Buffalo Bills

Joe Brady mentioned multiple times in his introductory press conference as Bills head coach that he’s from the Sean Payton tree.

Now he’s brought in one of Payton’s longtime offensive lieutenants.

Pete Carmichael Jr. is joining Buffalo as the club’s offensive coordinator, according to a report from NFL Media.

Carmichael, 54, was with the Saints from 2006-2023, spending the vast majority of that time as the club’s offensive coordinator under Payton. Carmichael did not call plays full-time until Payton departed the franchise after the 2021 season. But he was fired after two seasons under head coach Dennis Allen.

Carmichael reunited with Payton with the Broncos, becoming the team’s senior offensive assistant in 2024 and serving in that role over the last two seasons.

Brady noted he will still call the Bills’ offensive plays as head coach. But Carmichael joining the team will be a key factor in implementing Buffalo’s offensive game plans throughout the week.

Last week, Bills owner Terry Pegula declined to elaborate on his conversation with quarterback Josh Allen regarding the firing of coach Sean McDermott.

On Thursday, Allen gave reporters some insight into the exchange, and his reaction to it.

Allen said Pegula called to say McDermott had been fired. Allen said he became “very, very emotional” upon hearing the news.

“I’m sitting in my house, I wake up to a call from Mr. Pegula, telling me what had transpired,” Allen said. “And I called Coach McDermott immediately, and I’ve got nothing but love and respect for Coach McDermott. The last eight seasons, eight years of my life, he’s been through ups and downs of me as a player, as a person. He’s seen me grow up in a sense. And to know that, again, we’ve had a lot of success here, and I’d be lying to you if — I’m sitting here saying that, you know, I feel like I had part in it, because if we made — if I make one more play [during] that game in Denver, we’re probably not having this press conference right now. We’re probably not making a change, and honestly, we’re probably getting ready to play another game. And that’s the hard part to take in from my perspective. But that’s reality; it is what it is now. And I am very, again, very fortunate and thankful for Coach McDermott and everything that he’s done and the trajectory that he set here for our players.”

Allen’s comments speak to the likelihood that Pegula didn’t want Allen to blame himself for the outcome.

“I don’t want this in Josh’s head,” Pegula said in his January 21 press conference. “This was my decision.”

Involving Allen directly in the hiring process may have helped Allen get through the situation and embrace his new reality. Indeed, Allen seems to be fully on board with the new hire.

“I’m very looking forward to Joe and everything that entails with him becoming the head coach, and guys getting behind him and rallying behind him and understanding his vision, because I do believe in it,” Allen said. “I do believe in what he had talked about in his meetings, what he’s talked about really the last few years that he’s been in the quarterback room with just the mindset that he has, the togetherness being ‘you with us.’ I can go on and on about how good of a coach I think Joe is, but he’s also a great human being. He’s a family man, he’s a leader. And I think that our guys will respond positively to this.”

Allen ultimately has responded positively, even though he said he’s still “sick” about how the 2025 season ended. And the obvious goal will continue to be to cap a season as the only team that isn’t unhappy with the outcome.

The Broncos conducted their first offensive coordinator interview.

Ronald Curry completed an interview with the team, Gabriel Parker of The Denver Post reports.

Curry, 46, spent four seasons with Broncos head coach Sean Payton in New Orleans. He was the wide receivers coach with the Saints from 2018-20 and the quarterbacks coach during Payton’s last season with the team in 2021.

Curry stayed two more seasons in New Orleans before leaving for Buffalo to become the quarterbacks coach for the Bills. Josh Allen won the MVP award in 2024.

Curry interviewed for the Broncos’ offensive coordinator job when Payton was hired in Denver in 2023. Joe Lombardi held the job for the past three seasons before his firing this week.

Broncos quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator Davis Webb is the favorite to replace Lombardi if Webb doesn’t get the head coaching job in Las Vegas.

