Coordinator Craziness Shows All Is Not Well in Buffalo, Tampa, K.C.

For an NFL coach, the final week of the preseason is a time to tinker. To take care of your nagging little housekeeping items. You watch the borderline guys battle it out on special teams and you make your final roster decisions. You pick a No. 3 quarterback. You catch up on the last couple of episodes of "Hard Knocks." You fire your offensive coordinator.

Wait. What?

Yeah, that last little item made it onto the to-do lists of three different NFL teams last week. The Kansas City Chiefs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Buffalo Bills all decided, with less than two weeks left before their regular-season openers, to change offensive coordinators. It was a surprising and somewhat unprecedented chain of events whose timing speaks to the issues of coaching job security, modern-day impatience among sports fans and owners and, most of all, to the fact that these three teams are in pretty bad shape as the season approaches.

"To me, it's just wrong," said longtime NFL executive Mike Lombardi, who now works as an NFL Network analyst. "This time of year, to make a decision to make a change in that important voice that's calling your plays. You're getting ready in a week, week and a half to play your opening game against the New England Patriots, you'd better make sure your (stuff)'s pretty tight."

Lombardi's reference is to the Bills specifically, which is fine. All three of these situations are different, but Buffalo's appears to be the most layered and bizarre. The prevailing opinion around the league is that the firing of offensive coordinator Turk Schonert was dictated by owner Ralph Wilson -- that Wilson wanted to fire Schonert months ago, head coach Dick Jauron fought for him and the performance of the Bills' offense during the preseason obliterated Jauron's ability to protect Schonert anymore.

Add in this story about Wilson summoning Jauron and other Bills coaches to his Michigan home for a meeting last week, and then this interview Schonert gave after his firing, in which he says Jauron wants a "Pop Warner offense" and was "on my back" for months about simplifying the offensive schemes, and you have a clear picture of a Buffalo Bills team in ugly upheaval.

"Buffalo's clearly a desperate team," Lombardi said.

Stuck in a division with the powerful Patriots, the defending-champion Dolphins and an improved Jets team, the Bills are going to have a hard time finishing any better than fourth in the AFC East, and they seem to know it. The signing of Terrell Owens after his release from Dallas was a desperation move -- one that Wilson himself has acknowledged was made in an effort to improve ticket sales. Early in the preseason, the Bills made it clear that they would use a no-huddle offense this year -- another Hail-Mary tactic that looked haphazard in its execution throughout August. Buffalo is tied with Detroit for the longest current stretch of seasons (nine) without a playoff appearance. Jauron is one of several NFL coaches looking over his shoulder at unemployed Super Bowl champions like Mike Shanahan, Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren and Jon Gruden and knowing that, if they don't win this year, they're probably toast.

So, with all of that going on and the owner breathing down his neck about Schonert ... out goes Schonert.

Things are a little different down in Tampa Bay, where first-year coach Raheem Morris likely isn't worried about getting fired after one season. But the firing of offensive coordinator Jeff Jagodzinski says a lot about the blemishes on the Buccaneers' coaching situation. Morris, who celebrated his 33rd birthday on Thursday, apparently fired Jagodzinski after he learned that the former Boston College head coach had never called his own plays.

Presumably, this is the kind of question that should be asked and answered during the interview process. Morris is no dummy, but he clearly made a rookie mistake with one of his early and most important hires, and the fact that this came to light so soon before the season highlights the perils of teams hiring such young and inexperienced head coaches. Josh McDaniels has been conducting a clinic in How Not to Handle Tough Situations since being named the head man in Denver, and the more things like this happen, the more it points up what's good about experience and continuity on coaching staffs.

The Chiefs' situation is the easiest to figure out. New head coach Todd Haley is a former offensive coordinator who probably figured all along he could call plays better than Chan Gailey. Apparently, he gave Gailey a shot during the preseason, didn't change his opinion and then decided he'd go ahead and call his own plays. See ya, Chan.

But what all of these situations have in common is this: The Chiefs, Bucs and Bills all look like teams that are going to struggle mightily to win games this year. This kind of instability at the top, so close to the start of the regular season, is probably a cause rather than a symptom.