Buffalo News Sports > Columns > Larry FelserHASLETT, SHERMAN WOULD FIT1/15/2006By LARRY FELSERThe Buffalo Bills have been trying to replace Marv Levy as coach for seven seasons, so with the resignation of Mike Mularkey, Levy the general manager is leading the hunt for his own successful successor.Levy came to Buffalo late in the 1986 season with long experience as a head coach at three different colleges and in the NFL with the Kansas City Chiefs. The two most desirable candidates to fill the Mularkey vacancy, in this view, are Mike Sherman and Jim Haslett, the two most unfortunate victims of the great coaching purge of 2006. Their backgrounds bear some resemblance to Levy's.Marv himself took over the Chiefs in 1978 when they were far more decayed than the current Bills, having won just four of their previous 20 games.Levy steadily improved the Chiefs until he brought them their first winning season in eight years in 1981. Then, in 1982, came the players' strike that wiped out the NFL schedule from Sept. 20 to Nov. 20 and cut the season to nine games. It produced coaching burnout in such stalwarts as **** Vermeil and Chuck Knox, who quit their posts. Levy, whose team finished 3-6, was fired.Sherman became the Packers' coach in 2000 after Ray Rhodes was fired after one season because the Pack wanted better leadership to succeed Mike Holmgren. Sherman gave it to them with five consecutive winning seasons, including playoff appearances from 2001 through 2004.That success wasn't strong enough for Tim Thompson, the Packers' new GM. He fired Sherman after a 4-12 season that began with the Packers losing both their guards, Mike Wahle and Marco Rivera, to free agency and their top three running backs, top receiver Jevon Walker and tight end Bubba Franks to injury.Haslett was hired by the Saints in 2000, the same season Sherman began as a head coach. The fiery ex-Bills' linebacker turned a 3-13 team into a 10-6 playoff team with the Saints playing in the postseason for just the fourth time in the 33 years of the franchise's existence. Until this last season Haslett's record was 42-38, with just one losing season.To fully appreciate Haslett's accomplishments in New Orleans consider that Tom Benson, the eccentric San Antonio auto dealer, won't even allow the team's past records before he purchased it in 1985 to appear in the Saints' media guide. Then there are the vast temptations of playing in "the city which care forgot," and the presence of too many low-character players in the locker room.Then came Hurricane Katrina, with the Saints playing exclusively on the road amid enormous disruptions to the team families and Benson maneuvering to forsake New Orleans and move the franchise to his home town, San Antonio. For all its problems, Haslett's team still beat the Bills and never gave up on the season.Considering the storms that Haslett weathered and the unfairness of Sherman's dismissal as well as the pressure of coaching in a small market where the fans are even more crazed than those in Buffalo, either Sherman or Haslett would make a great fit here.Larry Felser, Buffalo News columnist, appears in Sunday's editions.
