosophy early, more than anybody else. (Nix worked as a graduate assistant under Bryant at Alabama in 1960). And not only me, guys in the South and especially in Alabama, whether they worked for him or were around him, he set a pattern for how they coached and what they thought. I’d have to say he was probably the most influential on me, especially early.”
Q: Talk about what John Butler meant to you and what he may have contributed to your philosophy?
A: “I wouldn’t be in this business, and certainly not in this position, without John Butler. A lot of us got our start around here with him. John was a guy who enjoyed the scouting part. He always thought of himself as a football coach. He liked to evaluate, but he also liked to look at schemes and talk about coaching. And the way he dealt with people had a lot to do with my philosophy in this job now.”
Q: When you took the job, you looked out at the media in front of you and recognized that maybe we weren’t thrilled with your selection. And some fans may have said “Buddy Who?” and wondered why the Bills didn’t get a big-name guy. What was your response to that?
A: “I think the only way you can quell that skepticism is by winning and I think we’ve got a plan to do that. I do think I’ve been consistent and that helps some, too. If you’ve got a philosophy and a feeling about things and you stick with it, and you’re consistent with it, then I think more people start to trust you. I’ve gotten a lot of jobs and the first head job I got in college, the headline was ‘Buddy Who?’ People didn’t know, and a lot of that is the same way here. People get these gurus in their mind and that’s what they think it takes. We’ll see.”
Q: Do you concern yourself at all with the fan base and turning the culture around and getting the fans back behind you?
A: “In a way I do, but the only way you can do that is to quit telling them what you’re going to do and do it. That’s what we’ve got to do; we’ve got to win. To get them back — I say get them back, but I don’t know if they ever left. It’s still their team; it doesn’t matter who the coach or the GM is. Those guys come and go, but the Bills belong to this fan base and you can gripe all you want about the way things are done, and criticize, but the bottom line is it’s your team. They may quit buying tickets for a year or two, but in this part of the country, and the way these people feel about the Bills, I don’t believe that will ever change.”
Q: At the end of the day why did you pick Chan Gailey to be your head coach?
A: “To me, that was the biggest decision I had to make. Our success depends on our head coach, and our coaching staff. And then you have to put the players with them. You’ve got to have that intact. We didn’t take Chan and put out the qualifications for what we wanted in a head coach, to match him. We put the qualifications out first, and he matched what we were looking for. It wasn’t predetermined; it was a process that we went through. I’ve been in this long enough that I knew what I wanted in a head coach. He fit all those needs. It’s amazing. Most of the time if you get 7 out of 10 you’d be good, but with this guy, he’s everything that I think it will take for us to turn this thing around.”
Q: Do you believe that one of these four quarterbacks will be able to take the reins and be a winning quarterback?
A: “Absolutely. It’s up to Chan on who it is. He’ll make that decision, he’s the coach, and I’ve got confidence in him coaching the quarterbacks and I’ve got confidence in him calling the plays to fit with what those guys can do. Athletically and physically, they can do what it takes. Maybe not all of them do everything well, but they can do the things that it takes to win in this league. What they do with coaching and the folks we put around them remains to be seen. But I have as much confidence in them, or more, in somebody we could have gotten. We explored every option and we always do. But, again, we made the decision that this was the best path for us, considering everything.”
Q: The C.J. Spiller pick drew some criticism. Some thought it was a luxury pick as opposed to drafting a lineman or even a quarterback. Your reaction to that?
A: “He was the highest-rated player on our board. We thought he was the best player, maybe from the start, but the best player for sure at the ninth pick. The thing people want to know, more so than why we picked Spiller, is why we didn’t pick a tackle or a quarterback. Picking a tackle that you don’t feel good about being the answer, only satisfies people in the summer. Come October, if that ol’ boy can’t play, and is not what you’ve got to have there, then it doesn’t satisfy anybody. I’m not trying to satisfy them in the summer.”
Q: What is your timetable in terms of turning this thing around and seeing progress?
A: “Miami (the opener). We want to see improvement from day one and so far we have.
“We’ve gotten a little better each day. To me — and I’ve said this before — you pick the best players you can in the draft and free agency, and then what do you do with them after you get them? If you don’t get better … now sometimes there’s injuries like last year and that’s something you can’t do much about it, but there’s something wrong somewhere if you’re not getting better every week and that’s what we expect to do.”
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Originally Posted by FWIWMyNameIsJoe
