The Buffalo Bills didn’t hire Joe Brady because they wanted a fresh start. They hired him because they decided 12-5 wasn’t cutting it anymore.
Sean McDermott got the team to the playoffs year after year. He built a defense that could win games. But he never got them to a Super Bowl, and that’s the only thing that matters in Western New York now. So McDermott is gone, Brady is in, and the message from ownership has been clear since the day they made the switch.
Good isn’t good enough.
McFarland doesn’t sugarcoat the stakes
ESPN’s Booger McFarland put it bluntly during a recent segment on NFL Live. He said he can’t think of a head coach under more pressure than Brady, and he meant it.
“You can’t even fathom how much pressure is on them,” McFarland said. “Let’s not forget. Sean McDermott was a very good head coach. This was a very good football team for a long, long time. They fired him and said, ‘That’s not good enough.’ So the ownership is telling you, ‘Right now, what we did in the past is not good enough. 12-5 and not get into the Super Bowl is not good enough.’”
McFarland doubled down by comparing the Bills situation to the Ravens. He argued that regular-season records won’t matter for either team. Nobody cares about 17-0 if you’re one-and-done in January.
“It doesn’t matter what they do in the regular season,” McFarland said. “They can go 17-0, nobody cares. What are you going to do once the playoffs start? Can your best players, can Josh Allen, can these guys make those plays? Can Joe Brady get this team over the hump?”
Brady knows the roster, but the job is different
Brady isn’t walking into a rebuild. He’s inheriting one of the best quarterbacks in the league, an elite offensive line, and a defense that has been consistently solid under McDermott. He already called plays for some of Allen’s best seasons as offensive coordinator. So he knows what works and what doesn’t.
But being the head coach is a different beast. You’re not just calling plays. You’re managing personalities, setting the culture, making the big fourth-down decisions, and carrying the weight of a franchise that has knocked on the door of a championship for years without ever breaking it down.
Brady has never been a head coach before. That usually buys a guy some grace, some patience from the fanbase and the front office. Not this time. If the Bills start 2-3, the noise will come fast. If they lose a playoff game they should have won, the narrative will shift to “maybe McDermott wasn’t the problem.”
What happens if the Bills stumble?
It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Brady gets more than one year. The Bills didn’t fire McDermott lightly. But one losing season, especially if Allen stays healthy and plays at an MVP level, would put Brady on the hot seat faster than almost any first-year coach in recent memory.
That’s just where the Bills are. They’ve been really good for a long time. Now they need to be great. Brady knows it. The roster knows it. And Booger McFarland is right.
The pressure is on. And it’s not going anywhere.
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