PALM BEACH, Fla. — Bills coach Chan Gailey and the rest of the AFC head coaches had breakfast with the press Tuesday morning at the NFL annual meeting.

OK, most were lucky to get down three sips of coffee. Questions didn’t let up for the entire hour of availability. (Even Pats coach Bill Belichick showed up this year, even if it appeared he’d just got up, threw on some clothes and ran a wet comb through his hair before arriving late.)

We sat with Gailey for the first half of his one-hour session and got some interesting stuff. A partial transcript:
On reaction to signing Williams within the AFC East:
“You hope that by the time you get everybody on the field, and everybody healthy — and you get Kyle Williams, and Marcell (Dareus) and Mario and the other people that will be playing, whether it’s Mark (Anderson) or whoever it is on the other side — you hope that you’ve got a viable pass rush with four people that makes our football team better. And you hope that (the opposing quarterback) feels like he’s got to get the ball out quicker, and maybe that makes him rush something. And if he rushes something, maybe he throws it to us instead of to his own guy.”

On whether the impact of the addition of a talent such as Mario Williams can be measured on a team:
“Yes, you can measure it. There is no statistical measure. But when you add Buddy Nix’s years in the league, and my years in the league, you come up with two old guys with a lot of years. And we know the effect that pass rush has on the game today. We’ve seen the game evolve. We’ve been in it since the ’80s. And pass rush is a huge part of this thing.”

On how to divvy the carries between RBs Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller:
“That’s a great problem to have, by the way — to have two great players. And I don’t know how to do that. I know one thing. They’re both not going to be totally happy with the number of touches that they get. With only one football and several guys who can make plays, everybody’s not going to be happy. That’s part of it. So you do the best you can to use C.J. and Fred in different ways to get them the ball, because they’re both capable of making big plays when the ball is in their hands.”

On whether he can ensure that each gets roughly an equal amount of carries:
“You can do that if that’s what’s most important. I don’t think that’s the most important thing. The most important thing is to win, and to try to find ways to get two good players the ball so we win.”

On whether they’ll come up with plays featuring both Jackson and Spiller on the field at the same time, as Gailey suggested at the scouting combine:
“That will probably be a definite part of our offense (laughs). It’s got to be. They’re going to be in there at the same time, somewhere.”

On what the Bills liked most about Mark Anderson before signing him this month:
“You’ve always seen Mark’s capabilities. What happened between his rookie year and last year, I don’t know, because Buddy (Nix) just started talking about him at the end of this year — so I didn’t go back and do all the research that Buddy did. It’s better for you to talk to him about that guy. He was very productive, he’s very talented — and he can bring an end rush. We know we got push, so we were looking for edge-rush guys that can bring the quickness and speed off the edge.”

On whether Mark Anderson is just a situational defender:
“He’s capable of playing all three downs, I think. And the thing about it is, all three downs in the league today is more passing than running. We’re a different animal than we were 15 years ago.”

On whether the fact the Bills already have a second offensive package with another QB (Brad Smith) will help them better prepare for Tebow and the Jetsssss:
“Yeah, I think it will, because we’ll get some work against a Wildcat-type offense in training camp, if nothing else.”

On whether having to prepare for such a package really is a distraction for a defense in its preparations for the main offense:
“To be honest with you, one of the reasons we have it is we think that there is a definite advantage to that. Because what we say is this: if you’ve got something that’s unusal, the coaches are going to take an hour to sit there and talk about it. And then on the field they’re going to do a 10-minute walk-through on the wildcat. And then in practice, out of their 45 plays they’ll take five on the wildcat. So if you take all that, it’s somewhere between 5 and 15% of their time that they have available that they’re using on the wildcat. Every snap and every minute they take doing that means they’re not working on your base offense, the base pass plays, the base pass protections. So hopefully it helps you win games.”

On how pleased he was with the play of linebacker Nick Barnett:
“Nick Barnett played extremely well. If we’d have won more football games, he probably would have been in the Pro Bowl, because his statistics matched up with a bunch of the guys that went to the Pro Bowl. He got his feet wet, so to speak, in Buffalo. And I think this year he’ll have a better year, maybe, than he did last year. And last year was extremely good. And he’ll feel a lot more comfortable about a lot of things this year.”

On whether it takes time to become a leader in a new locker room (he had spent his first eight years in Green Bay before signing with the Bills last July):
“Sure it does. I don’t care who you are. Peyton (Manning) might be the exception. But most people it takes a while to find your way around the team — and plus, last year was unique because he didn’t have an off-season to get ingrained. He showed up the weekend of training camp. So that’s another thing that kind of hindered his progress as a leader and feeling comfortable.”

On what kind of player OT Demetrius Bell is:
“He’s got some talent. He’s got good feet. He’s still a young player. In football terms, he’s a young player, because he hasn’t played a lot of football. But he’s a good man, and he’s got talent.”

On whether the Bills are still looking to bring him back:
“Oh yeah. We’ve been talking to him all along. But I don’t know what they’re looking for right now.”

On Robert Kraft saying yesterday that he thinks one of the reasons the Bills loaded up with pass rushers was to “come after our boy, No. 12″:
“Well, he’s right. He’s exactly right. That’s what we feel like we’ve got to do — you’ve got to rush the passer in our division. That’s the first thing you go after is your division.”

On whether that also played into the decision to switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3:
“No. I’ll tell you what happened is, there’s so much passing in the league today, you’re in a four-man front the majority of time anyway. That’s just the way the league is. Because you can’t stay in 3-4 on first and second down and go to nickel on third down. You’re in nickel on second down, and sometimes on first down because of personnel. So it had more to do with where we are as the game has evolved than it did anything else.

But some teams have switched to a 3-4 this year:
“It’s what everybody’s comfortable with. If (Dave) Wannstedt had been a 3-4 guy, we’d have kept going to a 3-4. But I thought he was the best guy to run it, and we can adjust.”

Did it help going to a 4-3 in recruiting Mario Williams?:
“Yeah. Oh yeah. Sure was. We’re going to be in it on every snap.”

On whether he’s happy with the roster changes this off-season:
“Yeah. We made some good additions to our football team. We said at the end of the season, our biggest challenge was to improve our pass rush, and that’s what we have done to this point. We haven’t done it on the field, but at least we’ve done it on paper. We’re excited about that. And when you help your football team in one area, you help your football team — there’s a ripple effect in a lot of different areas. So help your team in a lot of ways.”