Monday, January 27, 2014

Browns must make decision on Bills' O'Neil today

BY NICK ST. DENIS

After just one season as the Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator, Mike Pettine bolted for a head coaching gig with the Cleveland Browns.

Now, the Bills are are waiting to see if Pettine plans on poaching some of his old staff, and the Bills are complying -- to a point.

According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Buffalo has given the Browns until Monday (today) to decide whether they want to bring in Bills linebackers coach Jim O'Neil to interview for its vacant defensive coordinator position.

Cleveland dragged out the hiring process for its head coach, which put Buffalo in an undesirable position. The Bills couldn't do anything about it, because coaches can interview for head coaching jobs at their own will.

But teams are allowed to set limits and restrictions on when and if they'll allow their assistant coaches to be interviewed for another team's assistant position. The Bills are clearly putting their foot down in this case, as they should.

Buffalo recently hired former Detroit Lions coach Jim Schwartz to run the offense, and Schwartz will presumably meet with O'Neil this week, depending on how the Browns situation turns out.

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