Ex-Panthers duo rebuild laughable losers into a force
Twenty years ago this coming Wednesday, the Buffalo Bills unfairly lost the infamous “Music City Miracle” playoff game at Tennessee.
Yes, it was a forward lateral.
Thus began 17 years of serial mismanagement and futility within the Bills franchise. And endless misery within the ever-loyal Bills fan base.
But has all that heartache finally ended, thanks to the GM/head-coach tandem of Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott?
Sure seems so. And to that duo’s credit.
The Bills on Saturday will play their second playoff game since Beane and McDermott’s arrival in 2017 — meaning it’s just the franchise’s second playoff game since the Titans’ highly disputed, last-second, trick-play, kickoff-return touchdown gut-kicked everybody in Western New York.
Buffalo (10-6) kicks off the NFL playoff schedule, against the AFC South champion Houston Texans (10-6) in the first of two AFC wild-card matchups (4:35 p.m. EST, CTV via ESPN).
The Bills have not won an NFL playoff game in 24 years plus a week. A victory would mark the club’s latest substantial step back up the ladder into the heights of NFL competence and respectability. That’s something the locals in one of the NFL’s smallest markets downright crave.
How many other fan bases take note every time one of their players or coaches is featured on a popular national NFL TV program? Or greet the team by the hundreds in the middle of the night at the local airport following a seminal victory — or even after an admirable big-stage defeat? It’s because the Bills are as much a cultural beacon in Western New York as any pro football team is anywhere, with the possible exception of the CFL’s Roughriders in Saskatchewan.
The Bills’ 17-year streak of failing to reach the post-season continually pounded that region’s pride, like the power-hammer machine on a thick slab of molten metal on Forged in Fire. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM … one after another.
From 2000-16 the Bills not only failed ever to make the playoffs, but came close only a couple of times. This, after flying high as one of the NFL’s premier franchises in the 1990s.
Seven head coaches came and went during the drought. Eight if you count 2009 interim Perry Fewell. Two of them weren’t even fired; they quit. Above them, the Bills were run by a succession of football executives and GMs who either squabbled constantly with everyone — or too happily did the dutiful, too-often poorly thought-out bidding of well-meaning but meddlesome founding owner Ralph Wilson, who died at age 95 in March 2014.
Later that year, oil-and-gas magnate Terry Pegula and wife Kim bought the Bills from the Wilson estate for $1.4 billion, and set about correcting inherited shortcomings.
Which took a while.
Long-time team executive Russ Brandon’s lone especial talent throughout the drought, as he fast positioned himself into Wilson’s otherwise empty inner circle, was to somehow successfully sell what always crumbled into false hope. Over and over.
First and foremost with a new coach or GM every two or three years. But also there was the shamelessly lucrative but massive misread that was the Bills-in-Toronto series. And the $100-million signing of over-entitled pass rusher Mario Williams. And the time-wasting Buddy Nix/Chan Gailey era.
But at least Brandon usually kept the stands filled. The man could sell snow to Buffalo’s southtowns in March.
Wilson forgave Brandon’s missteps. So, incredibly, did many in the fan base. The Pegulas eventually did not but they moved slowly at first.
Brandon and his last GM hire, Doug Whaley, advocated the hiring of Rex Ryan as head coach in January 2015, three months after the Pegulas took over. Constant internal turmoil soon oozed outside club headquarters at One Bills Dr. That unnecessary melodrama and failed on-field promise compelled the Pegulas to fire Ryan by the end of December 2016.
Whaley and his closest talent-evaluating advisers went next, turfed by May 2017. In early 2018, team president Brandon finally got the shove, ostensibly for unconfirmed missteps of a personal nature.
Enter “McBeane.”
First McDermott, in January 2017. Then Beane, in May 2017. The duo had been close friends for years on the Carolina Panthers — McDermott as Ron Rivera’s defensive co-ordinator, Beane as a front-office riser and eventually assistant GM. The 30-somethings went for morning runs together. Their families socialized together. McDermott even helped coach Beane’s son in wrestling, in his basement gym.
On the field in 2017, Beane and McDermott immediately began the process of ridding the team of me-first, over-paid or under-producing Bills players.
They acted quickly.
Today, no offensive players, no kick-team specialists and only three defenders — ends Jerry Hughes and Shaq Lawson and outside linebacker Lorenzo Alexander — remain from the roster that suited up in Ryan’s last game as head coach in 2016.
“Brandon and I are aligned,” McDermott promised at Beane’s introductory news conference.
Added the GM: “It’s going to be very similar to what Sean and I were used to in Carolina. I’m going to deal with the football (talent-evaluating) side, and Sean’s going to deal with the coaches. But there’s not a czar around here. Sean’s not a czar, I’m not a czar. Every decision is going to be collaborative together. I think that’s the only way. Kim and Terry will be involved.”
Sure sounded clichéd, but Beane and McDermott have been disciplined and true to their word.
All Bills personnel decisions are co-decisions. The duo smartly remain careful never to reveal whose idea this or that was, for any player acquisition or departure.
What’s more, the endless leaks of internal dysfunction that hit the local or national press throughout the Whaley/Brandon years instantly stopped with their departures.
That’s not to say every McBeane brainchild has panned out. For example, their collective blind spots on offence. McDermott is a career defensive guy, and it has shown.
Such as in the months before Beane’s arrival when he not only passed on drafting either Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson with the No. 10 overall pick, but traded that pick to Kansas City. The Chiefs used it to snag Mahomes. The Texans took Watson two picks later.
Another example: The drafting, retaining, promoting and (several times too many) starting of plucky but talent-short, overwhelmed QB Nathan Peterman, during McBeane’s first two years. Peterman set passing records only for short-term interception frequency. A major misjudgment.
