Joe Brady takes charge, Part II: 'They’ve got to play us'
The HC and QB are kindred spirits. Both, long ago, weren't wanted in this sport. Now? All Joe Brady must do is win a Super Bowl. He won't lose the plot.
Read Part I here.
ORCHARD PARK, NY — He never got nervous as a player. Joe Brady quips he didn’t see the field nearly enough.
As a coach, however, this is his unequivocal strength. Livelihoods are on the line — weekly — and he’s Joe Cool. Those closest to the Buffalo Bills’ new head coach barely see him break a sweat.
“I try not to be rattled because, one, my players see that,” Brady says. “Two, if I’m prepared, like I believe I do, everything will take care of itself.”
Granted, this was not the case Day 1 Meeting 1 as the team’s quarterbacks coach in 2022.
Brady remembers being far too rigid explaining how the Bills would do this and do that. Listening intently, Josh Allen could sense trepidation. As the conversation shifted to changes the Bills would be making in their protections, the team’s QB1 cracked a joke. Brady will leave details up for your imagination. The new coach mentioned a particular number aloud, and Allen chimed in. (“I’ll leave it at that.”)
Laughs filled the room and Brady felt himself loosen up — instantly. This was exactly what he needed.
Josh Allen can throw the football a country mile, bulldoze through linebackers and decimate defenses with a videographic memory. This ability to read a room off the field, however, rivals any skill he brings on it.
“Like, ‘Alright, this guy’s a little uptight in his first meeting. I can calm him down a little bit,’” Brady recalls. “And that’s what he does to any room he walks into, in this whole building. It’s all natural. It’s real. Not many people can have that pulse and be what that room needs. Not in a fake way.”
A season and a half later, Brady was elevated to offensive coordinator.
On a Monday, the Bills lost to the inferior Denver Broncos at home and fell to 5-5.
On a Tuesday, Brady was told he’s the new OC.
On Saturday, he walked into his most important meeting since that first address to the QBs. Brady now stood in front of the entire offense. He wanted guys to know he was ready for this moment, so he shared that story from his high school days. The time he sprinted right onto the field to catch a pass and forever change his life. He wouldn’t be where he is today without this conviction. (“They were probably all asleep,” jokes Brady.) And when it was time to discuss what amounted to a must-win vs. a talented New York Jets defense, he didn’t cast Quinnen Williams as a modern-day Mean Joe Greene, didn’t prop Sauce Gardner up on a pedestal, didn’t discuss this Jets unit at all.
Instead, Brady looked around the room and pointed at specific players in his own room.
Whoever’s on the other sideline needed to contend with the Buffalo Bills.
He reminded everyone: “It’s about us.”
Buffalo then put a nail in the Jets’ coffin with a 32-6 blowout win. After throwing an 81-yard touchdown to Khalil Shakir, a mic’d up Allen snarled: “I feel like I’m fucking back.” Fueled by a resurgent offense, those Bills came within an inch here, a few inches there of playing in the AFC Championship Game. The next season, 2024, Allen won league MVP. The next, 2025, the Bills lost in overtime of the divisional round in Denver.
Sean McDermott was fired.
It’s time for the next most important speech of Brady’s football life.
He won’t lose the plot.
Outside, a blizzard has engulfed Western New York. This climate should gobsmack opponents. Outside, across Abbott Road, that sparkling new stadium will host arguably the greatest player in the sport: Josh Allen. The new philosophy of this organization is quite refreshing. You need to play in Orchard Park. You need to play Josh Allen. Coaches can handle all minutiae, all nitty-gritty crafting of a gameplan and relay that information accordingly. There’s no need to build up any opponent as intergalactic. When it’s time to address the entire team — a roomful of players he’s gotten to know as human beings — Brady will hammer this point home.
“In front of the mass,” Brady says, “when you focus on the other team too much, you lose sight. I want the guys to know going into that game, ‘It is about us.’ They’ve got to play us and not the other way around.”
Because here’s another NFL truth: Players forever take on the personality of their head coach. Brady is not high strung like others in this profession. Imagining himself in that next speech, he brings up Josh Allen, Dion Dawkins and Spencer Brown on offense and Terrel Bernard, Bradley Chubb and Christian Benford on defense and asks aloud: “Why am I going to walk into that game nervous?”
This is where he derives his brazen confidence, his edge.
Everyone will.
He doesn’t plan on coaching scared, so his players won’t play scared.
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Nobody wanted Joe Brady at that Nashville coaching convention. The William & Mary reserve who caught all of three passes in college willed himself into the cutthroat world of football coaching.