Bills head coach Joe Brady was one of the coaches pushing for the Bills to draft wide receiver Keon Coleman in the second round of the 2024 draft.

The details of Coleman’s selection became fodder for conversation last week when team owner Terry Pegula said that General Manager Brandon Beane was being a team player by picking a player at the request of the coaching staff. Pegula’s answer came after Beane was pressed on whether he did enough to bolster the team’s receiving corps and gave the impression the team has been disappointed by Coleman’s play, but Brady said he remains firmly in the wideout’s corner.

“I told Keon when I got hired, the best thing that happened to Keon Coleman was me being his head coach,” Brady said, via Alaina Getzenberg of ESPN.com. “I was one of the ones that stood on the table for Keon Coleman, and I believe in Keon Coleman.”

Brady said that he has “no doubt” that Coleman will be successful in the NFL “as long as he’s handling what he needs to do off the field.” Coleman was benched for portions of games and inactive for others due to disciplinary decisions, but it appears he’ll get another chance to show the Bills he’s capable of being a big part of their offense.

Bills head coach Joe Brady has filled one spot on his offensive coaching staff.

Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that they will hire Pat Meyer to be their offensive line coach. Aaron Kromer held that job in Buffalo for the last four seasons, but is expected to retire.

Meyer and Brady were both on the Panthers’ coaching staff during the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Meyer moved on to the Steelers in 2022 and remained with the team through the 2025 campaign.

Prior to Carolina, Meyer spent three years as the Chargers’ offensive line coach and he was an offensive assistant in Buffalo for two seasons.

Josh Allen has undergone foot surgery, but should be just fine by the time the offseason program begins.

Allen told reporters in a Thursday press conference that he had his fifth metatarsal repaired in his right foot. Allen had been dealing with a foot issue for a while, but said he re-aggravated it during Buffalo’s Week 16 victory over Cleveland.

“I had a broken bone — little broken bone in there,” Allen said. “So they went, took it out, cleaned it up. Obviously, not an ideal situation, painful throughout the weeks. But, again, gameday different story — just being able to put that to the side and just go out there and play football.”

NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport notes the usual recovery timeline for this type of injury is eight-to-10 weeks.

If Buffalo’s season had not ended already, it stands to reason Allen wouldn’t have had surgery already. But Allen also insisted that he’d find a way to be on the field if it had been necessary.

“I’m not even lying, if we had a game this week, I would figure it out to play the game,” Allen said. “It’s a little painful right now. But it wasn’t a crazy surgery. So, not too long. OTAs, I’ll be back and it shouldn’t hinder anything.”

Allen finished the regular season having completed 69.3 percent of his passes for 3,668 yards with 25 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He rushed for 579 yards with 14 TDs.

In the postseason, Allen completed 71.6 percent of his throws for 556 yards with four touchdowns and two interceptions in two games. While he rushed for 99 yards with two TDs, he also had three fumbles.

Wide receiver Keon Coleman became an unexpected focal point of Bills owner Terry Pegula’s press conference to discuss the firing of former head coach Sean McDermott last week.

Pegula jumped in to answer a question about whether the team has done enough to fortify the wide receiver position under General Manager Brandon Beane and said that Beane was a “team player” when the Bills selected Coleman at the top of the second round in 2024. Pegula said “the coaching staff pushed” to draft Coleman, whose first two seasons brought inconsistent production and off-field issues that led to multiple benchings.

The answer fostered speculation that Coleman will not be back with the Bills in 2026 and quarterback Josh Allen was asked at his Thursday press conference if he thinks the wideout can still succeed in Buffalo.

“He will come back from that,” Allen said. “I’m not going to give up on ‘0.’ He’s got too much ability. I will not give up on him. We’re going to work tirelessly, him and me, as well as everybody else in this building to make sure that whenever we step foot on the field that we’re going to find ways to win football games and he’s going to be a part of that.”

