21. Sean McDermott – Buffalo Bills
This is another complicated team. The Buffalo Bills haven’t won the AFC East since Marv Levy’s departure in 1997. That is until Sean McDermott arrived. Now, he has them winning three-straight division titles. He grew Josh Allen into one of the premier quarterbacks in the NFL, and has them as one of the top offenses in the league, and the Bills are constantly one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl coming into the season.
That’s the real issue. Three teams have become the pinnacle of the AFC; the Chiefs, Bengals, and Bills. Two of those three teams have represented the AFC in the Super Bowl over the past three seasons. The Bills are the only team that hasn’t. In fact, the Bills failed to get to the AFC Championship Game two years in a row.
Will the Bills accept the team’s current status, as one of the premier teams but nowhere near “the” premier team in the NFL? That will define McDermott’s status.
To be fair, there can be only one champion. Saying goodbye to McDermott, clearly one of the top coaches in the league, because he can’t take the Bills to another level can go one of two ways. Either, the Bills find the coach to take them to the Super Bowl, or they fall back into that place where they are praying for a division title. Because of the risk involved, expect McDermott to get more than one chance to take the Bills over the next step.