The Buffalo Bills fired the wrong person, and it will cost them

Jarrett Bailey

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The Buffalo Bills fired the wrong person, and it will cost them image

The Buffalo Bills made the decision to fire one of their main leaders on Monday, but they picked the wrong one.

Buffalo fired head coach Sean McDermott after nine seasons following yet another one-score playoff loss. It didn't come to Patrick Mahomes and the Kanas City Chiefs like it has in four of the last five seasons. Instead, it came to Bo Nix and the Denver Broncos - a quarterback who had never won a playoff game and a franchise that hadn't won a playoff game since Josh Allen was a sophomore in college in 2015. And while there is certainly an argument to be made that McDermott had to go - his playoff failures far outweighed his successes from September-December - there is zero  argument to be made as to why general manager Brandon Beane gets to stay on and lead the search for a new head coach.

The Bills should have fired Brandon Beane

Beane has failed in several senses, starting with the NFL Draft. Every single one of his top picks since drafting Josh Allen has been a swing and miss, in some regard. He drafted Ed Oliver No. 9 overall in 2019, who has been fine, but has zero Pro Bowl or All-Pro selections, which i what you expect when you draft a guy that high. A.J. Epenesa was the Bills' first pick in 2020 in the second round, and he's never been more than a rotational edge rusher. Greg Rousseau followed in 2021, and he hasn't made any sort of notable play in any big playoff game, nor is he on the tier of the best edge rushers in the NFL.

Kaiir Elam, Dalton Kincaid, and Keon Coleman in 2022, 2023, and 2024 was a run of picks that should have been the nail in the coffin for Beane. Elam was so bad he was a healthy scratch the majority of 2024 before being traded to the Dallas Cowboys after a disaster of a performance against the Kansas City Chiefs. Kincaid has actually been what Buffalo has hoped, in some degree, but they need him to become Tony Gonzalez to make their corps of pass-catchers anywhere near respectable. And then there is Coleman, who has been maybe the biggest disaster of them all.

Beane drafted Coleman just weeks after sending Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans, and he has been an abject disaster both on and off the field. He hasn't proven to be the answer the Bills needed to trading Diggs, catching just 67 passes over the first two seasons of his career, and he has consistently been a problem when the games aren't being played. He was made a healthy scratch by the team several times this season due to disciplinary reasons. In 2024, he was benched at the start of the Jacksonville Jaguars game for similar seasons.

Sure, it was the right move to trade Diggs at the time, considering all of the rumored drama that was going on involving Diggs, but Beane failed time and time again to get a No. 1 receiver in the building to help Allen and the offense, which has come back to bite them in each subsequent postseason. Specifically, it doomed the Bills this year, as Allen was throwing to Brandin Cooks and Mecole Hardman because Beane failed to make a big move at the deadline for a Jakobi Meyers or a Rasheed Shaheed, both of whom had become tremendous contributors for their new teams. 

Additionally, all of the retread signings to the roster rather than taking swings at new faces have been exhausting to watch year in and year out. Bringing back Dane Jackson, cutting him after following a horrible preseason, and then bringing him back again. Bringing Jordan Phillips back for the umpteenth time. Bringing back Jordan Poyer who is closer to 40 than 30. Baylon Spector. It's nauseating, the lack of imagination Beane has, when it comes to managing the deeper depths of the roster, and it's even more infuriating when those guys have to take the field due to his poor roster construction. Dane Jackson came in for one play on the Broncos' final drive of regulation - he was beaten over the top by Nix for a touchdown pass to Marvin Mims.

He is bad at drafting, he is bad at roster building through free agency, and yet, somehow, he won the power struggle over McDermott, who was tasked with making chicken salad out of the chicken you-know-what ingredients given to him by an incompetent general manager.

McDermott may have needed to face the music - there are only so many times you can fail in the playoffs and get away with it - but Beane surviving this is an astronomically bad decision by owner Terry Pegula, and it will come back to haunt the Bills.

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Editorial Team