The Buffalo Bills fired offensive coordinator Turk Schonert Friday, making him the third NFL coach holding that post to be fired within two weeks of the start of the regular season.

The Tampa Bay Bucs on Wednesday fired former Boston College head coach Dave Jagodzinski as their offensive coordinator before he ever coached in a regular-season game for them, and Kansas City earlier fired longtime NFL assistant, and recent Georgia Tech head coach, Chan Gailey.

As it shapes up, the Patriots couldn't ask for a much easier opener than having the offensively-challenged Bills come to Foxboro on Sept. 14.

Not only has New England beaten Buffalo 11 times in a row -- and in 16 of their last 17 -- but the BIlls also now are struggling (to put it mildly) offensively. Even though the Bills played five preseason games, their first-team offense, with Trent Edwards at quarterback, failed to score even a single touchdown.

"I wasn't thinking about firing (Schonert) three days ago," Buffalo coach Dick Jauron said Friday. "But when you start thinking about it, I think you need to move on it and do something."

Doing something like that after less than 72 hours of consideration smacks of a desperate, knee-jerk reaction, although it's not as if the Bills were an offensive machine last season, when they ranked 25th in the league in total offense.

Is there anyone from Bangor to Block Island -- or Bangor to San Diego, for that matter -- who thinks the Bills, especially considering the problems they've had against the Pats in this decade, have any chance of coming into Foxboro and putting up enough points against a Bill Belichick defense to pull off what would be a monumental upset on Monday Night Football?

There's even more chaos in Tampa, where general manager Mark Dominik and rookie head coach Raheem Morris hired Jagodzinski in January, only to let him go 10 days before the season opener.

I suppose Bucs fans could consider it good news that Dominik and Morris recognized their mistake and moved quickly to correct it. But it certainly makes you wonder what they were thinking when they hired "Jags" in the first place.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, first-year coach Todd Haley announced he'd be calling the plays now that Gailey's gone. Gailey's most recent firing was after the 2007 season, when Georgia Tech gave him his walking papers after the Yellow Jackets lost to archrival Georgia for the sixth consecutive time.

Compounding Haley's problems in making the Chiefs a contender in the AFC West is the fact that QB Matt Cassel, signed for big bucks in the offseason from the Patriots, is sidelined with strained ligaments in his knee.