Nobody wanted Josh Allen out of Firebaugh, Calif. He received precisely zero scholarships out of high school, then sent an email to 1,000+ colleges after JUCO. Only Wyoming responded.
Now, this is the HC-QB combination leading the organization. Kindred spirits who both know what it’s like to swipe right until their thumbs bleed without a single connection. The two can relate at a deeper level. Finally, the Bills have alignment where it matters most.
Head Coach and Quarterback must be in lockstep for any team to have a puncher’s chance.
The relationship between Allen and Sean McDermott was never rosy. As first examined in ’23, and explored again post-firing, the head man’s calculus never changed. McDermott did not view No. 17 as the center of this team’s universe, which created unnecessary roadblocks. Those close to this relationship cite those snow angels on ESPN as a red herring, repeating that their personalities were oil and water. Echoing members of the Bills coaching staff past, current sources in the building insist McDermott did not understand he was in possession of one of three greatest players on the planet.
It was bizarre and it took Terry Pegula a while to grasp in full. Eventually, the team’s owner identified the disconnect.
That’s why Allen was granted a seat at the interview table.
The choice was Brady.
At his introductory press conference, Brady professed his love for the quarterback. There’s no denying the fact that — as it pertains to the team’s $330 Million Man — the team’s new head coach gets it.
OK, so Allen is now a married man who’ll turn 30 years old next month. He’s a father of a new baby girl. He’s no longer Shane Gillis 24/7/365 inside the locker room. Jokes about a certain reproductive organ are on the decline. But rest assured. Allen still has his fastball. To this day, Brady is hesitant to answer any question posed by his quarterback because there’s always the distinct possibility that it’s a set-up. “Dude,” the QB will say through a poker face. “I’m asking you a question.”
Brady answers. Brady falls into the trap.
This was a refreshing union for the coach. Granted, Sam Darnold was always liable to drop a Michael Scott “that’s what she said” in the quarterback room. After spending so much time around the ultra-serious, ultra-buttoned up Drew Brees and Joe Burrow, part of Brady wondered if that’s how all of the elites needed to carry themselves at the position. Allen was no cookie cutter. Allen was proof that you can be one of the guys… and lead.
“And he can do things that no one in the world really can do,” Brady adds. “There’s a lot of power to that, but he wants to be coached and he’s a human. I have a lot of love for that man.”
This relationship only strengthened over time.
Allen was extremely close to a coach before, then saw that coach (Brian Daboll) take a head-coaching job with the New York Giants. GM Brandon Beane told us he believes Allen was careful not to get too close to Brady in fear of losing him to another team. All good teams with defensive-minded head coaches rifle through OCs. “It hurt him when Daboll left as the mentor, the father figure, the friend,” Beane said. “He had a great relationship with Joe but might not have let himself get quite as vulnerable as he did with Daboll because I think last year he thought Joe was going to leave.”
Brady turned down the New Orleans Saints job in 2025, then earned this Bills job in 2026.
(Note: For more on this decision to hire Brady, here’s our February piece following a sitdown with Beane and president of business operations Pete Guelli.)
Brady’s vantage point? He saw a quarterback who desired a coach that both cared for him and held him accountable. Allen was tight with Daboll off the field, true. They’d hang out on the back deck late into the night. It was father-son. Daboll could also go scorched earth on him during a game.
“When you’re a player of his level,” Brady says, “you always have to be mindful of who’s real and who’s not. That’s the element that naturally takes time. Even myself, I don’t trust easily. I’m not going to walk into that first team meeting and think I’m going to have everybody’s respect right away. That’s earned. Coaching Josh Allen was no different. I didn’t expect that first meeting where Josh was going to be like, ‘Yep, I’m going to do whatever you say and believe in you and you got all the answers.’ It was like, ‘We’re going to work through this together.’”
Skeptics decry the Brady hire as safe and/or placating the quarterback.
If anything, the opposite is true.
Bringing in a head coach starting at square one with Allen — totally hitting the reset button on such a consequential relationship — could’ve further delayed the quest toward a ring at best or blown up at worst. Brady’s now been in town for four years and two months. From that fragile first meeting to today, he’s gotten to a place where he can rip the quarterback when he should be ripped. Lift him up when he needs lifted.
Remember: Brady grew up on Dad’s tough love himself. Every special HC-QB combo is laced with just the right amount of healthy friction. No different than a successful marriage. I loved this analogy from the excellent Patrick Bet-David in “Your Next 5 Moves.” Show me a husband and wife who never fight, he writes, and that’s a relationship destined for destruction.
