Well, the Buffalo Bills have made another hire that continues to add to their interesting coaching staff. On Wednesday night, the Bills made an announcement that the team had hired Kathryn Smith to serve as a special teams quality control coach. Smith becomes the first full-time female coach that the NFL has ever seen. Her addition also means that the Bills will have one of the most intriguing coaching staffs of all time in the 2016 season.
Smith is the first female coach to hold a coaching job, and she is qualified for the position. In each of the last two seasons, Smith has worked under head coach Rex Ryan’s supervision as an administrative assistant. She has experience working in player personnel for the New York Jets as well. She will make a lot of firsts for the NFL, much like Jen Welter did when the Arizona Cardinals hired her as a training camp assistant in 2015.
However, Smith is far from the only interesting cog on the Bills’ staff. The team has been making hires left and right already this offseason, but the two biggest names were Ed Reed and Rob Ryan. Reed is a former safety and future Hall-of-Famer who will help to upgrade the team’s already strong secondary. He is a big name with little coaching experience, so it will be exciting to see what he can do as a coach.
As for the Rob Ryan hire, it is going to be one of the biggest storylines of the 2016 season. The fact of the matter is that the Bills ownership reportedly told Rex Ryan that he had one season to fix the issues with the team and get to the playoffs, or he will be out. So what does Rex do? He hires his brother to run the defense.
Now, it is not like Rob Ryan has been good over the past couple of seasons. In fact, his work with the New Orleans Saints was not good at all, as they had the league’s second worst defense this season, behind only the New York Giants. Still, Rex trusts that his brother is going to be able to revive the Buffalo defense that struggled last season, and possibly save the careers of both brothers. And besides, it has been a long time since either of them have coached together, so this should be fun to watch.
When it is all said and done, the Bills are going to have quite a staff. They have two brothers manning the head coach and defensive coordinator positions, the first full-time female coach, and one of the best players to ever play the game preparing to coach the team in 2016. It remains to be seen if this will work out, but the Bills are certainly going to be a very watchable team because of their coaches.
