Report: Terry Pegula, Brandon Beane unhappy with Sean McDermott’s talent concerns.
The decision to fire coach Sean McDermott and promote GM Brandon Beane shows that owner Terry Pegula solved the question of “training” versus “talent”. concluding that the program was good enough to advance beyond the 2025 playoff division cycle.
Veteran Bills reporter Vic Carucci of WGRZ.com posted a story with a nugget that sheds more light on the internal evaluation of whether McDermott had the tools he needed.
From Carucci: “I was told that in a meeting held five weeks ago between McDermott, Beane and Pegula, the coach revealed what is missing to win the Super Bowl. excited about McDermott’s test.”
This happens when ownership views the coach and General Manager as not being joined at the hip. If the position from the top is that both succeed or both fail, there is never a debate as to whether the GM has given the coach what he needs to improve. In those cases, ownership expects them to cooperate.
The either-or nature opens the door to something that often happens during NFL games. As the coach sits on the sidelines, doing his job with all his might, one or more people around the owner can criticize anything and everything the coach does and doesn’t do.
Those three hours a week are very important. And the coach cannot defend himself when he is being judged in real time by others who think of a way to save themselves (or, as it is, to advance their interests) by blaming everything on the coach.
Carucci’s reporting indirectly confirms that something like this happened in Nyathi. It was two against one, and the two didn’t want to hear McDermott’s belief that he didn’t have enough talent to take the team where others expected him to take it.
And so McDermott is gone. While the presence of quarterback Josh Allen makes the Bills job attractive, the next coach needs to approach the job with an open mind. It will be up to him to take the Bills to the top.
Of course, if the next coach doesn’t do that, Beane will be accused of hiring the wrong coach. A better way would be for Pegula to make it clear to Beane and whoever hires him that they will be running a three-legged race. Either they both make it to the finish line, or they both fall flat on their faces.
If the next coach to replace him is going to be the next guy to fall if the Bills fail, the Bills may not be able to find the best coach for the job. That’s what the Giants recently found out when they tried to hire John Harbaugh.
Harbaugh did not want to respond to GM Joe Schoen. Harbaugh wanted to be (and get) a direct conduit to those running the show, making it easier for him to make his case (if he felt compelled to) that the list didn’t exist.
Of course, there is currently no other candidate with the kind of avaugh that Harbaugh had. Whoever gets the job will be working for, and answering to, Beane. And if the coach concludes the program is not good enough, his best move will be to keep that idea to himself.