If a quarterback knows your intent is pure, it’s a lot easier to have the harsh and necessary dialogue. Pick any famous duo through time. Mahomes-Reid, Brady-Belichick, Favre-Holmgren, Montana-Walsh, Bradshaw-Noll. All had depth.
Brady expects total transparency.
“There’s going to be times on the sideline where we’re going to yell at each other,” Brady says. “There’s a lot of times we don’t agree. That doesn’t change how we feel about one another. We both set a level of accountability to one another. There’s a standard of how it should look. As long as we both can take the blame and we’re not pointing the fingers at one another, we’re good to go. I’ve made bad calls, he’s made right. I’ve made calls and he’s gotten to the wrong play. He’ll own it, I own it and we move on to the next play.”
A far cry from a head coach who wasn’t thrilled that Allen received the bulk of credit (a real thing) and once went ballistic on that quarterback for building a house in Orchard Park. But let’s not digress.
Indeed, there’s an sharp increase in emotional intelligence at One Bills Drive. Players are saying the quiet parts out loud. The day Brady was introduced as head coach, lineman Alec Anderson said: “He wants us to know that we don’t have to have our assholes so tight around him all the time. We can go walk around and be our personalities.” X’s and O’s do matter. The Bills will attack January football with more schematic ferocity. First, Brady knows he must connect with everyone on a level that transcends those X’s and O’s.
He wants to know the person more than the player. Their own sleeping-on-the-hotel-floor defining moment.
He points to James Cook, a man of few words. Where some people may interpret Cook’s stone-cold demeanor as “not caring,” Brady knows better. The two grew up 25 miles apart. “Talk to him out on the football field,” Brady says, “and he’ll say whatever he needs to say.” He cites quarterback dinners. Attending these each Friday night deepened his bond with Allen and the backups. He saw how they interacted with their wives and girlfriends.
“It’s everything,” Brady says. “If you only care about the player, you’re only reaching half of them. There’s so much more. Knowing where they come from. Knowing, ‘Alright, this guy might not communicate a lot. But it’s OK because I know who he is and his personality. When he does this, you reach him in this way.”
For 32 head coaches, life away from football often resembles sporadic clicks of a camera.
Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald stated that he spends a half-hour with his son during the week, with a tint of pride. As if it was ample time.
Coaches usually sound like aliens from another planet on the topic of work-life balance. The industry is inherently psychotic. Brady grew up with a (very) involved father and, dammit, he’s trying to thread this impossible needle with a 3-year-old and 5-month-old. Here, Brady admits there’s a ton of guilt in knowing his kids aren’t getting the best version of himself. He hasn’t come up for air since the Bills’ 33-30 overtime loss at Mile High, from interviewing for three different head-coaching vacancies… to scoring this gig amongst nine candidates… to filling out his first coaching staff… to free agency to, now, preparing for the NFL draft. (“No complaints there!”) His dream’s been fulfilled. But recently, Brady was scrolling through pictures from the family’s vacation at the beach last summer — the last time his family spent a string of uninterrupted days together.
Seeing how much his son has grown since then was “depressing,” he admits. Coaching can make any man’s life feel like the Adam Sandler movie, “Click.” Time’s stuck on fast forward. You miss birthdays, buzzer-beaters, daddy-daughter dances, milestones you’ll never get back.
Yet, this is the business Joe Brady has chosen.
Hell yeah, he enjoys it. Every minute of it. He knows there are millions of people who work endless hours at jobs they hate. He gets to watch football.
So, he finds a way.
This spring, Brady has been setting his alarm for 3 a.m. each morning. This gets Brady to the facility by 3:20. That way, he’s working while his kids sleep for three more hours. Wait until 6 a.m. and he knows he wouldn’t be back home until 10. Finding those hidden hours ensures Brady can take over all bath and bedtime proceedings. His baby girl still needs Mom, but Jordan is Dad’s responsibility. And all fellow fathers? Joe Brady is you. He, too, knows the perils and pitfalls of the nightly witching hour. Wait too long, break routine a smidge, and chaos awaits. “Absolute madness,” he jokes. He’ll read book, after book, after book, after book, after book, often turning off the lamp and using his iPhone flashlight as a reading light to ever… so… gradually… see his son’s eyelids finally close for the night.
Brady encourages his assistant coaches to bring their kids to work if they want. As long as they’re not in meetings, he’s got no problem with it. His own son loves it at One Bills Drive. The result, he hopes, is a healthy work environment for all.
