His survival as head coach of the Buffalo Bills on Tuesday came despite the fact the team joined exclusive company in turning a 5-1 record into a 7-9 finish this season.

Only three teams have started 5-1 only to finish with a losing record in the 31 years the NFL has been running a 16-game schedule.

A look at the history of coaching firings shows that Jauron also is the beneficiary of uncommon patience on the part of Bills owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Jauron became just the 14th coach since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 to survive to a fourth season after three straight losing years.

The last team to open a season 5-1 and finish 7-9 was the St. Louis Rams in 1995. Rich Brooks was in his first season as Rams head coach that year, and it was the Rams' first season in St. Louis. Brooks lasted one more year before losing his job. The other instance was in 1986, when the Atlanta Falcons started 5-1 and finished 7-8-1. That team was coached by Dan Henning, who was in his fourth year on the job, and he was fired after the season.

The odds of missing the playoffs after a 5-1 start are slim. Since 1978, 139 teams have opened 5-1 or 6-0, and 121 of them have made the playoffs. That's 87 percent.

Only four times have teams started 5-1 or better and slumped to 8-8. Those teams were: the 1978 Washington Redskins, coached by Jack Pardee; the 1993 New Orleans Saints, coached by Jim Mora; the 1995 Oakland Raiders, coached by Mike White; and the 2002 San Diego Chargers, coached by Marty Schottenheimer.

The Bills bucked the odds for 4-0 teams, too. Since 1990, teams that opened 4-0 have an 84 percent chance of making the playoffs (47 of 56 did it). Tennessee and the New York Giants were the only other teams to start 4-0 this season.

As for surviving three straight losing seasons, the last coach to do it was Dom Capers, who was fired in 2006 after four straight losing seasons as the first coach of the expansion Houston Texans. Before that, the last example was Bruce Coslet, who was fired by Cincinnati in 2000.

Only two of those 14 coaches eventually did get their teams to the playoffs. One was Bill Belichick, who won 20 games his first three years in Cleveland then went 11-5 in 1994. The other was Bart Starr, who had a winning record in his fourth year in Green Bay and got to the playoffs in his eighth year.

The most famous examples of coaches who turned teams around after three or more losing years are Hall of Famers Tom Landry of Dallas and Chuck Noll of Pittsburgh. They lost for five and three years, respectively, before achieving greatness.

Among active coaches, Tennessee's Jeff Fisher is the best example of a slow starter who turned it around. Fisher won 23 games his first three years, went 8-8 his fourth season then broke through with a 13-3 campaign in 1999. Fisher is the longest tenured head coach in the league, in his 14th season.

e-mail: mgaughan@buffnews.com