The Buffalo Bills were one play from spending today preparing to travel to New England for the AFC Championship Game. Instead, they have fired the second-winningest head coach in team history and begun a coaching search.
Bills owner Terry Pegula fired Sean McDermott on Monday, opening up what many believe to be the top coaching job in an insane cycle this season. And sources across the league — and some within the Bills building — believe quarterback Josh Allen will be the priority for the next hire.
“When you look at the big picture with the quarterback, are you changing the offensive system?,” said one source. “We know the answer to that.”
The Bills, led by general manager and now president of football operations Brandon Beane, are building their list of head-coaching candidates. But three names have emerged who are familiar with Allen, the 2024 NFL MVP.
Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady, former Bills OC and Giants head coach Brian Daboll and former Bills backup quarterback and current Broncos QBs coach Davis Webb have all been linked to the Orchard Park opening by multiple sources.
Brady is in the mix for head coaching jobs at multiple teams after pulling his name from consideration last year in New Orleans. According to a source he has a second interview set up with the Ravens and will also speak to the Cardinals. He remains in the running for the Raiders job, as well.
Brady, 36, has been the Bills OC the last two-plus seasons and forged a close relationship with Allen. Sources say the Bills did not want to lose Brady last year and were pleased when he pulled out of the running for the Saints job.
A Western New York native, Daboll was Allen’s first offensive coordinator with the Bills before taking the head job with the Giants. Daboll has interviewed for the Chargers and Eagles offensive coordinator jobs, and multiple sources say new Titans head coach Robert Saleh has interest in bringing him to Tennessee.
But Daboll wants to see how things shake out in Buffalo before making a decision on an OC job, sources say. Interestingly enough, Daboll and McDermott share an agent in long-time superagent Bob LaMonte.
Webb, the Broncos pass game coordinator who turns 31 later this week, is close friends with Allen. It would be highly unusual for a team to hire the close friend of a quarterback.
Sean McVay, hired at 30 as the youngest head coach in NFL history, had a Super Bowl appearance on his head-coaching resume before his team traded for Matthew Stafford. Philip Rivers stayed in close contact with Shane Steichen in the years since they worked together in San Diego when he got the emergency call toward the end of this past season.
But a close friend getting the job, with just three years of coaching experience, would be a difficult proposition for many executives who spoke to CBS Sports. Accountability and equal treatment — insofar as quarterbacks are treated the same as other players on a team — would inherently be an issue with a Webb-led Bills team.
Webb is also considered a strong candidate with the Las Vegas Raiders, where Tom Brady has significant say over who will lead that program with presumed future quarterback Fernando Mendoza in 2026 and beyond.
To be sure, not all sources agreed on this trio in Buffalo for various reasons. And it is certain the team will interview far more than just three men for the job. A well-placed source said there’s early interest out of Buffalo in Seattle offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, for example.
Whoever gets the job will be faced with meeting a standard that McDermott helped create but couldn’t reach this season.
“Liam Coen, New England’s success, Ben Johnson… that hurt Sean,” said one team source. Coen (Jaguars) and Johnson (Bears) won big in their maiden season with their respective franchises, as did Mike Vrabel in New England, which toppled Buffalo out of the AFC East’s catbird seat. “Because success is defined in a different way. We won 13 games this year and success is now one way. It’s winning a world championship. That is the new standard here in Buffalo.”
The Bills are getting a late start on their coaching search. Already four head-coaching jobs have been filled by John Harbaugh (Giants), Kevin Stefanski (Falcons), Robert Saleh (Titans) and Jeff Hafley (Dolphins). The Bills are one of six teams still searching for a head coach. Teams like the Raiders and Ravens have already conducted more than a dozen interviews each.
Further complicating matters for Buffalo are the league’s rules around interviewing candidates still in the playoffs. If the Bills desire to speak to any coach on the conference championship teams, they cannot have any communication with them this week. Buffalo could speak with coaches on the losing teams after Sunday, but they cannot interview coaches on the Super Bowl teams until after the Super Bowl is played Feb. 8.
That means some collection of these coaches will be unavailable to speak with the Bills until three weeks from now, at the earliest: Webb and Vance Joseph with the Broncos, Chris Shula, Nate Scheelhaase and Mike LaFleur with the Rams, Kubiak and Aden Durde with the Seahawks and Thomas Brown with the Patriots.
Who Beane will ultimately choose is still a guess. McDermott was hired a few months before Beane got the job following the 2017 draft, so Beane has never had to conduct a head-coaching search. He was in close proximity to one in 2011 as director of football operations in Carolina when the Panthers hired Ron Rivera, but that’s the sum of it.
Bills owner Terry Pegula has empowered Beane to not only run this search but take full control of football operations. For years, the head coach and GM reported individually to Pegula. Now, it is coach to GM and GM to owner in the chain of command.
By firing McDermott and giving Beane more power, Pegula made a tacit admission he believes the roster is championship-worthy. Sources say McDermott had gotten a sense of where Pegula stood in the closing weeks of the regular season.
Multiple sources indicated that could have influenced McDermott’s postgame screed on the Brandin Cooks catch that wasn’t. “I’m standing up for Buffalo,” McDermott said in his postgame press conference about the interception call that took little time for the league to review. He then made the unusual move to call a local beat reporter from the team plane to further his point.
“I think that was the result of him knowing his head was on the chopping block,” said one former Bills coach.
That play rocked the Bills and the overwhelming majority of the building still believe it should have been ruled a catch. As much as McDermott could not be convinced otherwise, neither could Pegula, sources say.
Instead of preparing for the Broncos, the Bills are preparing for their first coach search in nearly a decade. And they will have no shortage of interested candidates, especially on the offensive side of the football, to work with Allen.
