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Tag alongs Butler has created Buffalo West in San Diego
Updated: Thursday August 23, 2001 9:43 PM
By Don Banks, Sports Illustrated LA JOLLA, Calif. -- To John Butler's chagrin, it still happens far too often. If he's lucky, he'll mumble it or just pass it off as a 14-year habit that's hard to break. "You mean when you pick up the phone and sometimes still say 'Buffalo Bills?'" said Butler, San Diego's new executive vice president-general manager. "I still do it, and it can be embarrassing." Geographically and meteorologically, San Diego and Buffalo are about as far removed as any two outposts in the NFL. But this year, there is more than a conference connecting the football fortunes in these two old AFL cities. Nine former members of the Bills organization made the move west this offseason, with Butler in the lead like an oversized Pied Piper. After 14 years in Buffalo, the last eight as general manager, Butler was hired Jan. 5 to run the Chargers, a team he scouted for in 1985-86. Before San Diego's offseason makeover was finished, four other former Bills front office members and a like number of ex-Buffalo players had joined his rebuilding project.
On the field, in order of their arrival, are defensive end Marcellus Wiley, quarterback Doug Flutie, and linebackers Sam Rogers and John Holecek. Wiley, Rogers and Holecek have played a combined 17 seasons in the NFL, none of them for a team other than Buffalo. In the front office, Butler's longtime sidekick, A.J. Smith, was named the team's assistant general manager/director of pro personnel in mid-January. The Bills' former director of pro personnel, like Butler, had been in Buffalo since 1987, following a two-year stint as the Chargers pro personnel director. Three other San Diego transplants with Bills connections are director of player personnel Buddy Nix, pro scout Dennis Abraham and college scout Mike Biehl. The three have a combined 16 seasons of NFL experience, all in Buffalo. "From the top down, I see a lot of familiar faces," said Wiley, the NFL's most sought-after free-agent defensive end this offseason and a Los Angeles-area resident. "My roommate is from Buffalo, Sam Rogers, and I'm still playing with Flutie and Holecek. The key was John Butler. Once he came here it enlightened me to the possibility of the situation. "It does make it easier, because when you come to a new team you kind of feel like a junior who switches high schools before his senior year. But coming here, we still kind of share a lot of the old Buffalo stories." The idea in San Diego is to share some of the old Buffalo success. The Bills went to the playoffs 10 times in Butler's 14 seasons, compiling a 140-83 (.628) record that was second only to San Francisco's mark during that span. Flutie and Wiley are lynchpins of that plan, and both Rogers and Holecek, displaced in Buffalo's switch from the 3-4 to 4-3 defense, have a chance to start alongside Chargers perennial Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau. "We didn't just get people who John was familiar with, we got good solid players and pros," Chargers head coach Mike Riley said. "We'll take more of those type of guys if we can get them. They'll fit in with this team just fine."
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