In a press conference that streamed via the team’s official web site roughly as well as the team’s offense executed its mission during the preseason, the Buffalo Bills confirmed that offensive coordinator Turk Schonert has been ousted from his position.
“Today we removed Turk Schonert and relieved him of his responsibilities as our offensive coordinator,” coach Dick Jauron said. "[Quarterbacks coach] Alex Van Pelt will assume the play calling duties and [running backs coach] Eric Studesville will continue as our run game coordinator and we’ll obviously move forward as quickly and as well as we possibly can from here. Nothing that we had planned on obviously, nothing that was enjoyable in any way shape or form, but that’s what occurred.”
Jauron said that the decision was his and his alone.
“I wasn’t thinking about firing him three days ago,” Jauron said. “I wasn’t thinking about it two weeks ago. And when you start thinking about it, I think you need to move on it and do something. So when I started thinking about it I gave it a good deal of thought and did it. Clearly I believe it’s the right thing to do. It’s painful for him and for his family and for the organization to go through it, but it was just a decision I needed to make I felt, and made it.”
Jauron also said that Schonert will not be remaining with the team.
In explaining the reasons for the move, Jauron took partial responsibility for it.
“It was just the lack of productivity and the direction we were moving,” Jauron said. “I just didn’t feel like it was going certainly where I envisioned it going. And there’s clearly a lot of fault here, not just Turk and I’m willing to accept certainly my share of that.”
Translation? If Jauron hadn’t made the move now, it very well might have been his own butt later.
And it still very well might be.