It was a long time coming, but the Buffalo Bills front office made the move fans like me have been waiting too long to see. The team enters 2012 with George Edwards out as defensive coordinator, with linebackers coach Dave Wannstedt tapped to replace him. I wish I’d written that last sentence at around this time last year, but for the Bills, late is better than never.

After all, I have a hunch that I wasn’t the only Bills fan who figured that giving Wannstedt the DC job was the intention when his name surfaced as a potential Bills hire early in 2011. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots. Wannstedt had head coaching experience in the NFL, with the Miami Dolphins and Chicago Bears. He’d also recently coached the NCAA’s Pittsburgh Panthers, a team he’d taken to first in the Big East as well as leading them to three bowl games.

As a long time disciple of Jimmy Johnson, Wannstedt crafted that Dallas Cowboys defense which Buffalonians like me had learned to hate in those ill-fated Super Bowls in the early ’90s. He had a proven track record and plenty of experience, so I naturally figured he was being pursued to replace Edwards back in January of last year…which is right around the time Buddy Nix and Chan Gailey inexplicably started defending Edwards, making Wannstedt the linebackers and assistant head coach instead.

I’m no armchair general (manager), but keeping Edwards on as DC proved to be the senseless move we all thought it was, only delaying the inevitable. It’s hard to imagine why Gailey and company thought that Edwards, a man who’d only had assistant coaching experience, could take on the Herculean task of transforming a 4-3, cover-2 defense. Although Edwards had coached for a team that had previously done just that, he’d only been linebackers coach at the time. Indeed, Gailey himself had only ever had experience with the 4-3 before coming to Buffalo.

I think it’s safe to say that the Bills are moving forward with an upgrade at the DC position, but we don’t yet know what else will change for the defense. Will the Bills continue to rely on a 3-4 game-plan or will they finally give up on it and go to to the 4-3? Wannstedt has said that “changes” will be made, but he hasn’t committed to anything specific, saying that he’ll “sit back and evaluate things.” For this Bills fan, that’s progress.

Taurus Londono grew up in Buffalo, NY where he watched the Buffalo Bills go to four consecutive Super Bowls. He is a lifelong fan of the team.

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