Bills' Gailey: The fundamentalist
Old school coach is a man of principle and dignity, who has a burning desire to win, deals straight with his players and has a gift for getting the most out of themBy Mark Gaughan


Is it harder these days, Chan Gailey is asked, to get players to follow all the rules, to accept the consequences for their actions, to get them to resist taking the easy way out?

"How much time you got?" Gailey responds, leaning forward as if the question has touched a nerve. "That is a story in itself. Our society doesn't look at things that way anymore. So it's hard for young people to look at that anymore. When the president of our country does things that are not morally right and nothing happens, how in the world are they supposed to understand right from wrong? Now that gray line between those two has become larger and larger every year that I've been alive. Yes, it's become harder."

The new coach of the Buffalo Bills is a man who definitely knows right from wrong.

Way back in 1983 when he got his first head coaching job -- at Troy State in Alabama -- he developed a motto: Do everything the right way. It is a mantra that he has repeated, in one form or another, throughout his career.

"It was a compilation about what I believe about life, what I believe about the game of football, what I believe about how to treat people," Gailey said in an interview at One Bills Drive last month. "I used to say what's the opposite of right? Is it left or is it wrong? The opposite of right in that context is wrong. Generally everybody knows right from wrong. So treat people the way you should treat 'em. Do your studies the right way. Go on a date the right way. All those things you try to teach young men to have an impact on their lives."

"There is one way," former NFL quarterback Kordell Stewart once said about Gailey's approach. "It's not his way or my way, but the right way. It's not who's right, but what's right."

The new leader of the Bills is a man of principle, a man of convictions, a man of faith.

"I am who I am," Gailey said. "I go about my business. I try to make decisions that are best for the team. I'm old school."

"The best way I can describe Chan Gailey," says former Georgia Tech athletic director Dave Braine, "is he is old school."

"He's an old-time football coach," said Herman Edwards, Gailey's boss with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2008.

Old school, of course, is not sexy. It's not trendy. It's not hot.

And that's not what Bills fans coveted when the team set out to find a new head coach in January. They were dreaming of Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden and Bill Cowher.

They got Chan Gailey, the un-sexy hire for the un-sexy franchise in the un-sexy city.

Winning, however, is unquestionably sexy. It never goes out of style. And the 58-year-old Gailey has managed to associate himself with winning throughout his entire life.

Gailey's record in 13 seasons as a head coach at the college and professional levels is 98-65-1. He has been on NFL coaching staffs for 15 seasons, and his teams have made the playoffs 11 of those years. In 35 years of coaching overall, teams he has served have had a losing record only six seasons.

He is confident his success is going to continue with the Bills.

"You have to believe in who you are, and what your system is, and what you've done before," Gailey said. "You have to believe you can do it again. I've been fortunate that almost everywhere I've been, I've been able to do it. Having confidence and cockiness is a fine line. I have a great deal of confidence, trying not to be cocky, and understanding that there's still ways to get better. But I believe in the way that we're going to try to build this. I believe in what we're trying to do."

Competitive
Winning is an attitude that was ingrained in Thomas Chandler Gailey Jr. at an early age.

"I was fortunate to grow up in a household with a daddy who was a Marine and a high school coach, and everywhere I went I was expected to be successful," Gailey said.

The senior Gailey served in the Philippines in World War II, then raised his family in Americus, Ga., where he first worked as a high school coach, later became dean of students at a local college, ran a furniture business for 20 years, then became mayor of the town. Gailey's competitive nature comes from his father.

"A lot of times a coach who is a good person and has a great heart and a great feeling for mankind is taken for not being a competitive guy," said Gailey's best friend, Jim Goodman, who was a personnel man for the Denver Broncos from 1998 to 2008. "People say, that guy's too nice to be a coach. Well, let me tell you, if Chan plays you in racquetball, you better wear you some pads onto the court. If he's playing you in golf, he will try to whip you. He's not conceding you putts. Everybody in football wants to win. But Chan has a burning desire to find a way to win in whatever he's doing."

Gailey followed his career path largely due to the influence of his high school coach, Jimmy Hightower.

"We were a small high school, and we'd go play the big boys and he would never let you think about losing," Gailey said. "You expected to win, no matter where you went or who you played. You expected to be successful. I'm forever indebted to him for that."

Gailey went to the University of Florida to play quarterback in 1970 and spent most of his Gators career as a backup. He married his high school sweetheart, Laurie, in 1973 (they celebrated their 38th anniversary this spring). Then he began a nine-year coaching apprenticeship, most of it on the defensive side of the ball.

