CBS Sports recently listed eight NFL head coaches that they believe could be hot seat candidates in 2024 and they surprisingly included Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott.
McDermott is entering his eighth season as the head coach of the Bills. He previously served as the Carolina Panthers’ defensive coordinator from 2011 to 2016.
From CBS Sports: Not only does McDermott come from the Andy Reid tree, but his head-coaching resume all but mirrors Reid’s early Philadelphia Eagles career, when year after year of regular-season success — and resilient locker-room culture — was overshadowed only by a failure to reach the big game.
In that way, it’s hard to envision Buffalo truly eyeing a change up top. And yet McDermott’s teams have reached just one AFC title game in five seasons with MVP-level Josh Allen as the full-time quarterback. Now overseeing an overhauled roster, the coach’s long-term prospects are cloudier than usual.
This feels like quite a stretch.
Sure, McDermott has yet to take the Bills to a Super Bowl, but his teams have dominated the AFC East over the last four seasons. The last time the Bills failed to win the division was in 2019.
I’m not sure how a head coach who has won four straight division titles can be in the same sentence as the phrase “hot seat”. Especially when that head coach is in the same conference as Patrick Mahomes, who has officially taken the torch from Tom Brady as the best quarterback in the game. (If Mahomes isn’t in the NFL, McDermott probably has a Super Bowl or two with the Bills.)
McDermott, quite simply, wins. And while the Bills haven’t come through yet in the playoffs, at least they’ve been in a position to achieve their goals late into January in most years. If they stay the course, they’ll continue to have legitimate chances to win a Super Bowl. And who knows, maybe they’ll come through a time or two. One thing, however, is certain — even entertaining the idea of moving on from McDermott would be an incredibly foolish move.