The Buffalo Bills made one of the biggest and riskiest moves in franchise history Monday.
On the surface, that might seem hyperbolic and an overreaction to the moment, but it isn’t. Somehow, Orchard Park getting socked with a foot of snow wasn’t the biggest storm to hit Buffalo that day.
With the Bills deciding, in one fell swoop, not only to fire head coach Sean McDermott after one of the most successful runs in franchise history, but also to promote his former confidant and equal-footing partner in general manager Brandon Beane, they effectively took a side.
We’ll get back to that in a moment.
First, if there’s one thing that has been overshadowed by the announcement and the reaction to it, it’s about what McDermott meant to the franchise and community.
Heck, even the team that had employed him for nine years, through the first 24-plus hours of his firing, gave him nothing more than a statement on its social media platforms. By comparison, that rings awfully hollow.
When the Baltimore Ravens fired John Harbaugh on Jan. 6, they issued a statement, published a “thank you” message from Harbaugh to the fans, then made a third post, a simple “thank you” graphic, within an hour of having announced his dismissal. It wasn’t much for the Ravens to do, in the grand scheme of things, but to acknowledge the successes, even though the relationship had come to an end, is important. Especially in Buffalo, where the community is known for coming together in any situation, not doing so is notable.
The Bills, aside from their statement from owner Terry Pegula announcing McDermott’s firing, were stunningly cold and silent toward the person who helped completely change how the world thinks about the Buffalo Bills. McDermott had to put his “thank you” message out through a member of the media. The only thing the Bills posted after that was their 12 reserve/future signings, as if they had already moved on and were back to business as usual.
Though the NFL is a cold business, the Bills organization has been anything but that over the last nine years, and that’s the point that was missed Monday. The Bills still have time to make a nice tribute video or do something for McDermott to make it better, but people will remember the original silence.
Back to McDermott. Knowing what we know now about the nine years in which McDermott was head coach, the Bills couldn’t have found a single person better equipped to lead the franchise out of the tight clutches of mediocrity and encompass what it feels like to be from Buffalo.
He channeled what it was to be a Buffalonian as if it were his greatest accomplishment. It wasn’t just for show, either, in an NFL world where performative connections often reign supreme. Buffalo can sniff right through that, as it has with previous head coaches. McDermott was different. He did many things away from the bright lights of the NFL that endeared him to the community.
Other Bills coaches before him refused to acknowledge the hardships and only wanted to look forward, but McDermott took it head-on as if he were Jon Snow against the thousands of charging warriors in battle. The authenticity with McDermott was real, and that will be tough to replace in a place like Buffalo.
McDermott wasn’t without his faults, of course. When he arrived, he came in a little too hot at times as he was trying to establish his culture. He made some in-game mistakes that had people questioning some of his coaching tenets, too. But part of being a strong leader is knowing when to admit you’re wrong and wanting to evolve in ways you hadn’t previously considered, and that was one of McDermott’s greatest strengths.
By the end of his tenure, the originally conservative McDermott was one of the most likely to go for it on fourth-down chances. With his locker room, he went from a micromanager who butted heads with some players to a more relaxed version of himself, allowing the players to lead the way with his guidance in mind. There are other examples of McDermott’s evolution along the way, but these are the two biggest.
One of his biggest strengths as a head coach was his emotional awareness of what the locker room was feeling and how to operate that week to get the best out of his team. It’s why you saw the outcry of players bemoaning the move and thanking McDermott for everything he had done for them.
Just before the playoffs, I published a story about Josh Allen’s connection to the community. One of the interviews was with McDermott.
As soon as he was fired, I immediately thought of one thing he had said about Allen that perfectly encapsulated his evolving self-awareness and overall care for the players he coached and the city he coached in. Knowing what we know now, it reads harrowingly:
“For me, as a coach, one day my days will be: I won’t be coaching here anymore. That’s just the nature of the business and the nature of life. But to be able to look back, and I already do this, I already reflect on it. In those moments and things, you’re just like, here’s this young guy, right? He once was young. To see a person, a young man, come here and change the belief in a community and give them hope, and someone that they can see themselves in a little bit, and yet he’s so good at what he does.
“I think that it kind of makes me emotional just to think, like, a movie, you know? A movie, and that’s what it is. It’s for the city of Buffalo, Buffalo Bills fans. I drive up in the community, and you’re seeing the street, Allentown or whatever. Where is it — West Seneca, maybe over there? And I’m coming back from church in the summer. I’m seeing that. I’m just like, boy, oh boy, does he really even know the impact he’s made on this community? It’s just, it’s incredible.”
Sean McDermott endeared himself to the city of Buffalo and to Bills players in his nine seasons with the organization. (Tina MacIntyre-Yee / Imagn Images)
McDermott was the perfectly placed person to bring the Bills out of their 17-year playoff drought. He was also the right man for the job to make the final game at the old Highmark Stadium what it should have been: a master class in channeling the moment and understanding what it meant to those in attendance.
