Bills owner Terry Pegula met with the media on Wednesday to discuss the recent decision to fire coach Sean McDermott, after seven straight playoff appearances and eight in nine years.
It was, per Pegula, the latest playoff game that supposedly sparked the move.
“My decision to bring in a new coach was based on the results of our game in Denver,” Pegula told reporters.
“I want to take you in the locker room after that game,” Pegula said. “I looked around. The first thing I noticed was our quarterback with his head down, crying. I looked at all the other players. I looked at their faces, and our coaches. I walked over to Josh. He didn’t even acknowledge I was there.
“First thing I said to him, I said, ‘That was a catch.’ We all know what I’m talking about. He didn’t acknowledge me. He just sat there sobbing. He was listless. He had given everything he had to try to win that game. And, looking around, so did all the other players on the team. I saw the pain in Josh’s face at his presser, and I felt his pain. I know we can do better, and I know we will get better.”
Implicit in Pegula’s explanation is the belief that McDermott bears the blame. Even though, in Pegula’s view, “That was a catch.”
Pegula insisted he wasn’t firing McDermott because of a bad call. But if Pegula thinks it was a bad call, and if he thinks the Bills would have won the game if the right call had been made, wouldn’t McDermott still be there?
Indeed, at one point, a reporter asked G.M. Brandon Beane why the Bills (which he said have a championship roster) didn’t make it to the Super Bowl this year.
Pegula interrupted: “A bad call.”
A bad call. Not a bad coach.
As to Allen, he surely wasn’t distraught in the locker room because he believed the coach had failed the team. Allen believed he had failed the team. Keenly aware of the ticking of the clock on his career, Allen was dealing with the fact that the curtain fell abruptly on perhaps his best chance to get to a Super Bowl.
It’s also possible Allen was upset because he sensed that McDermott would take the fall for the failure of the team to advance.
Pegula later explained that he concluded the Bills had “hit the proverbial playoff wall,” based on the collection of annual failures to get to the Super Bowl. (Pegula specifically mentioned the “13 seconds” game from 2021).
“Where does the leadership of the team on the field and in the locker room — where [do] we go from that moment?” Pegula said. “Which, you know, another playoff failure. And that’s when I decided that Sean had to leave.”
Pegula said he wasn’t thinking about the possibility of a change until feeling the moment in the locker room after the playoff game.
If that’s true, it’s an irresponsible way to run a pro football team. Pegula gave no thought whatsoever to changing coaches until trying to discern the root cause of the vibe in the locker room after a disappointing overtime loss that turned on a “bad call”? How could anyone in that moment determine — after supposedly giving no prior consideration whatsoever to making a coaching change — that the right answer was to fire the coach?
Regardless, if it wasn’t already clear from the decision to fire McDermott and to promote Beane, Pegula’s opinion is clear. He thinks the talent is good enough. And he decided, with no prior deliberation and based solely on reading the complicated tea leaves of a collective (and justifiable) pity party that the coach had to go.
And that the General Manager deserved to get the keys to the entire football operation.
The list of Bills head coaching candidates is growing longer.
Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that they have requested an interview with Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski. He joins Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady, former Giants head coach Brian Daboll, and Commanders running backs coach/run game coordinator Anthony Lynn on the early list in Buffalo.
Udinski is also scheduled for a second interview with the Browns this week. Cleveland is the only team that Udinski has interviewed with at this point in the cycle.
Udinski was a Vikings assistant for three years before joining Liam Coen’s staff in Jacksonville for the 2025 season. He was also a coaching assistant for the Panthers for two seasons.
Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo is on the Bills’ radar as they get their head coaching search underway.
According to multiple reports, the Bills have requested an interview with Anarumo for the vacancy they created by firing Sean McDermott earlier this week.
Anarumo was on the list of candidates for the Giants and Titans before they settled on John Harbaugh and Robert Saleh as their new head coaches. He joined the Colts in 2025 after spending six seasons as the defensive coordinator for the Bengals.
Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady, former Giants head coach Brian Daboll, and Commanders running backs coach/run game coordinator Anthony Lynn are the other coaches who have landed on the radar in Buffalo at this time.
Three coaches with ties to the Bills are among the first candidates to emerge in the team’s search to replace the fired Sean McDermott.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that they have scheduled an interview with Commanders running backs coach/run game coordinator Anthony Lynn for Saturday. Dianna Russini of TheAthletic.com reports that they are also expected to interview their offensive coordinator Joe Brady and multiple reports say they want to interview former Giants head coach Brian Daboll as well.
Lynn was on Buffalo’s staff when Rex Ryan was their head coach and he became their interim offensive coordinator after Ryan was fired late in the 2016 season. Lynn became the Chargers’ head coach the next year and went 33-31 over four seasons. He was 1-1 in his sole playoff trip with the Chargers.
Brady has interviewed for several head coaching openings. Daboll was the offensive coordinator in Buffalo from 2018-2021 and is in the mix for offensive coordinator openings as well.
If former Bills coach Sean McDermott had concerns about the talent on the Buffalo roster, he kept it to himself. For the most part.
After the division-round loss to the Broncos, McDermott focused on the fateful decision (without replay review) to transform a key catch by receiver Brandin Cooks into an interception by cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian. McDermott continued his commentary on the ruling and the handling of it by calling Jay Skurski of the Buffalo News from the team plane back to New York.
Cooks was a post-trade deadline acquisition the Bills made after a failed effort by the Saints to make his contract less attractive on waivers. The Bills were one of the teams believed to be lurking for Cooks in free agency, if no one submitted a waivers claim.
McDermott may have been eyeing another in-season acquisition at receiver: Jakobi Meyers. The Bills had been linked to Meyers before he was traded to the Jaguars. And, in the days preceding Buffalo’s wild-card game at Jacksonville, McDermott made a comment that went largely unnoticed at the time.
“Well, I thought one of the moves that’s made, you know, a difference for them offensively is adding Jakobi Meyers,” McDermott said, via Alex Brasky of SI.com. “Good pickup for them. Probably a guy that’s, quite honestly, been undervalued in his career, but going against him in New England, ton of respect for his game.”
Brasky viewed the comments after they were made as a “veiled shot” at G.M. Brandon Beane for failing to close the deal for Meyers.
McDermott’s privately-communicated concerns about the quality of the roster also put the decision to make 2024 second-round receiver Keon Coleman a healthy scratch for multiple games after the trade deadline in a different light. Most assumed McDermott and Beane were on the same page regarding the need to not put Coleman in uniform for multiple games. Maybe they weren’t.
The Jaguars weren’t the only team to make an impactful deadline deal at receiver. The Seahawks picked up Rashid Shaheed from the Saints — and Shaheed had a direct hand in helping Seattle secure the No. 1 seed in the NFC with a game-altering punt return against the Rams in Week 16 and a tone-setting kick return for a touchdown to start Saturday’s playoff win over the 49ers. Maybe the Bills targeted the wrong Saints receiver.
For his part, Beane seems to have contempt for the trend toward trades for young General Managers, deriding it last January as “fantasy football.”
The reality for the Bills is that McDermott took the fall for the failure of the team to achieve the fanbase’s longstanding fantasy to win a Super Bowl. And it places under an electron microscope all moves made and not made by the Bills in the offseason (and during the 2026 regular season) to put more weapons around quarterback Josh Allen.
