ClutchPoints
Consider Stephen A. Smith not a fan of the Buffalo Bills’ dismissal of head coach Sean McDermott.
The outspoken ESPN commentator weighed in on the firing earlier today and indicated that he would have liked to see newly promoted Buffalo president Brandon Beane be ousted instead of McDermott, who led the Bills to eight playoff appearances — but importantly, no Super Bowls — in nine seasons as the Bills’ head coach.
“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I think he’s being scapegoated,” Smith said on ESPN’s ‘First Take’. “Why isn’t Beane being gone? Why is he still keeping his job? He’s the one that didn’t have the assets necessary in order for the Buffalo Bills to advance. If the Buffalo Bills had pulled the trigger before the trading deadline and acquired Jaylen Waddle from Miami — out of Alabama, from Miami — the way this brother could play, and you had given Josh Allen that kind of a threat, what would have happened? They didn’t get blown out. They won a divisional [sic] playoff game in Jacksonville against a top-three seed. They go to Denver against the number-one seed and push them to overtime, and then you lose the game in overtime.
“Josh Allen is an absolute stud, we get all of that. But the man needs help. And the reality is that when you look at how Buffalo was bereft of weapons, how this coach, who’s got — what’s his record here? 98-50 in his career with Buffalo; 73-27, an NFL-best over the last six seasons — if you had all the weapons with Josh Allen and you don’t get it done, I understand. But we’ve seen this team overachieve throughout this season because we know he didn’t have all the parts necessary. And for him to be gone and the GM not only to keep his job, but to lead the coaching search, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I don’t think McDermott deserved this.”
McDermott finished his tenure as the second-most-winningest coach in Bills history, only behind Pro Football Hall of Famer Marv Levy, who spent 12 seasons with Buffalo, three more than McDermott, and earned 14 more wins.
Unlike Levy, who led the Bills to four straight Super Bowls in the 1990s, McDermott’s teams consistently fell short of that mark. After two wild-card losses in his first three seasons, McDermott finished four of the next five years with losses to the Kansas City Chiefs in the postseason.
In both the 2020 and 2024 playoffs, the losses to Kansas City came in the AFC Championship Game, while during the 2021 and 2023 postseasons, they came in brutal, one-score divisional-round battles that saw Buffalo blow a late lead and miss a game-tying field goal, respectively.
This year, the postseason heartbreak again came in overtime, as a controversial Josh Allen interception in OT, as well as a defensive pass interference penalty, set up a game-winning field goal for the Denver Broncos....
