As Josh Allen stood at his news conference in Denver, wiping away tears from losing his emotions only a moment before, it was an atypical moment for a player who has always kept it together in those settings, even through the gut-wrenching playoff losses before this one.
Allen was emotionally broken in the immediate aftermath.
It was the kind of despair usually reserved for grieving. Allen and his teammates likely didn’t get clued into it then, but they were grieving not just a lost game and yet another opportunity to make it to their first Super Bowl — they were unknowingly grieving the only version of the franchise Allen has ever known.
Sean McDermott, the only head coach of Josh Allen’s career and the coach with whom he had formed a strong bond since arriving in Buffalo, is no longer with the Buffalo Bills. Given where the Bills franchise is today versus what it was when McDermott arrived, it’s a stunning development. However, the Bills’ result against the Broncos, relative to the AFC playoff field, left them open to change.
Something felt off in the Mile High air after Saturday night’s game, and it wasn’t just with the controversy surrounding the hotly debated Brandin Cooks play. It was an abnormal postgame scene for the Bills. It felt bigger and heavier. It felt like a substantial move started to become a real possibility.
As the Bills went through locker cleanout on Sunday, there was one notable absence from media obligations.
Josh Allen.
Whether Allen knew then what we all found out on Monday morning has yet to be determined. Yet, this is what we do know: Every move the Bills have made since Allen developed into a cheat-code quarterback has been with him in mind.
As seismic a shift as firing McDermott is for the Bills organization and for Allen’s day-to-day, this move is ultimately about Allen.
The Bills have tried to do a little bit of everything without pulling the McDermott tab. Before they even drafted Allen in 2018, the Bills switched offensive coordinators and hired Brian Daboll, in the hopes that Daboll would be the one who would cultivate the talent of their rookie quarterback.
Daboll did, and moved on to a head-coaching opportunity because of it. The Bills hired Ken Dorsey to replace Daboll, their then-quarterbacks coach and trusted voice in Allen’s ear. That move was a flop, the offense struggled and the Bills moved on to current offensive coordinator Joe Brady in the middle of the 2023 season. Brady was also a trusted voice in Allen’s ear, having served as the quarterback coach on Dorsey’s staff.
The Bills have always subscribed to the “happy quarterback, happy life” ideology. They reworked Allen’s contract last offseason to get way ahead of any conversation about him not being pleased with his compensation compared to quarterbacks worse than him. The Bills even went so far as to build the backup quarterback room, every year, with the right personalities that blend well with Allen. And usually, it’s with people he has a long relationship with.
It’s always been about Josh, and rightfully so.
They know just how rare a player he is — especially in Buffalo. It takes a certain person not only to have the game-defining talent that Allen does, but also to have the personality that has been tailor-made for the city. Buffalo has to deal with plenty of negative attention for their heartbreaks and winter storms. Allen willingly wears the weight of the city’s heavy desires to one day bring a championship.
Josh Allen and Sean McDermott have had a good relationship, but the results did not meet Buffalo’s expectations. (Barry Reeger / Imagn Images)
That’s not to say that Allen was unhappy with McDermott. Allen wasn’t unhappy with Dorsey when the Bills fired him, either. However, there was a slight parallel between the two situations. When the Bills were going through the motions offensively in 2023, the season they ultimately fired Dorsey, Allen’s body language wasn’t the same as it always had been for someone usually so exuberant on the field.
The game that led to Dorsey’s dismissal in 2023 was also against the Denver Broncos. In that prime-time contest, Allen rushed for the go-ahead touchdown with under two minutes to play. As Allen scampered into the end zone, there was no massive celebration like usual. In fact, there was no celebration.
It was very unlike Allen. His momentum took him straight to the front row of the stands, and rather than celebrating with those fans in front of him, he coolly turned around and just started walking back to the Bills’ sideline. Just a few weeks prior, Allen told reporters he was trying to be “low positive” to keep his emotions in check. Something was off with him.
The Broncos came back and won that game with a last-second field goal. Dorsey was fired the next day.
