We’ve started a series at Buffalo Sports Daily, highlighting the five biggest bright spots… and dark clouds on the 2011 Buffalo Bills season. We kicked off the dark cloud portions recently with number five on our countdown— the Bills reality check in the Whiteout game. Today we trudge on by profiling the fourth-darkest cloud on the season; Buddy Nix banking too heavily on Shawne Merriman.
There’s always something admirable about taking a chance, particularly in the ultra conservative world of Buffalo Bills football. Whether Shawne Merriman ever becomes the feared Pro Bowl linebacker he used to be or never plays another down for the franchise again, I’ll never condemn general manager Buddy Nix for rolling the dice and calling his shot.
Regrettably when it comes to Merriman’s prospects, it far looks like the latter will be the scenario played out.
While giving recognition to Nix for taking a stab with Merriman, the GM deserves plenty of culpability for an appallingly constructed contingency plan. Merriman’s health and productivity coming into the season was at best a risk and worst case a nightmare waiting to happen. Yet amazingly, the organization did precious little to support the front seven in case of a Merriman-less lineup.
The writing should’ve been on the wall from 2010, when Merriman was claimed by the Bills on November 3rd only to be injured just 20 minutes into his first workout with the club exactly one week later. The Achilles injury forced Merriman to Injured Reserve, essentially earning him around $1.8 million for about a half hour worth of work.
Still, Nix banked on Merriman’s healthy return for the defense. Buffalo failed to sign an outside linebacker in free agency and didn’t draft anyone either, showing entirely too much faith in someone most already considered damaged goods.
Things unquestionably began promising for Merriman this fall. In the first preseason game at Chicago, Merriman had sacks on consecutive plays near the end of the first quarter; doing his trademark “lights out” dance for each and igniting a desperate fan base in the process. For the next week Merriman literally was the talk of the town on airwaves, taverns and water coolers all over.
Without question, the Merriman who once conquered San Diego was back and better than ever. As a result, this Buffalo defense would be drastically improved.
Only that’s not the way things happened.
Merriman quickly looked more wore down with each passing week through the rest of the preseason and into the regular season. He missed countless practices during the week in efforts to remain healthy but nothing worked. Merriman would go on to play in just five games in 2011 and was virtually a non factor; finishing with just nine tackles and one sack. For the record, the lone sack came when he semi-pushed a scrambling Andy Dalton out of bounds in Cincinnati.
He went on Injured Reserve for the second straight year on October 25 because of setbacks with his Achilles.
Once Merriman was done, the position fell into the underachieving hands of try-hards like Arthur Moats, Danny Batten and even converted defensive linemen Alex Carrington and Spencer Johnson.
Unequivocally the collection was a disaster and a significant reason why the defense was arguably even worse than the ghastly campaign of the year prior.
Though Merriman never put a gun to anyone’s head and forced Nix to give him a contract extension (as Nix did last year following Merriman’s first stint on the I.R), it’s not easy to sympathize with a guy who made $4.25 million last year and over $6 million during his time in Buffalo. That doesn’t count any roster guarantees he has in place for next season.
If you buy anything into Nix’s comments during his state of the team address following the season, it appears that Merriman could very well be in the team’s plans for next season. That’s fine but if really the case, fans better hope Nix comes up with a more viable backup arrangement than one that consists of Carrington and Johnson spelling any Merriman injury.