On top of it, McDermott was a good coach. His success in getting the Bills to the playoffs in eight out of nine seasons — getting to at least the divisional round in each of the last six years and to the AFC Championship Game twice — is an extremely difficult thing to replace and sets a high bar for whoever is next. Looking back, if there was a year when it seemed like everything clicked for the Bills, it was 2024, which ended in the AFC Championship Game. In the McDermott era, that will truly be the one that got away.
McDermott will surely land on his feet with a head-coaching job somewhere. The nightmare fuel for the Bills is McDermott winning a Super Bowl somewhere else. Bonus terror points if it’s for another AFC team.
That brings us back to the Bills’ decision and why it’s a massive risk. It seems like a one-year-too-soon scenario. If anything, this felt like the year when the seats would have started to warm for McDermott and Beane. And if they couldn’t win it all in 2026, then starting over with a new coach and general manager would have been accepted. If the Bills had let go of McDermott and Beane this offseason, it might have felt rushed but understandable. Even firing McDermott while keeping Beane in his current standing might have been met with a softer response.
However, to combine McDermott’s dismissal with the concurrent announcement of Beane’s promotion has left fans with a sour taste, effectively thinking, “What did he do to warrant that while McDermott got fired?”
With those simultaneous decisions, most, if not all, of the goodwill the Bills have built up over the past nine years with the fan base vanished Monday. The fans’ trust that the team is always taking the right steps to improve the franchise has been broken, due to what is widely perceived as a power play by Beane, reminiscent of an episode of “Succession.”
Community is so important to Buffalonians, and it went from feeling like the Bills were one of the good guys, doing things the right way, to being just like every other team in sports. Fair or not, that’s how it came across.
After all, Beane is the one setting the table with the roster. Beane is the one making the in-season moves. McDermott could tell them what he thought the team needed, but executing it falls on the general manager.
It’s a two-way street because the coach has to utilize the players the general manager provides. But if the players the general manager provides don’t fit or aren’t good enough, that worsens the situation. They both get credit for the good and criticism for the not-so-good.
To put it bluntly, the roster was good in some areas and woefully ill-equipped in others. The quarterback, the running back, the offensive line and the tight ends were excellent. Finding defensive gems like Christian Benford, Cole Bishop and Deone Walker and getting the most out of veterans like Tre’Davious White, Shaq Thompson, Matt Milano and Jordan Poyer were good, too.
But the wide receiver conversation, much of Beane’s own doing, with his now infamous spot on WGR-AM after the 2025 NFL Draft, never improved well enough. It got to the point where they had to rely on a 31-year-old Brandin Cooks, whom they picked up in Week 13, to be their most important boundary receiver in the playoffs, and that was before Tyrell Shavers and Gabe Davis tore their ACLs in Jacksonville. Despite countless resources being devoted to it, the Bills’ pass rush has been an overwhelming disappointment for most of the nine seasons Beane and McDermott have been in Buffalo. Then there’s the matter of some questionable contracts signed along the way, whether free agent or re-signings. Most recently, that list includes Curtis Samuel, Joshua Palmer and Terrel Bernard.
By moving on from McDermott and promoting Beane, the Bills have opened themselves up to an entirely different world of criticism, and it’s all because the wonderful, feel-good ride fans have been on about the comeback of their beloved team stopped cold.
One of the questions many have asked is simple: Was firing McDermott the right move?
We are missing a lot of information right now — namely, who the next head coach will be — to decide whether moving on from McDermott was the right approach. You can want to be better and look to raise a team’s ceiling, but executing that strategy with the right person to replace McDermott is paramount. The Bills cannot afford a single or a double. They have to hit a home run with this hire, full stop.
However, the way they fired McDermott and how cold it came across is why they are getting such blowback. It has left fans feeling a bit icky about their favorite team, to put it mildly.
Now the Bills have to make sure all the steps they take keep Allen happy and playing his best football, because at the end of the day, Allen’s ability and the loudly ticking clock are among the reasons they likely fired McDermott. If any of the Bills’ moves begin to alienate Allen in any way, that will be an unmitigated disaster.
Most of all, they have to repair the goodwill that was lost Monday. It won’t be easy because when Buffalonians feel scorned, they can hold on to it for a while, and rightfully so. Bills fans dealt with a lot of terrible things before 2017. Walls can quickly go up to protect their sports hearts when that trust is questioned. They just devoted nine years to this operation; they fully believed and bought into it, only for it to be ripped away in favor of one person, who was equally responsible, over the other.
The heat is officially on in Buffalo, in more ways than one. All of it is the risk they took in the decisions they made and how they made them.
Only results will repair what has been lost this week.