Defensively is where McBeane have downright sparkled, practically with every move.
Starting with the drafting of cornerback Tre’Davious White, with that first-round pick the Bills received in the Chiefs swap. White was an exceptional pick at that spot.
In 2017, McDermott’s first as NFL head coach, he led the Bills to a 9-7 record and an unexpected playoff berth, as a wild card. Western New York went bonkers. McDermott quickly turned around an under-achieving defence, even if the offence, behind Tyrod Taylor in his third year as starting QB, often struggled. Buffalo lost that playoff game in Jacksonville, 10-3.
Buffalo went 6-10 in ’18. By McBeane’s design, it was a sacrificial year of sorts. The idea was to take two big steps backward roster-wise — such as in swallowing dead-cap obligations and biding time before getting rid of under-performers on offence — to hopefully take three big steps forward this season.
It was a gamble, but it worked. It sure helped that an informed, understanding ownership had McBeane’s back throughout. Under an impatient owner — hello, Cleveland — the duo might have begun 2019 on the internal hot seat.
McBeane this past off-season vastly upgraded the offence’s woefully talent-short line and receiving corps, mostly via free agency, especially with slot receiver Cole Beasley and speedy wideout John Brown.
Outside of highlight-reel plays by Allen, what has the NFL pumping up the Bills’ on-field improvement most of all is the job McDermott and his defensive assistants — led by former NFL head coach Leslie Frazier — have done for three years. Their defence is now one of the reliably stingiest and hardest-to-pass-on defences in the league.
White is on the verge of superstardom; he is as reliable a lockdown corner as there is in the league, Stephon Gilmore included. Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer comprise maybe the league’s top safety tandem for the third straight year. Middle linebacker Tremaine Edmunds is the NFL’s first linebacker to record back-to-back 100-tackle seasons before his 22nd birthday; three years from now he’ll still be young, fergawsh sake. Up front, the Bills have retooled with the additions of young standout tackles Ed Oliver, a rookie, and 26-year-old Jordan Phillips.
McBeane acquired them all. They know defence, as the Bills ended 2019 ranked second in scoring allowed, third in total yards allowed, 10th against the run and fourth against the pass.
Much with any NFL regime, McBeane’s success will be gauged on how well their franchise quarterback pans out: Josh Allen.
It’s possible the second-year player ultimately falls into the same box of QB misdiagnoses, to join so many other failed Bills QB prospects this century: Rob Johnson, Kelly Holcomb, JP Losman, Trent Edwards, Ryan Fitzpatrick, EJ Manuel and Tyrod Taylor.
But Allen, whom McBeane drafted No. 7 overall in 2018, seems different. He possesses both the ‘gamer’ spark and arm talent those predecessors did not.
As messed up as the big Californian’s mechanics continue to be on too many throws — the 23-year-old stubbornly and wrongly relies too much on his strong arm alone to drive the ball into tight NFL windows, lower-body mechanics be damned — the kid does possess an incredible playmaking upside as both passer and runner, and he has an admirable “win however you have to” in-game sensibility to boot, which he exhibits evermore, increasingly in winning ways.
It took until about midway through this, his second NFL season, for Allen to eliminate from his repertoire the maddening propensity for committing weekly gargantuan gaffes. The best NFL passers did not become that way by completing unlikely, holy-crap passes left and right. That’s not to say they don’t. First, however, they took care of the football, and quickly came to learn where the don’t-you-dare-go-over-this line was.
Allen is starting to see that line, no doubt thanks to persistent coaching of offensive co-ordinator Brian Daboll and his assistants. But like a puppy still figuring out where to pee, Bills coaches still have to get out the mop on a regular basis. If Allen is to last long-term in Buffalo, the mop has to go.
Still, Allen has won 12 of his last 19 starts. The last Bills QB who could say that was former CFL mega-star Doug Flutie. In 1999.
Which brings us full circle.
Should Allen and the Bills defeat the Watson and the Texans on Saturday inside Houston’s massive NRG Stadium, and advance to within two victories of a Super Bowl berth, few experts would regard it as much of an upset.
Think about that.
That’s how far McBeane have taken this Bills franchise in less than three years.
Buffalo Bills this century:
Year W-L Head coach GM Top executive
2000 8-8 Wade Phillips John Butler Ralph Wilson
2001 3-13 Gregg Williams Tom Donahoe Tom Donahoe
2002 8-8 Gregg Williams Tom Donahoe Tom Donahoe
2003 6-10 Gregg Williams Tom Donahoe Tom Donahoe
2004 9-7 Mike Mularkey Tom Donahoe Tom Donahoe
2005 5-11 Mike Mularkey Tom Donahoe Tom Donahoe
2006 7-9 Dick Jauron Marv Levy Russ Brandon
2007 7-9 Dick Jauron Marv Levy Russ Brandon
2008 7-9 Dick Jauron Russ Brandon Russ Brandon
2009 6-10 Dick Jauron* Russ Brandon Russ Brandon
2010 4-12 Chan Gailey Buddy Nix Russ Brandon
2011 6-10 Chan Gailey Buddy Nix Russ Brandon
2012 6-10 Chan Gailey Buddy Nix Russ Brandon
2013 6-10 Doug Marrone Doug Whaley Russ Brandon
2014 9-7 Doug Marrone Doug Whaley Russ Brandon
2015 8-8 Rex Ryan Doug Whaley Russ Brandon
2016 7-9 Rex Ryan Doug Whaley Russ Brandon
2017# 9-7 Sean McDermott Brandon Beane Russ Brandon
2018 6-10 Sean McDermott Brandon Beane Kim Pegula
2019# 10-6 Sean McDermott Brandon Beane Kim Pegula
* – Interim Perry Fewell coached the final seven games
# – Made playoffs
