Bills camp report: Chan's the man QB Edwards needs
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PITTSFORD, N.Y. -- There are three teams in the AFC East with established quarterbacks. Then there are the Buffalo Bills.
They have Trent Edwards, and while he returns as the starter I'd like a show of hands from those who think he finishes this season as the team's starter. He didn't last year, and in 2008 he missed two of the last four games.
Yeah, OK, so injuries were to blame. At some point the Bills must determine if they can trust him.
And that point is now.
It's not just because Edwards is in his fourth NFL season; it's because he's at a time and in a place where he has a chance to flourish. At least, that's how I see it now that Buffalo has Chan Gailey as its head coach. One thing I know about Gailey is that he goes far with young quarterbacks most people consider, well, little more than ordinary, and Edwards qualifies.
Gailey went to the playoffs with Jay Fiedler. He went to the playoffs with Kordell Stewart. He went to the playoffs with Mike Tomczak. And he squeezed 2,600 yards out of third-string quarterback Tyler Thigpen after injuries forced the Kansas City Chiefs to blow up their offense in mid-season to suit Thigpen's wide-open play.
Now, of course, Gailey's job is to make a playoff quarterback out of Edwards, and while that seems like Mission: Impossible IV, neither he nor Edwards is discouraged. And neither are Edwards' teammates, who don't waver when asked how they close the gap between themselves and New England ... and the Jets ... and Miami.
"Because of the coaching staff," said safety Donte Whitner. "I don't mean to knock anybody, but I know with some of the things we did in the past some of the teams would look at us and guys would say, 'We don't understand what you guys are doing.' We sort of had our own ways of doing things, which were unique to the National Football League.
"Guys would say, 'You come out and play hard, but no adjustments? We knew you would do this and do that.' [The difference is] having a coaching staff that knows we have to make adjustments."
I don't know about the past, but the biggest adjustments for the future are with Edwards. The Bills realize they must solidify the most important position on the field, which is one reason they hired Gailey. His addition is critical to the future of the franchise because it could be critical to development of its quarterback.
For the first time in Edwards' NFL career, every message, every critique, and every lesson begins and ends with one guy, and that man is Chan Gailey. He calls the plays. He coaches the quarterbacks. And he runs the team. More important, he is the only voice in his young quarterback's ear.
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So what? So there is no confusion. There was a feeling in past seasons that three or four people were advising Edwards, with the young quarterback trying to satisfy the last coach he heard. That can happen when you have four offensive coordinators in four years, except Edwards is working on his eighth in nine seasons, dating back to his career at Stanford University.
"It's almost not fair to judge a guy on that," said a sympathetic Gailey.
Maybe, but life is not fair. The NFL and its fans demand immediate results, and with Edwards in his fourth season, Buffalo wants something more from its quarterback than another losing season. Given the competition in the AFC East, I don't know how that happens, but at least Gailey can give Edwards the chance he deserves.
"He's very talented, very smart, very knowledgeable and just one voice," Edwards said of Gailey. "If a play were called in other systems, maybe the head coach would be second-guessing, or another coach would be second-guessing.
"Here, one guy calls all the shots, and the other coaches kind of follow him. As a quarterback, that's really a situation you want to be in. If we had another offensive coordinator that I was working with you would wonder: What does the head coach think of me? Right now, I know what the head coach thinks of me because I'm talking to him."
The last time he was in a similar situation, Edwards said, was his junior year at Stanford when Walt Harris ran the offense and coached the football team. Result: Edwards had his best statistical season and was named the team MVP.
Of course, the only stats that matter here are wins and losses, which is another reason Gailey makes sense for Buffalo. He coached the Dallas Cowboys for two seasons and put them in the playoffs both years. So he knows how to win, and, as he proved as an assistant, he knows how to win with limited resources.
