The Bills are wrapping up their investigation into the arrest of offensive line coach Aaron Kromer and a decision on his future with the team could be known before the end of the week, Vic Carucci of The Buffalo News writes. Kromer, of course, allegedly punched a teenage boy in a dispute over beach chairs.
If Kromer is dismissed, the Bills would likely promote assistant offensive line coach Kurt Anderson to offensive line coach, an NFL source told Carucci. Carucci also hears that if Kromer is canned, they’ll follow a course of firing him with cause and, therefore, not pay him his salary, believed to be slightly more than $1MM annually. Kromer then could file a grievance, but from the outside, that would seem like an uphill battle at that point.
Kromer is due in court on August 12th, when he is expected to enter a plea. However, the Bills are not obligated to wait for that or any plea deal the coach might work out with prosecutors, according to Carucci’s NFL source, and there are strong indications they won’t.
The 48-year-old was at the center of another story in Chicago last season, when he admitted to being the leak for a report in which an anonymous Bears source criticized the play of quarterback Jay Cutler. Having gone from an interim head coach in New Orleans to an offensive coordinator in Chicago to an offensive line coach in Buffalo, Kromer had already seen his coaching career trending in the wrong direction in recent years.