Bills fan hitched the luckiest ride home from Atlanta with Sean McDermott

Bills coach Sean McDermott just delivered another feel-good story for Buffalo: he and a member of Bills mafia recently carpooled home together.

This is Carpool Karaoke: Buffalo Bills edition. Coach Sean McDermott made an early case for winning COTY in 2023 after a wholesome interaction with a Bills fan in which McDermott and the fan somehow ended up carpooling to Buffalo.

How does one somehow rub shoulders with an NFL coach and convince him to hitch a ride together?

The story starts one night in Atlanta, where Bills fan and hockey coach Jason Guenther and McDermott were waiting for a flight to Buffalo. The flight ultimately got cancelled and Guenther and McDermott got to talking, hitting it off so well that they decided to forge a plan to get home to Buffalo together.

The two flew from Atlanta to Pittsburgh and then rented a car to drive the rest of the way to upstate New York, a roughly three hour-trip. What began as an inconvenient plane delay turned into possibly the best day of one Bills fan’s life.

Guenther said of the experience:

"“I enjoyed the conversation we had about coaching, life and just living, [Sean’s] a great person and fantastic coach. I have so much respect for him. All class.”"

Bills fan, Sean McDermott hitch a ride together to Buffalo

The top feel-good story of the year, of course, is Damar Hamlin’s miraculous recovery. But this comes up as a solid second. Just two guys in a car nerding out about football, probably.

McDermott landed on the short list for Coach of the Year for the 2022 season along with Eagles’ Nick Sirianni, 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, Jaguars’ Doug Pederson, and Giants’ Brian Daboll. But after the Bills’ deflating exit from the playoffs in which they lost a home game to the Bengals, there was some buzz that McDermott had landed himself on the hot seat.

Entering his seventh season as head coach of the Bills, McDermott may not have the playoff wins to show for it, but he definitely has the heart.

We’re trying to think of other NFL coaches who would go on a three-hour road trip with a fan, and not many come to mind. Strangely, the AFC North feels like the division with the most friendly and relatable coaches: we can easily see John Harbaugh, Zac Taylor, and Mike Tomlin all potentially chumming it up with their respective franchise’s fans. From the AFC East: Mike McDaniel is a hard yes. Bill Belichick is a hard no. Jury’s still out on Robert Saleh.

After the car ride, Guenther was unsurprisingly more of a Bills/ McDermott fan than before, and he was already predicting that Buffalo will win the Super Bowl this season.

Bills fans are known to be a different breed, but their team’s head coach is something else, too. Stay humble and hungry out there.