Not only did my beloved Buffalo Bills suffer yet another brutal and heartbreaking playoff loss, but they followed it with what I believe is a major organizational blunder.
Fans of the team saw how controversial officiating calls led directly to this gritty team losing to the Denver Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs. Sure, the team made many mistakes of their own, turning the ball over multiple times, but they hung tough as they are known to do and were in position to win the game, until they weren’t.
Two days later, they fire their coach, Sean McDermott. To me, that is a big mistake. I think they should have fired their general manager, Brandon Beane, who was responsible for constructing an underwhelming roster of players to complement the one player, Josh Allen, who many consider the best player in the NFL at a team’s most important position, quarterback.
Few Bills players drafted by Beane have been named All-Pro. Earlier this season Beane went on a rant in the media because he was widely criticized for not bringing in a true number one wide receiver for Josh Allen. The receivers he did bring in did not perform: they couldn’t get open, they dropped passes. The receiver he drafted two seasons ago has been largely a bust. At the trade deadline this season, he did nothing. He’s handed out pricy contract extensions to players who have underperformed. He screwed up a waiver claim on a cornerback this season and the Bills were left short-handed. The two backup cornerbacks who had to go in during the Denver game were both scored upon. He signed aging defensive pass rushers who didn’t sack the opposing quarterbacks enough.
And yet the team’s owner, Terry Pegula, decided that coaching was the issue and not talent. I’ve been plenty critical of Sean McDermott as a coach in the past for various in-game decisions, but this might have been his best year at the helm—he got a lot out of the pedestrian roster Brandon Beane constructed for him.
Now Beane not only has been kept on as general manager, but promoted to president of football operations, and will be a major voice in choosing the next coach, along with Pegula. But after seeing how Terry Pegula has run his other franchise—the Buffalo Sabres—into the ground by cycling through coaches and GMs through an NHL-record 14-year playoff drought, I have little faith that he knows how to hire the coach that will bring the Bills to the promised land and appease their long-suffering fan base with a Super Bowl trophy.
I’m one of those fans, and this has been a really difficult week among years and years of seasons that have ended badly.