Fast forward to Saturday night in Denver, and Allen was on the complete opposite side of those emotions. He felt everything following his seventh-straight early playoff exit and took it hard. Perhaps Bills owner Terry Pegula and general manager Brandon Beane saw it as a cry for help.
Even if that isn’t what it was to Allen in the moment, that’s how it will be perceived now. Not even two days later, McDermott is gone.
The Bills are now in flux.
To think McDermott’s dismissal was done with anything other than Allen’s prime years clock ticking loudly in the back of their brains, and reverberating through the boiling anxiety of the fan base, would be a mistake.
With this playoff exit, Allen will enter his 30s without a Super Bowl appearance. When the Bills drafted Allen in 2018, they thought that with his talent, the possibilities of success were endless. Now with seven of those opportunities gone without a Super Bowl title, the Bills are left clinging to hope that Allen will have enough time, given his physical style of play, to get them there at least once.
Allen takes a beating every single year. While he’s gotten better at not taking unnecessary hits since his early career, he takes a lot that he still deems necessary to put a win on the board. He has to scoop himself up off the field, usually once or twice a game. Eventually, the punishment bill will be overdue.
The Bills’ firing of McDermott may also be a self-preservation measure. The NFL changes quickly from year to year, and so does a player’s relationship with a team. We have seen notable franchise quarterbacks throughout the last two decades who have chosen to exit eroding situations.
Even with McDermott and Allen having a good relationship, keeping McDermott in place risked the stagnation potentially rising in their quarterback. And if Allen ever begins to feel stuck and running in place, there’s a risk that he’d wonder whether going somewhere else would be better for his career. The Bills will open their new stadium in 2026, and Allen is at the center of their Super Bowl hopes in the short and long term.
Allen is clearly not growing tired of Buffalo. There is a deep bond and chemistry between him, the city and the fan base. He wants to deliver a championship to the area with every fiber of his soul.
“Well, I mean, I think it’s one of the last, great, truly great sports stories in all of sports. Just to bring a Lombardi here to Western New York, obviously, the hardship of going to the four back-to-back-to-back-to-back, you know, and having it be so close but not being able to do it and having the 17-year drought,” Allen told The Athletic in October. “I truly believe it’s one of the great sports stories out there for not just a city but a fan base that’s really countrywide, worldwide, for that matter, that deserves to feel what that feels like.”
Yet, the Bills likely felt they had to be proactive to ensure it never got to the point that they’d be worried about Allen having a wandering eye. This is the life of having a game-changing quarterback.
Beane remains, with new power and control in the organization, to lead the search for their new head coach. Unless something else drastic changes in the coming years, he will be the author of the rest of Allen’s prime years. Beane has to place the coaches and talent around his once-in-a-lifetime quarterback.
Over the years, one of the Bills’ most significant questions has been what it would be like to pair Allen with an offensive-minded head coach. McDermott was good, but his background was in defense, and he entrusted the offense to his coordinator every season. In Daboll’s case, he was good enough to become a head coach elsewhere, leaving the Bills to pick up the pieces with a new offensive leader. In Dorsey’s case, it didn’t always go well.
Now that the Bills have made the McDermott move, it’s time to test the theory that an offensive-minded head coach is the best fit for Allen.
Pairing Allen, potentially through the rest of his career, with an offensive-minded head coach should be the priority. If that head coach finds a great defensive coordinator who ultimately gets hired elsewhere, then at the very least, they still have Allen’s number one coaching ally in-house without the threat of exiting. And with Allen, the Bills are in a great position to make a case to the best available defensive coordinator candidates that they could be an important missing piece.
The Bills now have the NFL’s most appealing head-coach opening. They will likely be able to pick whoever they want as the new head coach. That’s the Josh Allen effect. If the Bills are going to win a Super Bowl in the next five to 10 years, it will be because of their superhero quarterback in Allen, who’s been putting on his red, white and blue cape for them since 2018.
The Bills’ clock is ticking, and loudly. Firing McDermott, amid all his success, is one of the biggest stories in Buffalo sports history.
What they do next will define the Josh Allen era in Buffalo.