That explains why Buffalo invested its first-round draft pick in explosive running back C.J. Spiller. Gailey is smart enough to know that Edwards can't and won't carry this football team alone. But his chances of succeeding are enhanced if he has others to help, and Fred Jackson, Marshawn Lynch and Spiller are the others -- talented running backs who command respect from opponents.
A more productive running game should open holes in the secondary for the passing attack, which is where Edwards comes in. The Bills don't need him to throw 30 touchdown passes or accumulate 4,000 yards, but they do need him to be effective enough to keep defenses honest, and that's exactly what happened last week when Edwards and the first team ran up 21 points in the first quarter against Indianapolis.
"There were games last year where I don't remember us scoring 21 points," said safety George Wilson.
As a matter of fact, they failed to score that many 12 times, nine of them they lost. Now, if you improve the league's 16th-ranked running game you protect the quarterback. And if you protect the quarterback you increase his chances to succeed. And if you increase Trent Edwards' chances to succeed maybe, just maybe, Buffalo finds itself an established quarterback.
Granted, it will take time. The Bills' offensive line didn't do a good job of protecting anyone last season, and the club still has an APB out on a second wide receiver, with Steve Johnson the front-runner to succeed Terrell Owens. Nevertheless, there are signs of progress -- with defensive backs talking about Edwards' command of the offense and a leadership role that has him taking an active role in pushing away trash-talking defenders from receivers in practice.
"I guess I'm older, and I feel like I know what it takes to win," Edwards said. "If a DB pushes my receiver, it's a very small thing. But if I step up and say something, my teammates will notice and want to fight harder for me."
But nobody needs to fight harder for Trent Edwards than Trent Edwards. This is a city that built its success on confident and dynamic quarterbacks. When the Bills went to four Super Bowls in four years it was with Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly. When they continued their playoff run into the end of the decade it was with Kelly and, later, Doug Flutie.
You don't win championships in Buffalo by throwing the ball in December and January, but you do make it with consistent, competent play from the quarterback -- and Trent Edwards isn't there yet. In fact, his position as the team's starter wasn't solidified until training camp when he separated himself from backups Ryan Fitzpatrick and Brian Brohm.
But now that he's won a job, he must win respect from opponents, and Edwards is in luck. Gailey and what should be a formidable running game are here to pitch in.
"I think the running game's going to have to carry the load," said Gailey, "but we have three of them to carry it. So that's an advantage. It's not one guy out there carrying the whole load. So that should take some pressure off the quarterback.
"If we can figure ways to keep people off balance with the running game and with different things we might be able to do and throw at them, I'd like nothing more than to have [the quarterback] not have to win the game himself."
Edwards will second that, and so will his teammates. This is a football team that is tired of losing and tired of a decade without making the playoffs. Something has to change, and -- who knows? -- it could wind up being the quarterback. But first things first, and first Trent Edwards gets a fair shake with a coach who knows how to handle young quarterbacks and understands what it takes for them to succeed.
He doesn't ask Edwards to explain what happened last season. He doesn't ask what happened to the downfield passing attack, either. Nor does he ask if concussions or sacks affected Edwards' outlook or self-confidence. There is virtually no talk of the past, with Edwards reminded that his career is at ground zero, with Gailey and his staff building the quarterback from scratch.
As Gailey freely admits, it is a work in progress -- with the head coach still unsure what he has in front of him. But give him time. The record does not lie.
"He said, 'You have the talent to make it and play this position for a long time,'" Edwards said of his head coach. "But he also said he's not going to talk about the past a lot: 'This is a new beginning for me and a new beginning for you. Let's see where we can go with this.'
"And that's something I focused on in the offseason: To take a new approach to it; to have a fresh, new beginning. I needed to take what I could from last season, but it's still in the past -- and I'm not going to help myself by looking in the past.
"The power I have lies in the present right now. So I'm focusing on the next rep, the next practice, the next meeting, and that's all I can handle. I'm very optimistic with having Chan here and with having my career go in the direction I want it to go."
He should be. And so should Buffalo.
