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It happened again. The Buffalo Bills had a chance to beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs and they blew it, losing 32-29 in the AFC Championship Game. It is a gut-punch to Bills Mafia, but also a feeling they know all too well. Now the fanbase and the team must pick themselves up off the mat, dust themselves off, and do what Buffalo fans do best: Hope that next year is finally the year. But the truth is, it won’t be unless the Bills fire head coach Sean McDermott.
If you are a member of Bills Mafia, you are all too familiar with this feeling. It was the feeling you had every post-Super Bowl Monday from 1991 to 1994. It was the feeling you had somewhere between Week 4 and Week 8 or so when the playoff hopes mercifully ended from 2000 to 2017 when the Bills finally broke their playoff drought.
Yes, this season seemed different. Josh Allen was the MVP of the league in the regular season, having one of the greatest quarterback campaigns in NFL history. But that wasn’t enough in the end.
And sure, Allen didn’t play great in the AFC Championship and the referees made some unconscionable spots that hurt the Bills and Dalton Kincaid dropped a pass that would have extended the game but none of those are the biggest reason the Bills lost to the Chiefs.
The biggest reason is that for the fourth time in the NFL playoffs, Andy Reid outcoached, outclassed, and out-just-about-everything-else’d McDermott.
Let’s start by saying that McDermott is not a bad coach. He seems like a good coach who can obviously help guide a team to the playoffs, and pretty far in the playoffs at that. But when the rubber meets the road and the best of the best face off, Reid, and even Zac Taylor, have shown that they are much better head coaches.
That’s why Buffalo must fire Sean McDermott in a nutshell. But now let’s get into all the much more specific reasons, many of which showed up in the Bills’ AFC Championship Game loss to the Chiefs.
There are two overarching reasons the Bills must fire Sean McDermott. One is that he is a defensive coach in charge of a team that desperately needs an offensive guru at the helm, and the other is that he has poor judgment and decision-making.
Starting with the judgment and decision-making and working backward, this is a coach who once extolled the teamwork of the 9/11 hijackers in a motivational speech. That stunning lack of awareness (at best) is a fire-able offense on its own.
McDermott’s bad moves showed up during the season, too, like when Josh Allen threw three times and then the team punted to ultimately lose the game in Week 5 against the Houston Texans.
In the AFC Championship Game, McDermott settled for a field goal in the first drive, and that...
