The best Sean McDermott replacements are no longer available for Bills, Josh Allen

Billy Heyen

The best Sean McDermott replacements are no longer available for Bills, Josh Allen image

The Buffalo Bills will need a new head coach, but their search for the right guy has already been hampered by their own success.

Maybe the two best names available, John Harbaugh from the Ravens and Kevin Stefanski from the Browns, have both been hired already.

Harbaugh will lead the New York Giants into the future. Stefanski just got the Atlanta Falcons job.

And it really emphasizes the oddities of this whole process.

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The Bills made it to the second weekend of the playoffs, so they couldn't fire Sean McDermott until after their loss Sunday.

Meanwhile, teams that missed the playoffs entirely had two whole weeks of figuring out their new head coaching situations.

Don't you think Harbaugh or Stefanski would've loved to coach the Bills and superstar QB Josh Allen?

The Bills surely would've loved to have one of them.

There isn't an obvious fix to this timeline. Teams need to get their new head coaches, and it's not often playoff teams are making firings like this.

But it really doesn't necessarily work out the best for anyone involved.

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Harbaugh and Stefanski would never say they'd rather be elsewhere, but Allen and the Bills would've been quite compelling if it was all available in front of them at the same time.

And the Bills won't publicly state any regrets about not getting one of those guys, but the feeling like works the same in reverse, too.

Buffalo will have to make it work with a second-tier crop of candidates, and really through no fault of their own.

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Editorial Team