Now, Joe Brady must embrace his reality
A trip to the Super Bowl is expected in Year 1? Good. That's how it should be for a Josh Allen-quarterbacked team that's fallen short year-in, year-out. Can Joe Brady handle it?
ICYMI:
When Joe Brady steps up to the podium as the 21st head coach in Buffalo Bills history, there is no need to tap the microphone with rehearsed bars. “Is this thing on?” Rex Ryan crowed. “Because it’s getting ready to be on.” Locals read straight through all bloviating BS. Nobody wants delusions of grandeur, followed by a parachute leap from 13,500 feet high at the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, eating dog biscuits and struttin’ up to microphones in a Clemson helmet.
When Joe Brady lays out his vision, he doesn’t need to sell himself as an agent of change. Sean McDermott was the one who inherited a 17-year playoff drought. Total fumigation is not required.
But Brady positively must embrace his new reality.
The bar for this 2026 season — and each season that follows — is as discreet as a blinding whiteout on Route 219.
A Super Bowl appearance.
Exactly what McDermott failed to deliver with arguably the greatest player in the sport.
Anything less than a trip to Super Bowl LXI in Los Angeles will be deemed a disappointment. Fair, unfair. That is the cold-hard truth in Western New York. And that should be the world all 32 teams in the NFL pursue at maximum velocity 365 days a year. Owner Terry Pegula believes the roster has been talented enough to win championships. So after yet another locker room full of tears, he cut bait while there’s still time. Allen turns 30 in May.
When the Bills’ fieldhouse fills up with family and friends and players and media members for all pageantry associated with the hiring of a new NFL head coach, Brady could opt to juke and spin and hurdle past this expectation… or he can own it. He can own the fact that he has been chosen as the man to exorcise all demons past — Wide Right, Music City Miracle, 13 Seconds, etc. — and hoist the trophy.
Over the last 24 hours, I’ve heard his Year 1 challenge described as “impossible” by many talking heads. What? This is no burden. All week, the Bills’ mission was to find the coach dying for fourth down, 1 minute left, trip to the Super Bowl on the line. In other words, the level of pressure that has too often triggered punts and prevent defense and goosebumps and blame games in the past.
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Know a Bills fan in your life? Chances are, your phone was (again) spammed with profanity. Most constituents desperately wanted whatever was inside a glistening Mystery Box. Hard to blame ‘em. I get the appeal of those other names. It’s human nature to desire a 30-year-old ballyhooed as the next Sean McVay or an offensive coordinator who put on a playcalling clinic in the NFC Championship Game. Brady, to them, helped build that proverbial “playoff wall” referenced by Pegula.
Only time will tell if the Bills screwed up by not seeking an outside voice.
In one poll, by The Athletic, only 9.5 percent of fans said they liked the move. In another, by News 4 Buffalo, 7 percent of fans said they’re excited.
With this hire, the Bills are screaming from the mountaintops exactly what they think about Sean McDermott. He has officially been diagnosed as the problem, so he was dismissed. In promoting Brady, the Bills obviously believe this team still had a lot of good things going for itself. Bobby Babich is out, too. After allowing 33.2 points per game in their last six playoff losses, the Bills will seek a new approach on D. To them, blowing up the entire operation didn’t make sense. Pegula decided to stick with GM Brandon Beane over his coach. Now, Brady takes over. Many of us in the media heard the same thing from One Bills Drive.
The team’s interview committee was wildly impressed by how he’d run the show as a “CEO.”
Pegula knew how Brady ran an offense. He didn’t know how he’d run a team.
The Bills see new harmony between coaching and personnel sides of the building. This relationship was clearly unhealthy after nine years.
The Bills see new harmony between quarterback and head coach. This, too, wasn’t exactly what it appeared at press conferences. (Holy smokes, people were surprised by that information when we popped on Rome.) Josh Allen’s involvement was crucial. No relationship matters more in sports.
Honestly, this was not the year to go big-game hunting for a new coach. Ben Johnson and Mike Vrabel were not available. But this decision is similar to the third home-run hire from the ‘25 cycle: Liam Coen. If the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ brass was supplied truth serum, they’d probably tell us they should’ve fired Todd Bowles and promoted their OC after losing to the Commanders in the playoffs. In one year, Coen warped the Jacksonville Jaguars into contenders. He clearly has what it takes to run a building.
The Bills interviewed nine candidates in all and decided the best choice was in-house.
X’s and O’s do matter, and we’ll get to those.
But no team should hire a head coach based on X’s and O’s alone. The job is far more than devising the perfect play or coaching QBs. Perhaps that’s why the Bills passed on Brian Daboll. He checks those important boxes, but also went 20-40-1 as the Giants head coach. I don’t believe the Bills are gaslighting us when they inevitably say that Joe Brady presented the best big-picture vision out of these nine candidates. He’s been around since 2022. He knows this current roster (QB included) better than anyone else who interviewed.
From the outside, this looks like simply rearranging the living room. But in pure personality, the Bills are unequivocally pendulum-swinging away from the man who’s led the team since Jan. 11, 2017. Right up to last week’s firing, several sources described McDermott to us as a tight coach. He tried to change after our ‘23 series, one high-ranking source told us, but too often “resorted back to those ways when the pressure increased.” No coach simply changes at age 50. Nor should he be asked to change.
Brady, at 36, brings a completely different EQ to the job. A grinder isn’t going to get this team over the top. The Bills see value in Brady’s strong emotional intelligence. He naturally connects with players and coaches in ways his boss could not.