Creative
By 1983, he got his first head job, at Troy, and his flair for offensive creativity presented itself.

Troy went 2-8 the year before Gailey arrived, but in his second season at the school, Troy adopted a no-huddle wishbone offense, went 12-1 and won the Division II national championship.

"We went to the no-huddle wishbone for a couple reasons," Gailey said. "One, it was unique. Nobody else was doing it. Two, in Division II film, nobody knew unless they talked to somebody that we were no huddle. So it caught 'em by surprise, especially in the playoffs. Nobody called around as much then as they do now. You just watched the tape."

Gailey would go on to coach in four Super Bowls, but the drama of Troy's '84 title game never has been topped in his career. Gailey's team got the ball, down by two, on its own 12-yard line with 96 seconds left and no timeouts. The game ended with a 50-yard field goal by a walk-on freshman as time expired to give Troy an 18-17 win.

Gailey got his break into the NFL a few days later when he received a call from Denver Broncos coach Dan Reeves, who grew up in Americus and had coached Gailey in little league.

"I was really just calling to congratulate him," Reeves said. "He had an interest at that time in coaching in the NFL and I just happened to have an opening on my staff at the time I called him."

Gailey's career path kept going upward. He coached special teams and receivers, then became offensive coordinator, succeeding Shanahan, whom he calls the most creative offensive colleague with whom he's worked.

A four-year stint on Cowher's staff in Pittsburgh from 1994 to '97 put Gailey on the NFL's "A List" of head-coaching candidates. Gailey created the "Slash" role for multidimensional quarterback Kordell Stewart. After two years as a receiver-slash-runner, Stewart took the QB job in 1997 and went 11-5, producing 32 touchdowns. It was under Cowher that Gailey honed his philosophy of tailoring his scheme to the talent on hand.

"It took me awhile to figure that out, but I figured it out in Pittsburgh," Gailey said. "Cowher was really good about that. He said, 'We've got Kordell, let's use him. How we gonna use him? Use him, Chan.' He pushed the envelope about how to be unique on the field and adapt to what you got. Bill was really more than open-minded about trying things. He wanted to make sure we had enough unique things in the game plan each week to keep the defense off balance. It evolved to how do we best use our people."

Said Reeves: "When I got Mike Vick in Atlanta [in 2001], I went back and looked at films to see what Chan did with Kordell. He did some very innovative things, and we took some of those and utilized them with Mike."

Cowboys
Gailey parlayed that success into one of the elite jobs in football -- head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

Only the Cowboys were not a premier team when Gailey arrived. They had gone 6-10 in '97, had an aging roster and still were in the throes of the out-of-control Barry Switzer era. While Gailey came to Dallas billed as an offensive guru, he brought a back-to-basics approach. Quarterback Troy Aikman did not like adjusting to Gailey's offensive system after spending nine years in Norv Turner's scheme.

Nevertheless, Dallas went 10-6 and 8-8 under Gailey and made the playoffs both seasons. But first-round playoff exits each year prompted Jerry Jones to fire Gailey, a move Jones since has called one of his biggest regrets as Cowboys owner. Dallas went 5-11 the next three seasons under Gailey's successor, Dave Campo.

"At Dallas they hadn't been to the playoffs in a couple years," Gailey said, "and for where they were and what they had, we were in transition from an older team to a younger team, and things were a little bit in disarray at the time. You were trying to win in transition, while going from an old team to a young team."

"We had lost a lot of players and we just didn't have the players that the team had in the past," said Jim Bates, whom Gailey inherited as defensive coordinator in Dallas and who subsequently worked with Gailey in Miami. "There are a lot of things that come up when you're a head coach, whether it's players getting in trouble or whatever. All I can say is every incident that happened when I was with him in Dallas, he handled professionally and with class and high character."

Fundamentals
Since leaving the Cowboys, Gailey's career has been characterized by getting good production out of generally lesser talent than his opponents.

He spent two years as offensive coordinator in Miami, and the Dolphins made the playoffs twice with Jay Fiedler as the quarterback and Oronde Gadsen as the top receiver. He spent seven years as head coach at Georgia Tech and took the Yellow Jackets to six bowl games. He got fired, in a nutshell, because he couldn't beat rival Georgia and didn't win quite enough.

Then he spent one season as offensive coordinator in Kansas City, where the team went 2-14 but Gailey got good reviews for making the best of a rotten situation.

Former players and colleagues say Gailey's teams will be fundamentally sound.