No way could Joe Brady have predicted this as his life inside that crammed hotel room 13 years ago. Back when he had zero clue if he’d ever work in coaching. He was one of many. He can still remember the other young coaches at the convention dying to enter this crazy world. A handful blazed a trail. Justin Rascati, the QBs coach at James Madison, was present. Now, he’s the pass game coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals. Matt Guerrieri, a GA at Duke, is now the safeties coach at Ohio State University. Josh Grizzard was a GA at Duke, too. He’s the pass game coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles.
The small-school coach honored in Nashville that year, Craig Bohl, took the job at Wyoming before then taking a chance on a hard-throwing gunslinger from Firebaugh.
And at the NFL Combine this past February, Brady ran into a familiar face. It was Ahmaad Smith. “Last I saw you,” Smith told him, “you were sleeping on the floor.”
OK, so Macdonald’s comment might’ve been a tick extreme… but not that extreme. Nobody in the NFL flinched when the clip went viral because everyone understands that winning demands sacrifice.
The 2026 season begins soon.
Brady wants what Macdonald’s Seahawks currently have.
It’ll require more than a nocturnal life.
Modern playoff games almost always boil down to one or two plays. The chasm between winning and losing is razor thin.
Coaches who master split-second decisions are at the advantage. It’s why the Bills put all candidates through rigorous game-management testing. If one game goes haywire, that’s understandable. Nine years’ worth of January failings is a trend that bakes into the subconscious of an entire organization. Doom becomes the expectation. This is what Pegula was referencing by that “proverbial playoff wall.” I get the general populace going berserk over his Keon Coleman dig. Most people are offended by their own shadow nowadays. But the press conference quote that should’ve caught fire was when the owner got real on McDermott.
“It’s not an easy decision. Trust me,” Pegula said. “But what is success? Is success being in the playoffs seven years in a row with no Super Bowl appearance?”
He let those words hang in suspense.
Nobody knows yet how Brady handles this imperative aspect of the game because there’s no way to simulate fourth and 2 from midfield with 1:35 remaining in front of 60,000 fans. He knows this.
All holistic messaging, however, is supported by action.
During his interview for the job, Brady used the word “attack” often. Up in the booth as a playcaller, he explained, it drove him mad when communication to Allen shut off at the 15-second mark of the play clock and defenses started to disguise and deceive. He wants opposing playcallers to feel this raw helplessness, to scream “F—k!” in horror like he would. Coaches who faced this Bills D years past also informed the team’s brass during the interview process just how stagnant and predictable their defense was to face presnap.
Bend-don’t-break logic doesn’t fly against quarterbacks capable of killing you with a thousand paper cuts.
On 52 non-kneeldown drives in their last six playoff defeats, the Bills have surrendered 25 TDs, 13 field goals and 3.83 points per drive while creating only three turnovers and forcing only 12 punts with one missed field goal.
Offensively, expect changes. Gameplans in the past could become too hyper-focused on the opposition. If the Bills faced an elite passer — like Patrick Mahomes, for example — the edict from above was often to play keepaway. Play safe. Nerves were obvious in the head coach ahead of those Kansas City Chiefs playoff games. Several sources inside the building still diagnose those 13 fateful seconds at Arrowhead Stadium (and the game’s bizarre aftermath) as the moment that broke this franchise’s psychology.
The roster is much different. Now, the head coach is different.
It’s worth noting that Brady wasn’t even around for the team’s debilitating 2021 divisional playoff loss in KC and that he only has glowing things to say about his former boss.
Finally, Buffalo can start anew.
Walking the halls those other six days of the week, Brady won’t resemble a Tin Man. He’s the opposite of tight. He’s the first to point out that this doesn’t mean he won’t make mistakes. His hope is for the Bills to possess enough “competitive stamina” to forget whatever happened the previous day, to shake off an inevitable last-second loss instead of letting it become the team’s identity. Speeches. Play style. Personnel. He plans on doing everything in his power to make such a fearless mentality infectious. Starting… now. Players are officially back for offseason workouts.
It’s “two-fold,” he adds. Brady needs the Bills defense to bring this energy.
“And if we talk about ourselves (on defense) like we’re on a level of Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow, then we’re going to be able to play with that mindset,” Brady says. “If we just talk about like, ‘yeah, they’re above us and they’re so much better than us,’ we might start second-guessing: ‘Can I go make that play?’ And that’s why I want the personalities of the guys that are going to come in with that mentality. And it’s not only about Josh Allen, but damn, we got Josh Allen.”
Through the free agency frenzy, Brady sat in on all transactions (and near transactions).
Watching Beane work the phones agent to agent to agent was vertigo-inducing.
There were times the head coach thought the GM should hang up on agents jerking the Bills around. As he learned, there are layers to the job. That agent pissing off the Bills may represent someone in their building. Or another player they’re pursuing.
