Breaking: Joe Brady inks 5-year deal to be next Buffalo Bills head coach
From QB coach to OC to the next man in charge of leading the entire team.
To get over the Super Bowl hump, the Buffalo Bills are promoting from within.
Joe Brady will be the team’s next head coach. It’s a five-year deal, sources tell Go Long.
There’s a ton of familiarity with quarterback Josh Allen, of course. That’s been crucial to Buffalo throughout the entire interview process. But also, we’re told Brady nailed the “CEO” portion of his interview. The Bills’ brass was impressed by how he’d structure everything from his new seat overseeing everything. They knew Brady as a quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, but not as a potential head coach in charge.
The team also liked his views on how coaching and player personnel would sync up, an obvious problem before.
In casting such a wide net, the Bills started with Brady and were then able to compare/contrast his vision with everyone else.
Brady, 36, first arrived in 2022 as quarterbacks coach, then was promoted to offensive coordinator halfway through the 2023 season. Under his watch, the Bills averaged 30.9 points per game in 2024, Allen was named the league’s MVP and the team advanced to the AFC Championship Game. This past season, James Cook led the NFL in rushing and Buffalo fell to the Denver Broncos, 33-30, in overtime of the divisional round.
He helped beef up the team’s sluggish rushing attack as OC. Up front, the Bills evolved into an offense that can bully defenses.
The downfield passing game, however, was a problem last season. Buffalo didn’t get enough production out of the wide receiver position, be it a matter of personnel or route design.
As promised, Buffalo left no stone unturned. Owner Terry Pegula, GM Brandon Beane and the Bills interview committee met with nine candidates in all after firing Sean McDermott one week ago. Former OC Brian Daboll was in the mix, as was 30-year-old Jaguars OC Grant Udinski, former Pro Bowl quarterback Philip Rivers and Commanders running backs coach Anthony Lynn, amongst others. While the Bills desired a fresh voice at the top, they are apparently trying to thread a needle. This is a team that has made the playoffs seven years in a row with five AFC East titles.
If anything, this sort of move reinforces the team’s belief that Sean McDermott was, indeed, the problem. The team’s defense allowed 33.2 points per game in the last six (of eight) playoff losses, while also allowing a staggering 3.83 points per non-kneeldown drive. Last offseason, the team signed and drafted a horde of defensive players to address the problem. Nothing changed against Bo Nix, a depleted receiving corps and a non-existent ground game. This time, the head coach was fired.
Promoting from within also may be a hint that McDermott had his fingerprints all over the offense and the Bills were eager to see what Brady could do full autonomy. During his discussions with the team, he needed to show how he’d evolve a passing attack that didn’t get much at all out of the wide receiver position.
Brady was in demand. He also interviewed for the head jobs in Miami, Arizona, Atlanta, Baltimore, Las Vegas.
Now, he must fill out a staff. Who stays? Who goes? Whether they want to admit it or not, reaching the Super Bowl is the expectation for the Bills in 2026.
Before arriving in Buffalo, Brady won a national championship as LSU’s passing game coordinator in 2019. He coached the likes of future NFL stars Joe Burrow, Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase. From there, he spent less than a season as the Carolina Panthers’ offensive coordinator. Brady was fired with five games to go. He first arrived in Western New York as the Bills’ quarterbacks coach, getting the promotion to OC after a 5-5 start in 2023. Allen was noticeably reinvigorated by the move and, by all accounts, the two work well together.
To put it mildly, Tuesday’s news was met with quite a bit of pushback from fans. One poll by beat reporter Joe Buscaglia cites overwhelming disapproval.
Clearly, Buffalo will have some questions to answer when Brady is officially introduced at a press conference.
But after speaking to many candidates from many backgrounds, Pegula views Brady as the man capable of delivering the Lombardi Trophy to this trophy-starved city.
We’ll have more analysis at Go Long in the future on this move.
Stay tuned.
Our stories on McDermott’s firing, icymi:
We are comfortably never getting to the Super Bowl!
The 'CEO portion' of the interview being decisive is absolutly fascinating. Most organizations get seduced by coordinators who excel at X's and O's but lack organizational architecture skills. I've seen this pattern repeatedly in leadership transitions. What intrigues me is how Buffalo essentially bet that McDermott's defensive fingerprints were strangling the offense. That's a bold hypothesis. Whether Brady can actualy scale from play-caller to culture-builder remains the real question.