Earlier today, the Buffalo Bills fired head coach Sean McDermott following the team's overtime playoff loss to the Denver Broncos on Saturday, according to sources that spoke to ESPN's Adam Schefter. Bills general manager Brandon Beane, who is being retained, will lead the search for the team's next head coach.
“Sean has done an admirable job of leading our football team for the past nine seasons,” wrote Bills owner Terry Pegula. “But I feel we are in need of a new structure within our leadership to give this organization the best opportunity to take our team to the next level. We owe that to our players and to Bills Mafia.”
Buffalo will be the tenth team to hire a new head coach going into next season, tying the NFL record for the most head coaching changes in a single off-season.
Sean McDermott was hired as the head coach of the Bills on January 11th, 2017, and led the franchise to new heights by breaking an 18-year playoff drought. In nine seasons as Buffalo's head coach, he amassed a 98-50 record and reached the playoffs eight times, where he failed to lead the Bills past the AFC Championship Game.
It was time for a change
The writing was on the wall for a while with this move. If we're being honest, the Bills could've fired McDermott last season, and fans would've been understanding. However, Buffalo's ownership group decided to give McDermott one more shot, which was the right move because consistency and stability are important in the NFL. For a while, it looked like that decision was going to pay off because the Bills reached the postseason and wouldn't have to deal with elite quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, and Lamar Jackson. All Buffalo had to do was get past the Jacksonville Jaguars, Denver Broncos, and New England Patriots to get to the Super Bowl, but they couldn't even do that. This might have been the Bills’ best chance to reach a Super Bowl with Josh Allen, and they squandered that opportunity, which is why Sean McDermott was let go.
In all likelihood, this was an incredibly difficult decision for the Bills' ownership group and general manager. After all, Buffalo is behind the curve in the 2026 coaching cycle since some teams have already hired their next head coach. Regardless, a change was necessary. The Bills may never have an easier path to the Super Bowl than this season, and they still came up short. Buffalo’s kryptonite during the Sean McDermott era has been elite quarterback play, and the QBs in the 2026 NFL Playoffs have been far from special. Yet, Sean McDermott, a defensive head coach, couldn't come up with a gameplan to hold the Denver Broncos' 14th-ranked scoring offense to fewer than 33 points (almost ten more points than they averaged during the regular season).
McDermott is an excellent head coach who will surely get hired by another team this off-season. With that being said, his teams have consistently underperformed in the playoffs, especially on the defensive side of the ball, which is supposed to be his specialty. In 16 playoff games, McDermott's Bills allowed opposing teams to score 23.7 points per game, almost 3.5 more points per game than during the regular season. Those 3.5 points have proven to be very important because the Bills' last three playoff losses have been each by three points.
Unfortunately, the grass is not always greener on the other side. There have been several instances recently where teams felt they had their franchise quarterback and just needed a new coach to unlock the team's full potential. Look at Mike McCarthy with the Dallas Cowboys, Jonathan Gannon with the Arizona Cardinals, Doug Pederson with the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Brian Daboll with the New York Giants. In every one of those cases, the franchise believed it had its quarterback position figured out and that it just needed a new head coach. But instead of winning Super Bowls, every one of those coaches was eventually fired. Hell, there were even some teams that completely moved on from their quarterbacks! That won’t be the case in Buffalo because Josh Allen has proven himself to be an elite quarterback. Still, a new coach does not guarantee the Bills will inevitably get over the hump. In fact, if Buffalo doesn’t NAIL this hire, it’s much more likely that the team sees little to no improvement and actually regresses.
When push comes to shove, the Bills needed to cut ties with Sean McDermott. His teams have failed to meet playoff expectations over the last three seasons. On top of that, it looks like there’s a new top dog in the AFC East with Drake Maye and Mike Vrabel leading the charge in New England. Buffalo needed to do something with the Pats on the precipice of returning to the Super Bowl. Think about it: New England lost Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, drafted a quarterback, moved on from him, drafted another quarterback, fired a head coach, and is now likely going to make it back to the Super Bowl, all before the Bills won a single AFC Championship. The shortcomings in the postseason, coupled with the unexpectedly fast turnaround for New England, are the reasons why the Bills fired their head coach.
