Buffalo Bills fire general manager Doug Whaley, to no one's surprise

• Doug Whaley has been the Bills' GM since 2013.
• He joined the franchise in 2010 after working more than a decade for the Steelers.

ORCHARD PARK – On the way out the door after seven-plus years of employ with the Buffalo Bills, at least deposed general manager Doug Whaley got a nice pat on the back from the team’s new power broker, Sean McDermott.

“I will say that Doug and his staff did a phenomenal job, I will say that,” McDermott said Saturday at the conclusion of the NFL Draft, complimenting the work Whaley and his scouts put in on Buffalo’s six draft choices.

Terry Pegula did the same thing Sunday morning when he announced that he and his wife and co-owner of the Bills, Kim Pegula, have fired Whaley and the entire scouting and personnel departments.

“I want to make it clear that this decision was made by Kim and I,” Pegula said during a 15-minute news conference at One Bills Drive. “Doug is a good guy, a smart man. There were a few tears shared around the building. He's a good guy. He’s going to land somewhere, I can tell you that.”

Pegula stopped short of getting into the reasons for the dismissal of Whaley and the football personnel men, calling those discussions “private.” He then added, “We look forward to hiring our first GM as owners of the Bills. Everybody needs to get better. I don’t care if you own a sports team, or do your job. You strive to get better in everything you do. Whether it’s a learning curve or not, let’s get better.”

Pegula said that Whaley was responsible for putting together the Bills’ draft plan and executing it, but very few people truly believe that. McDermott, who Pegula hired as the new head coach of the team in mid-January, was basically serving as its de facto general manager these last couple months, too, and his voice has overridden everyone else's.

It was obvious at the NFL scouting combine in March when the Bills declined to make Whaley available to speak to the media — which is commonplace for general managers at that event — that his days were numbered.

When he was also muted at the NFL owners’ meetings, and lastly, and perhaps most alarmingly, he was not allowed to talk at the team’s annual draft luncheon a couple weeks ago, which has always been the domain of the GM and the personnel chiefs, there was no doubt Whaley was a short-timer in Buffalo.

Thus ends yet another disappointing run for a Bills’ executive. As we all know, the Bills haven’t been to the playoffs in 17 years, and Whaley had been here for seven of those seasons, so it was time for him to go. He joins Tom Donahoe, Marv Levy, Russ Brandon, and Buddy Nix in the Bills’ graveyard of general managers who failed to get the Bills to the postseason in the 21st century.

The Bills could have sent Whaley packing along with fired head coach Rex Ryan back in January, but that would not have been logical. Whaley and his staff had done all the scouting of the college prospects last fall. They had made the contacts with the college coaches, watched live practices and games, and then pored over hours and hours of film. It would have been counter-productive to not have their voices heard in the draft war room this past weekend, let alone share their knowledge with another franchise should some of them had been hired elsewhere.

But now the draft is over, and the Bills are turning the page to a new era, one that they hope will be much more successful than the previous era when Whaley was running the football side of the operation.

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He came to Buffalo from Pittsburgh in 2010 with the reputation of a young up-and-comer, a man who had learned his craft in the highly-respected front office of the Steelers. Whaley began his tenure with the Bills as newly-appointed GM Nix’s right-hand man before taking over for Nix in the corner office following the 2013 draft.

During his time at the top, Whaley certainly had his share of personnel misfires. Nix may have been the GM of record in 2013, but that draft had Whaley’s fingerprints all over it, and the very first pick, EJ Manuel at No. 16 overall, proved to be an ominous warning sign of trouble.

Manuel was a bust, one of the biggest in Bills’ history, because he was viewed as the future franchise quarterback and never came close to fulfilling his over-drafted status. Four years later, the entire 2013 draft class is gone from Buffalo.

In 2014, Whaley made a move that still gets criticized today, the trade up to get wide receiver Sammy Watkins. It cost Buffalo its 2015 first-round draft choice, an exorbitant price for a player who has turned out to be injury-prone and to date has not lived up to his draft position.

When you combine the 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 drafts, the Bills picked 28 players. Thirteen players are already long gone from the roster, and of the players still here, only five have been full-time starters –— Watkins, Preston Brown, Seantrel Henderson, Ronald Darby, and John Miller. The top two picks in 2016, Shaq Lawson and Reggie Ragland, are expected to become full-time starters this year.

Obviously, it wasn’t all bad for Whaley as he made a number of solid free agent, street free agent, and trade acquisitions. Still on the roster are players like LeSean McCoy, Jerry Hughes, Tyrod Taylor, Richie Incognito, Charles Clay, and Lorenzo Alexander.

There have been other key contributors now gone such as Corey Graham, Dan Carpenter, Jerome Felton, Mike Gillislee, Chris Hogan, and others, but not enough home runs to get the Bills over the hump.

MAIORANA@Gannett.com