Sean McDermott is out as head coach of the Buffalo Bills in a move made Monday that few saw coming.
McDermott took the Bills to the postseason in eight out of his nine years on the job, including six straight years with at least one playoff victory – a standard matched by no other team in the NFL at this time.
But there were no Super Bowl appearances, which is ultimately why the Bills are headed in a new direction along the sideline.
That star quarterback Josh Allen turns 30 before the start of next season and it’s time for someone else to have a turn running the team may be about as simple as this gets.
Throughout the period during which the Bills have been considered Super Bowl contenders, a debate has raged over whether McDermott – who followed six full-time Bills head coaches who had failed to reach the playoffs over a 17-year span – is an elite head coach or just a good head coach with an exceptionally talented quarterback.
Now his critics will get a chance to find out.
The timing of the move is surprising in that the shortcomings of the 2025 season for Buffalo don’t really point to coaching, including Saturday’s overtime loss to Denver in which they committed five turnovers.
Instead, they point more to the state of the roster, which was weakened by injury and short on top-end skill at some key positions. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that this past season represented some of McDermott’s very best work in terms of maximizing what he had to work with considering squad limitations.
This firing has to be more about the overall playoff body of work, which comes with some patterns, such as losing close games in contests where the Bills offensive output should have been enough to win.
In Buffalo’s past three playoff exit games they’ve scored 24, 29 and 30 points and given up 27, 32 and 33. In the two playoff losses before those games they surrendered 27 in a game where they scored 10 and 42 when they scored 39.
When you’re a defensive-minded head coach with numbers like that in playoff exit games, it’s not hard to understand why an owner might see you as the problem.
Still, there is genuine shock in Buffalo on Monday and not just about McDermott’s firing: Not only has general manager Brandon Beane been retained, but he’s also been given the title of president of football operations, overseeing all aspects of the organization.
So why was only McDermott fired and not the two of them, especially considering that McDermott was hired first?
That’s a question that can only be answered by owner Terry Pegula, who rarely speaks in public. But it’s going to be the No. 1 conversation in Buffalo, at least throughout the off-season, and for good reason, as there is a lot in Beane’s body of work to criticize.
You can start with his decision to invest heavily in then 32-year-old defensive end Von Miller after the 2021 season, a move that failed to pay dividends after Miller tore his ACL during his first season in Buffalo, turning him into a role player for the next two.
His decision to trade away star receiver Stefon Diggs before the 2024 season came with an onus to replace him. But two full seasons later, that still hasn’t occurred and the list of players the Bills have reached for is long and unimpressive.
Diggs, now 32, and one year removed from an ACL injury, outperformed any of the Bills’ receivers in 2025, putting up his fifth 1,000-yard receiving season in the past six, and might play in his first Super Bowl with the division-rival New England Patriots.
The Bills’ top receiver this season, Khalil Shakir, had 719 yards, with no other receiver recording more than 500, including second-year player Keon Coleman, who went from 556 in his rookie season to 404 in 2025.
The apparent miss on Coleman’s selection in the second round of the 2024 draft is an especially large mark on Beane’s scorecard, since he passed on several better players in a deep receiver draft to get him and the result left a pronounced void in the lineup.
The two receivers Beane signed during the most recent off-season, Joshua Palmer and Elijah Moore, failed to have much impact this season. Palmer struggled to stay healthy, missing five full games and parts of others, while racking up just 303 yards and never reaching the end zone. Moore had just nine receptions before being released midway through the regular season.
There were at times signs of friction between Beane and McDermott, or at least instances where they didn’t appear to be on the same page.
During a well-publicized interview on WGR 550 AM radio last April, Beane took issue with the perception of the Bills not investing in enough high-end offensive talent around Allen and instead pointed to the defence as what had been holding the team back.
He then proceeded to spend six of the Bills first seven 2025 draft picks and most of their free-agent dollars on that side of the ball.
The Bills’ defence improved steadily over the course of the season, despite being ravaged by injuries, to become among the league’s best against the pass. And against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the first round of the playoffs, the Bills held a team that had averaged more than 33 points a game during an eight-game win streak to just 24.
And even though by October it was evident that the passing offence wasn’t clicking as it had the previous season, Beane opted not to pull the trigger on a receiver deal before the trade deadline. At the news conference following the deadline, he said he believed the Bills had a championship roster.
The greatest behind-the-scenes battles across football always take place between coaching and player personnel. The longer a team goes without achieving its goal, the more the pressure mounts, and the more tendency there is for those two sides to turn on one another.
That appears to be what happened in this instance, where Pegula has chosen one side over the other.
McDermott is expected to be a highly sought-after candidate for other NFL head coaching vacancies and the Bills job will be among the most desirable jobs there is.
Whomever gets the job will have an all-time quarterback talent in the heart of his prime, a brand-new stadium to play in, and the support of some of the NFL’s most loyal fans.
But along with that comes a load of pressure and expectations.
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