FanHouse DickJauron

The Buffalo Bills have fired head coach Dick Jauron, the team announced on Tuesday, bringing to an end a coaching tenure in Buffalo that yielded nothing but losing seasons.

The firing, which was first reported by Jason La Canfora of NFL Network, comes in the midst of a disappointing season in Buffalo, and two days after the Bills lost 41-17 to the Tennessee Titans, dropping their record to 3-6.

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NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

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NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

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NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

Consider this hypothetical: what if two coaches met in a dark alley and threw down in a no-holds-barred brawl? Who would emerge victorious?

First, some background: back when I was in high school, when my friends and I were pretty creative in finding ways to avoid actually paying attention in class, we'd create brackets (think NCAA Tournament) where we'd pit our teachers against each other**. Whoever we thought would win in a fight advanced to the next round. It always ended with our offensive line coach against our wrestling coach in the finals and a huge argument as to who would come out on top.

Anyway, last week, the Back Porch staff somehow ended up discussing whether Rex Ryan or Tom Cable would win in a old school playground scrap. I passed along the above information, and shortly after that, an idea was born -- NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament.

Fired a week before the start of the season as the Bills' offensive coordinator, an angry and confused Turk Schonert said the problem in Buffalo was that coach Dick Jauron wanted "a Pop Warner offense" -- an offensive playbook as simple and uncreative as possible, and that Schonert's schemes were too complicated to fit in with Jauron's plan.

Now five weeks in to the season, having committed nine (NINE!) false start penalties Sunday in losing one of the worst offensive games in sports history to the previously winless Browns, the Bills are playing as if to prove Schonert right.

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His contract says Dick Jauron is the Bills coach until 2011. The fact is he might not last the 2009 season.

Last year, the Bills finished 7-9 for the third consecutive season and Jauron was given another opportunity to prove himself when he received a contract extension in October. The man hasn't produced a winning season of football since the 2001 season when he led the Bears to a 13-3 record.

All he's done in upstate New York is get criticized for the way the team has performed.

As far as the United States Justice system is concerned, Michael Vick has served his debt to society. He spent the last 19 months in the clink, and now he's kicking it in his mansion. The terms of his probation stipulate that he get a job (his construction gig starts next week) and remain under house arrest when he's not wearing a hard hat.

But there will come a time when he seeks to return to the NFL. The first order of business is getting commissioner Roger Goodell to reinstate him, and then finding a club interested in his services. The former will be tougher than the latter, although neither appear insurmountable.

Not that you asked, but...

...Only the Lions could find themselves in this position -- owners of the No. 1 overall pick in a year when neither they nor anybody else really wants it. It's such a Lion position in which to be. The consensus is that there's no Orlando Pace in this draft -- no clear-cut, impact, franchise-changing No. 1. And the Lions need so much help that they'd love to trade down and get three or four useful players instead of one. But since nobody else seems to know who they'd take if they traded places with the Lions, nobody's lining up to do it.

Personally, having watched a lot of college football last year, I'm an Aaron Curry guy. For me, he's the guy Mike Ditka would be trading his whole draft and putting on a wedding dress for if Ditka were still in charge somewhere. He's the all-around game-changer type in this year's draft. But since he's not a quarterback or a mountainous offensive lineman -- not necessarily a guy who'd even be on the field on third down -- nobody feels like they want to spend the top pick on him. Fair enough, I guess. Seems to me he's athletic enough to do whatever they'd need, but they know better than I do.

Terrell Owens recently signed with the Buffalo Bills. People questioned Buffalo's willingness to give the temperamental wideout an excessive amount of money, based on his previous, ahem, issues with other teams.

Those questions might seem pretty on-point in the early going too, as word out of Buffalo is that Owens has already skipped the team's first workout, albeit one that was voluntary.