Bills will welcome back familiar, not-so-friendly face with Patriots' Week 5 visit

Former Bills' head coach Doug Marrone is now the New England Patriots' offensive line coach and returns to Buffalo over a decade after his ugly departure from Buffalo.

Dec 29, 2013; Foxborough, MA, USA; Buffalo Bills head coach Doug Marrone looks on during the second half of their 34-20 loss to the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium. | Winslow Townson-Imagn Images

A familiar face will return to Orchard Park this weekend when the Buffalo Bills welcome the New England Patriots to town for a Sunday night AFC East matchup. And most Bills' fans will not be happy to see him.

Former Bills head coach Doug Marrone is in his first season with the Patriots as their offensive line coach, having been hired by first-year New England HC Mike Vrabel just over a decade following an ugly departure from Buffalo.

Marrone served as the Bills’ head coach during the 2013 and 2014 seasons, compiling a record of 15-17, including a 9-7 mark in his final year at the helm before he elected to exercise a clause in his contract that allowed him to opt out of his deal due to a change in ownership from Ralph Wilson to Terry and Kim Pegula. He pocketed $4 million while walking away from his job with the Bills.

Dec 14, 2014; Orchard Park, NY, USA; Buffalo Bills head coach Doug Marrone during the second half against the Green Bay Packers at Ralph Wilson Stadium. | Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images

Marrone later expressed regret over the way things ended with the team that made him an NFL head coach for the first time.

“I think you take away a lot,” he said from the 2017 NFL Scouting Combine, then as head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. “Everything is a learning experience. You look back, I made mistakes in Buffalo. You look back on them and try to grow from them and do a better job. I always appreciated that experience.”

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Upon quitting on the Bills, Marrone alerted his former players by sending a mass text informing them of his shocking decision.

“That's definitely a big part of the learning process of wanting more time,” he added in 2017. “Privately, I've talked to Terry (Pegula) about that, and he knows how I feel about it. I'm going to keep that conversation private. You learn from that. That's one of the mistakes you wish you could go back and do over. I wish I could've communicated better at that time.”

Dec 21, 2014; Oakland, CA, USA; Buffalo Bills coach Doug Marrone reacts against the Oakland Raiders at O.co Coliseum. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Everyone encounters situations throughout life that they wish had gone differently. For Marrone, he clearly regrets how his time in Buffalo came to an end, expressing as much years later. But that doesn’t mean Bills' fans have forgiven or forgotten their team’s former leader and how he cast them aside, at the time, without a second thought.

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Things were different back then, long before the Bills became the perennial division champion and playoff regular. At the time Marrone was in Buffalo, the team was still amid a lengthy playoff drought, with emotions among the fan base as raw as they had ever been throughout the team's history.

If Bills' fans are to see their former head coach walking the sidelines for the opposition on Sunday, it's sure to bring up some bad memories of one of the darkest times in franchise history.

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