Steaming mad Sean McDermott notes Bills failed to meet 'standard' in ugly loss

Buffalo Bills' head coach Sean McDermott voiced his frustrations following a 33-6 preseason defeat to the Chicago Bears.

Ralph Ventre | Aug 10, 2024

Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott adjusts a play during drills on the opening day of Buffalo Bills training camp. / Shawn Dowd/Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / USA TODAY NETWORK

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To say the head coach was not happy would be the understatement of the summer thus far.

Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott watched his team kick off the preseason schedule with a complete dud against the Chicago Bears at Highmark Stadium, and the eighth-year bench boss was displeased with the effort.

"A ton to work on. Our standard was not out there today. That's not how we play. There's a lot that we need to do to get ourselves ready to go here," said McDermott.

The Bills seemingly struggled up front, managing only 77 yards rushing on 26 attempts. As an offense, Buffalo averaged only 3.1 yards per play. Meanwhile, the Bears gained an average of 6.5 yards per play.

"We didn't control the line of scrimmage from the jump," said McDermott.

In addition to those issues, Buffalo was charged with 11 penalties in the 33-6 defeat.

"It started with, I felt like, beating ourselves quite a bit with pre-snap penalties - eight of the 11, maybe. Self-inflicted wounds are hard to overcome and then you have to play an opponent on the other side," said McDermott.

Even though his team emerged unscathed in the injury department, and his franchise quarterback looked fine, McDermott had trouble hiding his frustrations during the postgame press conference.

"If you had a blood pressure cuff on me during that game, it would have probably exploded," said McDermott.

Having instilled a "playoff caliber" mindset since the beginning of his tenure, McDermott explained the forces behind his disappointment on Saturday.

"The standard is the standard. It's the standard even in a preseason game, Preseason Week 1. That's probably one of the more irritating things of this. I don't care who it is, where we're playing, what time of day we play, or, in this case, Preseason Game No. 1, there is a standard and an expectation, when you put the colors on of the Buffalo Bills, to come out and play a lot better than we did and coach a lot better than we did," said McDermott.

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