Rex Ryan Must Align with Bills' Stars in Year 2 to Find Success in Buffalo

The Buffalo Bills are committed to head coach Rex Ryan. The head coach must now get his players to fully commit to him.

Ryan was supposed to bring some swagger to the Bills franchise. The coach even guaranteed a playoff appearance after being hired.

"I honestly 100 percent believed that," Ryan told the Buffalo News' Tyler Dunne. "I feel bad that I didn't deliver."

He certainly didn't. The team isn't even as good as it was a year ago. Buffalo owns a 7-8 record and took a slight step back from last year's 9-7 campaign under Doug Marrone.

Even so, owner Terry Pegula expressed confidence in his coach and general manager, Doug Whaley, in a statement Wednesday, per the team's official site:

"

As our first full season as owners of the Buffalo Bills draws to a close, management, coaches, players and fans all feel that our expectations were not met. 

Kim [Pegula], Russ [Brandon] and I look forward to working and collaborating with Doug Whaley and Rex Ryan in forming a winning future for the organization. Our management team and coaching staff are very capable and work well together. This stable foundation is necessary to achieve long term success in the NFL.

"

The clock continues to tick after Buffalo missed the playoffs for yet another season. After nearly 17 years, Bills fans should be used to this by now, right?

The team's problems this year were generally self-inflicted, though. Yes, Ryan had to deal with numerous key injuries, but his stubbornness toward a specific defensive scheme flustered players.

"It's safe to say not all [players] have," Ryan said Wednesday when asked if players bought in this year, per ESPN.com's Mike Rodak. "I haven't said anything publicly about it until now but, sure, [players' criticism] would bother me."

For Ryan to experience legitimate success in Buffalo, he must get his players to buy in to his philosophies.

Four years ago ago, defensive end Mario Williams signed a six-year, $100 million contract with the Bills. Williams set a career high a season ago with 14.5 sacks.

In Ryan's aggressive scheme, many expected the former No. 1 overall pick to serve as a wrecking ball and completely dominate this season.

It never happened, and Williams criticized the coaching staff publicly earlier this month, per Syracuse.com's Matthew Fairburn:

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You know, it's crazy. You saw the game [against the Washington Redskins]. You're trying to switch personnel as they're coming out of the huddle. I don't know, man. I don't know who in the world was calling, saying what personnel they're in and how that was confusing, but apparently it is. Like you say, this is game in and game out.

My mindset is, if you're an attack defense, if you're going to be a bully on the field. You don't let anything else dictate what you do. We're going to put who we're going to put out there and then we're going to be able to execute and make plays with the guys out there. I don't need to wait on you to make a decision. ... We're trying to switch men. It's not like we're trying to switch plays, we're trying to switch men as they're coming out of the huddle. That's happened a few times in 10 years with me — a few times in those 10 — like you said, game in and game out, I don't know how it keeps happening.

"

Williams' rant proved to be troublesome on a couple of fronts. First, he wasn't wrong in what he said. Second, the team's most recognizable player shouldn't feel the need to come out publicly to rip what happens on game day.

Frustration certainly built up after Williams only registered four sacks this season. After all, he amassed 10.5 sacks or more in each of his previous three seasons.

The 30-year-old pass-rusher even insinuated he wouldn't mind leaving the team after this campaign.

Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images

Maybe this could be written off as a disgruntled star who isn't happy with how he's been used this season. However, the veteran wasn't the only defender to criticize the system.

Linebacker Preston Brown echoed Williams' concerns, which extended beyond personnel groupings, per Rodak:

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It seems this year there's been issues with it. We've definitely had discussions [with the coaches] that it has been an issue and they said it's something that it needs to be changed.

It's so much thinking involved with [the defense]. A lot of guys [have] never been a part of [it]. It's definitely been difficult. At times, when [they] let us play, you can see we can be one of the best defenses in the league.

"

Players who aren't thinking about what their responsibilities are each snap play faster. Ryan's defensive scheme remains one of the league's most complicated even for the most seasoned defensive players.

Former Bills general manager, current ESPN analyst and recent Hall of Fame inductee Bill Polian discussed the primary problem with the Buffalo News' Vic Carucci:

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You need veterans to make that defense work. First of all, the players thrived in another system [in 2014 under Jim Schwartz] – in a simple, straight forward, very easy to understand, very easy to communicate system where there was constant repetition of the same thing over and over again, taught in a very straight-forward way. And the techniques were geared toward what the players could do, what their skill sets were, and the plans were constructed around the players and what they could do.

Rex’s defense is just the opposite. It is not straight forward. It’s exceedingly complex. There is no carry over learning from one week to the next. There’s exceedingly complex language. There are exceedingly complex checks that have to be made at the line of scrimmage. There is a guy designated to make those checks. It was...Ray Lewis in Baltimore and it was...Jimmy Leonhard with the Jets, who literally could not put one foot in front of the other at the end of his career.

I remember asking one of the Jets' coaches during the offseason, "How in God's name can you put Jimmy Leonhard on the field?" He said, "No one else can translate the defense, no one else can get everybody lined up."

"

Clearly, the Bills players have been lost in translation this season. The unit ranks 20th in total defense, which is blasphemous considering the success of previous Ryan-led defenses.

Simplifying Ryan's defensive scheme is only one part of the equation. The organization must fully commit to Tyrod Taylor as the team's starting quarterback.

Despite a strong showing from the first-time starter, the team almost seems allergic to actually naming him its franchise signal-caller beyond this season.

"Is he the long-term starter?" Whaley said two weeks ago, per the MMQB's Jenny Vrentas. "Let's put it this way: He's shown us enough that we can obviously keep trying with him. But it won't preclude us from going out and protecting ourselves [in case] he's not."

Keep trying?

Consider this for a moment: Taylor ranks among the league's top five in yards per attempt and quarterback rating. He's thrown 20 touchdowns compared to six interceptions. He'll likely eclipse 3,000 passing yards this weekend even though he missed a couple of games because of injury. And he added 517 rushing yards.

Gary Wiepert/Associated Press

Yet Ryan and Whaley continue to pick apart his game.

"I think all the other numbers are telling you that this young man has a real chance," Ryan said Dec. 14, per Rodak. "Never be considered a great quarterback until you can bring your team back and win in those [late-game] situations. So yeah, I would say that, that is the next stage in being able to bring his team back in those situations."

Whaley agreed: "To get that consistency in the end-of-game situations where we can depend on him and basically throw the game on his back and have him come through and deliver."

Buffalo's decision-makers need to take a step back for a moment, look around the league and realize the 26-year-old is a promising young quarterback in his first year as a starter and that many teams would now be eager to acquire his services if the Bills didn't want to commit to him long-term.

A young quarterback needs to be assured and not looking over his shoulder to play at his best.

By fully committing to Taylor and gearing the defense toward the talent on the roster, the Bills could easily be a playoff team in 2016.

Ryan, however, must be willing to accept he needs to change his approach to live up to the Pegula family's commitment.

Brent Sobleski covers the NFL and NFL draft for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @brentsobleski.