“I enjoy coaching way more now,” Brady says, “because there’s no way in hell I could do that.”
The head coach is thrilled with all moves made to smash that wall. Before March, Brady calls the idea of acquiring this talent a “pipe dream.”
Player to player, Brady details what has him excited.
He sees himself in Dee Alford. After the signing, Brady caught up with the team’s new nickel cornerback and learned this Division II product who played in the CFL was out of a job throughout COVID. He worked the night shift at FedEx, trained, stayed ready, got his shot and earned this NFL life. (“This is the type of guy that I want on my team.”) Brady worked with DJ Moore in Carolina, of course, and knows the Bills need a separator in the room. (“Ecstatic to be able to work with him and put him in our crew. I was pumped about that one.”)
Back to his days as a Saints grunt, Brady has made a habit of taking notes on players that gave him fits. Safeties Harrison Smith and Budda Baker earned high praise. Back then, intel was chronicled in a literal notebook. Today, he keeps a running file on his tablet.
Chauncey Gardner-Johnson made the file. He wants this championship swagger on his defense.
Bradley Chubb was a player he took a ton of notes on. Brady and new DC Jim Leonhard view the ex-Bronco, ex-Dolphin as a perfect scheme fit who’ll stay on the field all four downs. The head coach expects Greg Rousseau and Chubb to shut down the edges vs. the run and — another year removed from a torn ACL — for Chubb to invigorate this pass rush. Perhaps most importantly? There was a “C” on his chest. The more Brady spoke to people, the more he realized Chubb was a captain for reasons beyond his play. (“He’ll do wonders for this locker room, this organization.”)
Now, the honeymoon is over.
Last week, I touched base with one ex-Bill who shed light on the HC-QB dynamic in Part III our ’23 series. With five exclamation points, he assures via text that players love Brady. Now, it’s simple. He listed off four unknowns. We’ll see if Brady can handle the surface-of-the-sun heat associated with the job, manage games late, truly lead a roomful of grown men through hard times and surround himself with assistants who’ll cover his blind spots. On this final point, Brady was ecstatic to land longtime New Orleans Saints lieutenant Pete Carmichael as his OC. When Brees is enshrined into Canton, Brady knows the quarterback will be thanking Carmichael. “An absolute stud,” Brady says. “He’s ours now. He was the most important get for me.”
Like the spring of 2013 at William & Mary, Brady applied his offensive brain to defense in hiring Leonhard to stress opposing playcallers.
No coach knows how he’ll handle the job until they’re in the job.
This ex-player’s advice? Be humble “and get out of the damn way.”
“It’s about Josh, the locker room and that city,” this player says. “If he understands that, he will win a trophy. If he thinks it’s about him and he’s special, he will fail to.”
The city is dying for that trophy. One generation endured four straight Super Bowl defeats. The next, a 17-year playoff drought. Now, they’ve got a future Hall of Fame quarterback with nothing to show for it. No QB in NFL history has won more playoff games (eight) than Allen without an appearance in the big game. Brady is fully aware that reaching the Super Bowl is officially the year-to-year expectation.
When I ask what makes him the man for this moment, he admits he hasn’t even thought about the Lombardi Trophy.
When he won a national title at LSU, he never touched the hardware. Never even saw it up close.
He’s sure he’ll feel something if he ever hoists the sterling silver this February.
“I’ve been here long enough to see the impact that it would have on the guys that I coach and this freakin’ city,” Brady says. “That means way more to me. That drives me. I get to coach football, but the people that I get to do it for is what matters to me. And we have such a good locker room. I’ve been fortunate that I’m in a place that I already know the people, both outside the building and in the building. The expectations that this city has? It’s what I have.”
When Brady walked into new Highmark Stadium recently, he was awestruck. It hit him. For as long as this building exists, he is the one calling the first play. Briefly, Brady allows himself to look into the future. The new man in charge may be a refreshing gust of calm who embraces all JA17-centric math, who gets all 53 players to stay in attack mode, who’s prepared for every conceivable scenario.
The ball will be kicked off. The play clock will start winding down. In that exact moment, the gravity of his reality will become very real.
“I won’t be nervous,” he says with a pause. “But an emotion will hit me.”
Sleeping on a mattress — not on a hotel floor — should guarantee maximum focus. (With the help of a Fast Twich or four.)
Perhaps a variation of Dad’s triple option is the ticket.
That is, of course, assuming a backup wide receiver on the sideline isn’t overcome with the sudden urge to sprint onto the field.
Great read Tyler. Thank God McDermott is gone.
Another masterpiece!
Looking forward to having a beer with you this Wednesday!