Let's talk about Bills HC Sean McDermott

After getting off to an 8-2 start in a 'rebuilding' year, it's time to give Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott his flowers.

David Faux | Nov 11, 2024

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Let’s talk about Sean McDermott.

Expectations were a bit different for the Buffalo Bills head coach as he entered the 2024 season, his eighth at the helm of the team. A bevy of veteran offseason departures made some people feel like it was the end of an era. Center Mitch Morse, who had been on the team since 2019, was cut to save money against the cap. Three members of the Buffalo secondary, who had been on the team since McDermott’s first season in 2017 (when this particular writer was just a senior in college annoying his roommates for yelling so much at the TV on Sundays), were also shown the exit door. Micah Hyde remains in limbo as a free agent, Jordan Poyer went to the rival Miami Dolphins, and Tre’Davious White was cut after his second season-ending injury in three seasons.

The cookie on top of it all was the Bills letting their top two wide receivers go. Gabriel Davis walked in free agency to take a nice deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars, who currently sit at 2-8 this season. Perennial Pro Bowler Stefon Diggs was traded in what could only be described as an ugly divorce from the team, as Buffalo chose to take on $30 million in dead money to have him play for a potential playoff opponent in the Houston Texans.

On one hand, an era was objectively over for this team. They decided to take some tough medicine, prepare themselves for future salary cap flexibility, and restructure how their offense functions. Gone are pass-happy coordinators Brian Daboll and Ken Dorsey, succeeded by once wünderkind Joe Brady, who has ushered in a new style that’s not only working, but is attacking the defensive trends of moving defenses deeper to prevent big plays. This was an interesting, perhaps ironic, move to make considering that McDermott and former defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier were the first to make this defense a reality to try and stop Patrick Mahomes in 2020. It didn’t work, either in the regular season or in the playoffs, but for different reasons.

Why does this matter though? Why am I bringing all of this up?

Because those outside of Buffalo—and even some Bills fans—simply do not recognize how incredibly good of a coach McDermott is. People seem to take for granted the incredible success that he’s had since taking the reins of the team.

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There are expectations for this team. The Buffalo Bills have actual expectations. It’s hard to fully explain how insane of a statement that is if you don’t remember the drought era, and how everyone had largely accepted mediocrity as the standard for this franchise. Yet, as soon as McDermott arrived, the culture changed. They went 9-7, punched their first playoff ticket in nearly two decades, and lost a heartbreaker to the Jacksonville Jaguars. The following season was arguably a better coaching job, taking a roster that had been depleted to a 6-10 record while playing an incredibly raw rookie Josh Allen at quarterback for the majority of the year. The following two seasons showed incredible growth, going from a plucky Wild Card team to an outright dominant force in the AFC. They’ve won four straight AFC East titles and are looking to cruise to a fifth straight this year.

This is an unprecedented level of success that this franchise simply hasn’t seen since Marv Levy was wearing the headset, so why are some fans upset and doubting this coach? Well, it’s largely for the same reason that fans were upset with Levy:

They haven’t gotten the ring.

It’s the ultimate goal. It’s the thing everyone on this team and in this city wants and desires. But is that the only measure of success? There are many great coaches who haven’t won the big one. There have also been some less-than-great coaches who have been carried to a Super Bowl title. Frankly, this is the nature of the beast. Football is an incredibly difficult sport to be consistently great at. Between the short shelf life of players, the salary cap, no developmental league, high expectations to be realized in a short period of time, and having to balance both brains and brawn to achieve victory, it’s an incredibly difficult sport to be successful in.

Not winning a Super Bowl doesn’t mean that McDermott is a bad coach. It doesn’t mean that a different coach couldn’t come in a take this roster to the title that everyone so deeply craves. It also doesn’t mean that he won’t win a title during his time as a head coach. Some people point to Marty Schottenheimer, a great coach who found ways to lose in the playoffs, as a comparison. I look to others like Dick Vermeil, who went to a Super Bowl with the Eagles in 1980 and fell to the Raiders. He returned to the NFL in the 1990s with the Rams and in 1999 broke through and rode a miraculous Kurt Warner run to a title. I look to Tony Dungy, a coach who was considered too conservative, too relaxed, and not fiery enough to motivate players. When he was fired in Tampa and replaced by Jon Gruden, a very fiery coach, Gruden rode a historically great defense (built by Dungy) to a Super Bowl title. This was in spite of Gruden’s offense not being as good as it was the previous season under Dungy. The Pro Football Hall of Famer then went to the Colts and found a way to break through there and win a title in 2006.

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Not convinced? For 14 seasons, Andy Reid was brutalized by Philadelphia media and fans alike because of his inability to win playoff games, poor clock management, and unwillingness to run the ball. The Eagles went to multiple NFC Championship games and made a Super Bowl appearance, but ultimately never won the big one. He would move on to Kansas City where he found even more of the same thing: great regular seasons, high expectations, and big disappointments in the playoffs. It seems that since Patrick Mahomes has become quarterback and won three Super Bowls, people have developed collective amnesia about Reid’s time as a head coach, even with the Chiefs. The 2013 Wild Card game where they surrendered a massive lead to the Andrew Luck-led Colts comes to mind, or maybe the 2016 loss to the Steelers in the Wild Card Round where the Kansas City defense didn’t surrender a single touchdown. Or in 2017 when the clearly unstoppable force of Marcus Mariota and Mike Mularkey mounted an 18-point second-half comeback (Mularkey was fired after losing in the Divisional Round).

There have been many frustrations with McDermott as the head coach. There’s been tough playoff losses, bad losing streaks, poor rushing defense, and even bad in-game decision-making. Welcome to the life of any NFL team to ever exist. No team is perfect, no team is going to win it all every year, and no team is going to make every fan satisfied, as some fans want nothing more than to find something to complain about.

All of this is to say that if you don’t think McDermott is a good head coach, you're allowed to think that way. You’re also allowed to be told very strongly and with great fervor, data, and facts behind it, that you’re very, very wrong. He brings culture, preparation, energy, and an incredibly strong leadership ability to this team, and has completely changed the entire identity of this franchise. His use of analytics has brought this team forward, his ability to see and adjust to trends in the NFL keeps this team ahead of others. His ability to replenish his coaching staff, and train up younger coaches fosters a great environment to work in. His ability to work with both the front office and ownership makes for a unified front that doesn’t fall apart or try to take shots through the media.

If you can look at this team being off to its best start since 1993 in a season in which many pundits expected the Jets or Dolphins to usurp them for a division title and still can’t admit that Sean McDermott is a great head coach, then the problem no longer rests with Sean McDermott.

Here are some fun stats about the Bills head coach on the way out.

1. 81-43 since taking over as the Bills head coach in 2017.

2. One losing season during that time, in a rebuilding year with a rookie quarterback and terrible roster.

3. His career winning percentage in the month of December is .677 with a record of 21-10.

4. Since their offensive explosion in 2020, the Bills have ranked in the top six in Points Per Game every year, including this year (thus far) despite having three different offensive coordinators during that time.

5. Since 2019, the Bills have finished outside the top four teams in defensive Points Per Game once. They finished first in 2021, second in both 2019 and 2022, and despite a slew of injuries in 2023, they finished fourth. The only outlier was 2020, where they finished 16th.

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