Does this mean he’ll win more games? No clue. It’s foolish to declare any coaching hire as A+ or F- in the moment. To quote Kyle Shanahan on predicting the future, “I can’t guarantee that anybody in the world will be alive Sunday.” But I do think this quality matters for this team at this time. Something is amiss each January. Brady understands the power in playing on pure instinct. Flow state. Facing those high-pressure moments and just… playing. All a sharp contrast from McDermott. It’s one thing to say the AFC Championship is just another game, and quite another to live it. There’s no power switch a team can flip. Sources did not reveal his infamous Sept. 11 terrorist speech to Go Long for no good reason. As we reported, McDermott referenced those hijackers as a group of people who were able to get on the same page to orchestrate attacks to perfection.
Their point? McDermott could not see the forest from the trees.
Too often, he missed the big picture. He didn’t realize this was a certifiably insane analogy.
When we sat down in his office last year, McDermott walked over to his desk at one point to retrieve a thick packet of papers he declared a 2024 postseason plan loaded with various sections in bold: “Mindset,” “the game,” “distractions,” “first-round bye,” “Super Bowl.” McDermott told me he wanted to prepare his players for every conceivable scenario they’d face on and off the field.
Maniacal preparation is a helpful quality. But it’s a trait more suited for discombobulated teams chasing relevancy — like those Bills he inherited.
A group on the cusp needs something different.
OK, about that offense.
First, the good. In 2024, the Bills scored 30+ points in eight straight games, Allen was the MVP and the team fell just short of a Super Bowl trip. In 2025, James Cook was the 2025 rushing champ. By now, you’re well aware that #EveryoneEats. The bad? Wide receiver production has been anemic. When news alerts flashed across cell phones, the first sight to undoubtedly cross the minds of skeptical fans was the dreaded receiver screen.
Now, let’s remember how we got here. Back in ‘21, Daboll was not afraid to defy his boss and throw the ball all over the field. Halftime of the Tampa Bay was an inflection point. That season ended with 13 Seconds at Arrowhead. Daboll, we’ve been told, was leaving WNY regardless. New OC Ken Dorsey continued pushing the ball downfield through ‘22. The offense was off-kilter 10 games into ‘23. Dorsey was fired. And, obviously, McDermott wanted a coordinator who’d stick to the run. This was needed. The Bills morphed into an offense capable of winning in their own wintry elements.
Too often, however, imagination and explosion have been lacking in the passing game.
Who’s at fault? Brady probably was not left to his own devices. If your boss — a boss burning through assistants — tells you to run the ball on a given play, you run the ball. You follow orders. Especially when this same boss is saying you’ve gotten too “cute” as McDermott did this past season. You’re less than willing to take a big risk in a big moment of the game. If McDermott was flooding Josh Allen’s football brain with terms and conditions, his game should also elevate.
Only those parties involved know what’s said on the headset.
Maybe Brady was running his offense in full.
Maybe McDermott was a helicopter parent.
There’s no ambiguity now. Brady is the head coach and Brady is calling plays. On Thursday, it’s fair to ask what will look different on offense in 2026. Because for all the defensive failures we’ve referenced roughly 1.3 trillion times, it’s also true the Bills offense has had opportunities to win games late and came up short. If coaching and personnel are now synced up — as we’re told — the Bills must also find a weapon at wide receiver this offseason. Beane tried to reel in a wideout at the deadline and nobody in the division would play ball. Don’t be surprised if he’s ultra-aggressive this spring with more options available.
The front office knew it’d be killed for this decision, and didn’t give a damn. A sign the front office is extremely confident in this new alignment. A PR move, this hire was not. In a matter of one week, McDermott was made the symbolic figure for a Super Bowl-less decade. Via promotions, Buffalo established a new Core 4: Owner, GM, Head Coach, Quarterback. Everyone’s on the same page now. Many words will be spoken at the introductory presser. The two most important ones — Super Bowl — should not be considered taboo. That’s all that matters now, and that’s OK.
Next season likely ends one of two ways: with a raucous parade down Delaware Avenue or more pitchforks. Pressure’s on.
The Bills’ bet is that Joe Brady is the man uniquely qualified to handle it.
Miss our three-part series in December 2023? All stories are unlocked to read, icymi:
I'm a new subscriber here, and I enjoyed this read immensely. I'm in wait-and-see mode with this hire because, as you've argued, there's so much that we don't yet know about how Brady will run this team. Other than perhaps last year's star hires (Vrabel and Johnson), his resume stacks up pretty well when compared to other candidates.
But color me skeptical, mainly because the assignment is insanely difficult. Lots of very good coaches fail to reach the Super Bowl because, after all, only two of 32 get there in any given year and there's so much luck and variance that goes into a season and a game. Secondly, what we do know of Brady's track record doesn't indicate a history of surprisingly elevating a team above its perceived talent level.
Finally, the Bills made McDermott the scapegoat for playoff failures much like the Bengals tagged Lou Anarumo as "the problem" last off-season. Well, it turned out that the Bengals D still stunk because the talent was the problem. That's a cautionary tale for Bills fans. We can't be sure that the talent ISN'T the problem in Buffalo. In fact, I'll go further: we know that the Bills lack blue chip talent in many areas: WR, all along the DL, Safety, CB depth, ILB, etc. That's a lot of holes on a supposedly championship roster.
Thanks for what you do, Tyler. Count me as skeptical. I know the fans have a Super Bowl or bust mandate next year…and you’re right, that’s the way it should be. But I’m not convinced that Pegula will hold Brady and Beane to that same mandate. He waited too long to fire McDermott and he will wait too long to fire Beane and Brady if it comes to that. This whole thing succeeding is a long shot, but a long shot is still a chance. Ah, the life of a Bills fan.