Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula made a bad situation worse on Wednesday.
Much, much, much worse.
During a press conference in Buffalo, Pegula and general manager Brandon Beane intended to address the firing of Sean McDermott — and the search for a new head coach. It’s a search Beane will lead following his promotion to president of football operations (on top of his GM duties). And that’s a promotion that surprised many (myself included), given that Beane and McDermott seemed like a package deal in their nine seasons together in Buffalo.
Bills owner Terry Pegula (right) hired both Brandon Beane (left) and Sean McDermott (center) in 2017. (Photo by B51/Mark Brown/Getty Images)
They came in together, but for reasons so far unexplained, they didn’t exit together. So there were questions from reporters about McDermott’s exit and Beane’s rise — and so much more. As those questions poured in, what transpired was truly unusual.
The press conference devolved into a series of statements and takebacks. Pegula set out to create clarity and bring fans back to the organization. I sense the opposite happened.
It started with the discussion around McDermott.
“My decision was based on the game in Denver,” Pegula said of firing McDermott.
It’s an oversimplification to say that game, Buffalo’s overtime loss to the Broncos in the divisional round, came down to the Ja’Quan McMillian interception, which has turned into the most controversial play of the season. Pegula called it a “bad call” during the press conference. But that call did ultimately play a major role in dictating the outcome of the game.
So did McDermott’s firing come down to that play?
“I did not fire a coach based on a bad officiating decision,” Pegula said.
Wait, what? So what did?
“If I can take you into that locker room, I felt like we hit the proverbial playoff wall, year after year,” Pegula said. “I just sensed in the locker room, ‘Where do we go from here with what we have?’ And that was the basis for my decision.”
So … it was about vibes.
After the loss to Denver, Buffalo’s locker room reaction went viral, with receiver Brandin Cooks breaking into tears when speaking with a media scrum — and franchise quarterback Josh Allen crying during his postgame press conference. You don’t often see melancholy in football players. But that was it.
That’s not the best reasoning for firing a coach. But you can see it, if you squint.
“What is success? Is success being in the playoffs seven years in a row without a Super Bowl?” Pegula wondered.
Yes, that’s success.
But again, the Bills had hit a wall. Change was necessary from my vantage point. Still, everyone can’t help but wonder: Why remove the coach — and not the GM?
Beane’s claim to fame is his selection of Allen, essentially the organization’s savior — and the player whose championship window has created urgency, which tangentially led to the coaching change. It’s not that Allen wanted McDermott to get fired. Pegula said the QB had “no input.” But the Bills clearly feel they must win a Super Bowl with a QB of Allen’s caliber. And that’s true.
Aside from Allen, Beane’s record has ups and downs.
Currently, the Bills’ problems are layered. In the past, we’ve seen McDermott make coaching mistakes that have contributed to Buffalo’s playoff losses. We did not see those mistakes against Denver. Instead, we saw a roster that was short on talent — that, frankly, exceeded the obstacles of the team’s incomplete roster composition, with shortages at edge rusher and receiver.
So why did Beane not only avoid getting fired, but instead get promoted?
“That was my decision,” Pegula said. “I could be wrong.”
Statement. Takeback.
When expectations fall short, how much responsibility goes into coaching versus roster construction?
“That’s a hard question to answer,” Pegula said. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
Wild.
And we haven’t even gotten to the most surprising moments of the press conference.
We haven’t even gotten to Keon Coleman.
Beane picked the receiver at No. 33 overall in 2024, and the Bills expected him to play a major role in his rookie season, given their need at receiver. Not only did Coleman fail to meet those expectations last season, but he battled maturity issues this season that kept him off the field. In a year when the Bills desperately needed a pass-catching threat, Coleman managed 404 yards and four touchdowns. So when Beane faced a question about Coleman — and the overall lack of talent at the receiver position — it was fascinating that Beane was not the one who answered.
“Can I interrupt?” Pegula said.
Oh? Oh, please do.
“The coaching staff pushed to draft Keon,” Pegula told reporters. “I’m not saying Brandon wouldn’t have drafted him, but he wasn’t his next choice. That was Brandon being a team player, and taking the advice of this coaching staff, who felt strongly about the player, and [Beane has] taken, for some reason, heat over it and not said a word about it.”
Coleman is still with the team, by the way.
So is offensive coordinator Joe Brady, a member of “this coaching staff” who the Bills plan to interview for their head coaching job.
And now, to Beane’s credit, he said, “I still believe in Keon.” Beane also said: “Ultimately, I’m not turning in a pick for a player that I don’t believe in.”
But by that point, the damage was done.
It was bad enough that Coleman and Brady caught flak as Pegula attempted to implicate McDermott. It was worse that a video exists of Beane, at the NFL Combine, discussing Coleman’s 40-yard dash time and how it would “help to get him” in the draft. And that demonstrated Pegula’s misunderstanding of the situation — which is that every decision under the Beane-McDermott era was made largely in lockstep. You can’t implicate one without the other.
So why fire one and promote the other? From an optics standpoint, it furthered the narrative that McDermott got Beane hired but Beane got McDermott fired. They fielded questions about just that.
“I don’t like power-play people,” Pegula said. “Any sense at all that he was on a power play, he would have been gone.”
Beane added regarding accusations that he ousted McDermott: “That’s hurtful to even hear that. I’ve done nothing but have everyone’s back, and so for someone to question my character, my integrity, that’s where I draw the line.”
I’m glad we cleared that up.
Just like we cleared up the Coleman situation.
And the mechanics of how Pegula decided to remove McDermott and promote Beane.
Lost in all this is that the Bills still need a head coach. And given the way Pegula has treated their most recent one, this job will suddenly look less enticing. The new power structure, with Beane overseeing that head coach, would’ve put off the top candidate, John Harbaugh, who signed with the Giants before Buffalo fired McDermott.
Josh Allen will be the Bills’ selling point. Who wouldn’t want to work with him? But prospective coaches will have to weigh that against what we all just saw during this press conference.
Even after the presser, the details remained murky. And it wasn’t necessarily because Pegula obscured them. All he did was create the sense that his process lacked detail.
That confusion created the chaos in the press conference. One statement would lead to a takeback. One comment would require context. One mistake would lead to another. And for a city that was losing faith in its leadership after McDermott’s removal, the owner’s comments created more damage in the relationship between the Bills Mafia and its beloved team.
In Big Picture, we contextualize key moves and moments so you can instantly understand why they matter.
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