Buffalo Bills Head Coach Dick Jauron

National Football League Blogcast, NFL Blogcast

I’ve always really respected Buffalo Bills head coach Dick Jauron. Not only is he an intelligent and determined football coach, he’s also a highly respected gentleman around the NFL and beyond. And he knows how to find the right people to build a football team with — talented and hard-nosed, yes — but also willing to put their team before any individual accomplishments. With that kind of philosophy, talent and character, success cannot be far behind. That’s why the organization gave coach Jauron a three-year extension that will keep him in Buffalo through the 2011 season. So, it’s “starting to happen” for the Buffalo Bills. After a 4-0 start to this 2008 season, the team has cooled a bit losing three of their past four. But at 5-3, the Bills are tied for first place in the AFC East and are ready to face their toughest challenge so far this season at New England on Sunday. I spoke with coach Jauron on a national conference call this afternoon.

How is the mood of the team in response to the recent losses?

Well, the mood was a lot better from everybody, including myself, when we were 4-0. But the fact is, you’ve got to take every week as it’s presented to you and we’ve got to take the 5-3 record and move on. We know this New England game is a huge game for us coming up.

How do you keep the team motivated and enthusiastic?

Well, the number one thing is you’d better have the right guys. If you don’t have the right guys, it’s not going to make a whole lot of difference what you say to them. So, they’ve got to be — to a large degree — self-motivated guys. They’ve got to be guys that really care about our football team. Hopefully more or at least as much as they care about their own individual performance. Hopefully they’re into our team just as much. And I would say that we have a good group. So it makes that part of our job a little bit easier. Marv (Levy) used to say it all the time. The way you motivate a team is you have intrinsically motivated people. There’s a lot of truth to that.

Depth on a team is so important because you certainly experienced a deluge of injuries last season and you’re experiencing them again this season — key injuries — albeit to a lesser degree.

Oh yes. We know our game. Everybody in the league suffers injuries. It’s just a tough game. Probably nobody on the field is 100%. Once they start training camp and start working as hard as teams in our business work and play as hard as they play every Sunday, there’s attrition unfortunately. And we all go through it. So, yeah, the backups are critically important. And the backups to the backups. What you do personnel-wise is you move through it because obviously most of your backups are critical special teams performers. If they’ve got double-duty, that wears them down and wears a little thin. So, it really does take its toll over time. But as I said, everybody’s got injuries and they have to deal with them.

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