Says Fiedler, who went 21-10 as a starter with Gailey: "He's an excellent coach. One of his real strengths is his knowledge of all sides of the ball. He's coached just about every position. From an offensive perspective, I really learned a lot from him about how to study defenses because of his knowledge and his ability to take advantage of weaknesses."

"I thought he was a great teacher of fundamentals, which is kind of rare at the NFL level," Fiedler said. "A lot of times coaches get too advanced into the X's and O's and expect that NFL players are already fundamentally sound. One of the things that makes Chan a good coach is he stays on the fundamentals."

"He is a fundamentalist," said Braine, his Georgia Tech boss. "If you're supposed to go two steps to the right before you make a cut, then that's the way it is and that's what Chan will make you do."

"He's not going to have 150 plays for every ballgame, I can promise you that," Braine said. "He's going to be prepared. If there's only a handful of plays they're ready to run, they're going to be able to run them from 15 different formations. Everybody is going to know what they're supposed to do on every play."

"It's definitely not an overcomplicated system," said quarterback Damon Huard, who played for Gailey in Miami and Kansas City. "I've been in an offense with 30 different protections. His probably has six or seven, which really at the end of the day might be all you need or is the way to go if you have a lot of young guys. He does a good job of changing up personnel groupings and formations to disguise his plays."

Gailey generally played to the strength of star-studded defenses in Denver, Pittsburgh and Miami.

"If you're only real good on one side of the ball, the biggest thing is don't beat yourself," Bates said. "He couldn't do all he'd like to have done offensively [in Miami]. But he made sure we were good as far as not turning the ball over, doing what we had to do, playing field position. As a result we were in the playoffs both years with not the greatest talent, and that speaks volumes."

Edwards praises Gailey for playing a wide-open spread attack, out of necessity, when the Chiefs were forced to start rookie Tyler Thigpen in the middle of the 2008 season.

"He knew the best thing this kid did was going out of the shotgun," Edwards said. "So he said, 'Let this guy wing it.' Does your ego get in the way of your system or is it about the players? It's definitely about the players with Chan."

"But if he could have it his way, he's an old-time football coach," Edwards said. "He wants to run the ball and control the clock. Stay out of third and long. He's going to do that. He doesn't like to see his team make penalties or turn the ball over offensively."

"I think at the end of the day he'd love to be a power running football team," Huard said. "That's what we tried to do in Miami. At the end of the day he'd also love a quarterback who's very mobile, which I wasn't, so I don't think I was one of his favorite quarterbacks. But he's got the flexibility in his system to adjust to what he has."

Straight-shooting
The two places Gailey received the most criticism in his career were Dallas and Georgia Tech, and at both places detractors complained he was too conservative.

Nobody, however, ever accused Gailey of being anything less than a straight shooter.

"He can be very direct and blunt and intense, and not just in film work -- on the field in practice and games," Fiedler said.

"He's a good speaker," Huard said. "He's very good in front of the team. I thought he was able to get guys motivated. His personality is pretty much what you see is what you get from week to week. In the NFL, with the roller coaster ride that it is, you need someone who's consistent."

"He's a man of great integrity and faith, and he's a man of his word," Edwards said. "He tells his players straight. There's no gray area with Chan. He lets you know how he feels."

Huard, who got passed over as the starter in both Miami and Kansas City due to Gailey's evaluations, attests to that.

"Those were very difficult conversations, but I thought he handled them with class and honesty," Huard said. "As a player, especially when it's all done, you appreciate the people who were honest with you, even when it's not what you want to hear. Because there are coaches who will blow smoke up your behind. You appreciate honesty and consistency, and with Chan that's what you get."

For Gailey, that's just part of doing everything the right way. However, Gailey acknowledges that in his job, he will be judged on the final score on the field, not in his life.

"I'm not sure that's going to help us win games or lose games because a guy lives his life on principle," Gailey said. "My job is to win football games. If I can help a guy be a better man and get him to understand his life will be better if he lives it with principles, then I'm helping him further than just being a football player. That's not part of my job description. My job description is to win."

Spoken like a true old-school football coach.

Click here to comment on this story or to see what other readers have to say.
Entertainment Calendar
Best bets:
Tue 7/27: Tuesday in the Park: George Thorogood & the Destroyers
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Thu 7/29: Margaret Geller
Thu 7/29: Thursday at the Square: Robert Randolph and the Family Band
Fri 7/30: Molson Canal Concert Series: Rik Emmett
Fri 7/30: Kings of Leon
Fri 7/30: Cavalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci
Sat 7/31: Buffalo Place Rocks the Harbor: O.A.R.
Sat 7/31: Creed
Sat 7/31: BPO Summerfest: Beethoven Festival


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