Coleman blossoming into the kind of player the Bills hoped to land a couple of years ago would be a positive step for the Buffalo offense, but the offseason will have to play out before we know just who Allen will be throwing to in Joe Brady’s first year as the team’s head coach.

The Buffalo Bills spoke to 20 different potential candidates for their head-coaching job. They didn’t talk to Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, because they missed the window to interview Kubiak virtually during the bye week.

To interview Kubiak (or any other assistant coach employed by the Seahawks or Patriots), the Bills would have had to wait until after the Super Bowl. They chose not to do so.

G.M. Brandon Beane explained the decision during new coach Joe Brady’s introductory press conference.

“Because of when this change was made and when we started our search, we were no longer allowed to talk to coaches that were still in the postseason,” Beane said. “To the point, the way we did it was we said, ‘Let’s go ahead and start this process with all available coaches. Their seasons have ended.’ . . . But we can’t even — because of the rules — we can’t even Zoom anyone on either of the remaining teams. And you hate to rule it out, but I think you would unfairly hurt them, because all the staffs are going to be filled up. And I just don’t know if it would be fair to them or the Bills to wait any longer.”

Three years ago, the Cardinals got into a pickle by talking to Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon during the bye week prior to the Super Bowl. Any contact with Kubiak would have put the Bills in line for a similar problem. They had to keep away from Kubiak until the confetti falls. And, by then, the Raiders (in theory) could be on the brink of hiring him.

It’s one of the fundamental problems of the current rules of the coaching carousel.

“I’ve long been a proponent of changing the hiring process,” Beane said. “If you guys remember, and I’ve brought up rules changes but I don’t make the rules, and my job is to make sure I’m always doing what’s best for the Buffalo Bills. And so I just thought once we got to this point, it would be just not smart to wait any longer. We need our guy. As long as we find the right guy. Now, listen, if we went through these nine [candidates] and we’re like, we said that we’re not going to force it, but we had some very good options when we did this. And clearly, at the end, Joe was the man for the job.”

The key word in everything Beane said is “unfair.” But not because of the difficulty in hiring staffs. The current timeline hurts the candidates whose teams keep winning. And it hurts the teams, because the candidates are necessarily distracted by the possibility of achieving their lifelong dream of becoming a head coach. At the expense of achieving their lifelong dream of winning a Super Bowl ring.

Joe Brady has been with the Bills since 2022, making him a part of the team’s postseason struggles over the last few years.

But as he now moves to head coach, Brady isn’t envisioning the Bills taking any sort of step back in 2026. And he’s prepared to handle that pressure.

“I didn’t take this job to shy away from expectations,” Brady said in his introductory press conference on Thursday. “I sure as hell did not do that.

“I’m embracing it. I’m understanding it. And I’m meeting it full on. I know what I signed up for and we’re going to embrace it because no one rises to low expectations. I want what this city wants. I want what Mr. [Terry] Pegula deserves.”

That means Brady is going to have to help the Bills get past their proverbial playoff wall, which Pegula mentioned after firing former head coach Sean McDermott earlier this month.

It’s a challenging job, and Brady noted that he’ll make mistakes at points. But the continuity within the building should help Brady as he tries to get the Bills to their elusive first Super Bowl appearance in the Josh Allen era.

Jim Leonard continues to be a popular name on the defensive coordinator interview circuit.

Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the Ravens have requested an interview with the Broncos’ assistant head coach and defensive pass game coordinator. The Bills and Chargers have also had Leonhard on their radar, although the Chargers opted to move in a different direction by hiring Chris O’Leary on Wednesday night.

Leonhard has spent the last two seasons with the Broncos and he served as the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin from 2017-2022. He had a brief stint as his alma mater’s interim head coach in his final season in Madison.

Leonhard played for both the Bills and the Ravens during his time as an NFL safety, so he would be repeating part of that Wisconsin experience if he lands the coordinator job with either team.