Buffalo Rumblings
Sean McDermott was a tremendous head coach for the Buffalo Bills, an instrumental part of the franchise emerging from a 17-season playoff drought to become a perennial Super Bowl contender.
There, of course, were also infamous blunders during his time roaming the sidelines in Orchard Park — and while he improved in the game-management department as he progressed as the Bills coach, a few late-tenure decisions always stuck with me as signs that he either didn’t quite get it or simply was still demonstrating panic in key scenarios.
In theory, these three game-management fiascos cost the Bills, and are the most prime examples of what Joe Brady cannot do during his time as Buffalo’s head coach.
With margins razor thin for playoff seeding and in the postseason, game-management decisions are crucial, and they’re underscored now that we know there was a game-management quiz for the Bills head-coach candidates run by Vice President of Football Operations Dennis Lock.
And I must say too — process over results, always. The situations I’m describing ahead for Brady and highlighting below from McDermott are not cherry-picked, hindsight-based scenarios.
With McDermott, they were instances in which he indisputably made incorrect decisions in crunch time.
Let’s dive into these three situations.
You know what happened.
I won’t further belabor the point, but it’s the most emphatic point of them all.
This was a slow burn McDermott clock-management blunder. It was painfully obvious and transpired across multiple plays on Buffalo’s final drive of the game.
In what was one of the most catastrophic passing performances of Josh Allen’s career, the Bills quarterback did lift his team from a 20-3 third-quarter deficit — which was helped by a fourth-quarter Terrel Bernard interception of C.J. Stroud — and tied the game at 20 with 3:18 left.
After the Bills forced a Texans punt, below is where the Bills began their ensuing drive.
I’m as big of an advocate of any for Buffalo’s offense to keep its proverbial foot on the gas with Allen at quarterback, yet context is occasionally needed, and that afternoon in Houston, it was obvious the Bills should’ve been conservative to take the game to overtime after mounting such a furious comeback.
At the snap here, Allen was 9-of-27 for 131 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions. He had run for 54 yards on four attempts. With Khalil Shakir injured, his top two receivers were Mack Hollins and rookie year Keon Coleman. The passing attack was dysfunctional all game.
Instead, McDermott — who wasn’t calling offensive plays of course but as head coach almost assuredly decided course of action at the start of a drive like this one — decided on the aggressive route despite the dire circumstances.
The Bills took two deep shots to Coleman down the left sideline that fell incomplete, and Allen was hit as he threw on 3rd and 10, and the pass fell incomplete.
Those three plays took 15...
