In December of 2024 I authored a rant that claimed that Terry Pegula was, at that time, the worst owner in professional sports. At the time the Sabres were in year 13 of 14 consecutive playoff misses and the Bills had, once again, underperformed. I pointed out Pegula’s poor Sabres hires from Terry Murray, Ralph Kreuger, Phil Housley, Jason Botterill, Don Granato and especially the hire of Kevyn Adams whose only qualification to be GM was kissing Terry’s ass and being someone who ran the Harbor Center, a youth hockey rink. At the time I received pushback from Bills fans. I pointed out that when Pegula bought the team he’s kept Doug Whaley as GM and hired Rex Ryan as coach. His hiring of Sean McDermott, I espoused, was a stroke of luck. McDermott brought Beane in for an interview, the Bills drafted Josh Allen and poof, franchise drought ended and stability endured.
Over the past three years I’ve been very critical of McDermott as well as Beane. I opined that McDermott’s conservative philosophy of “complementary football” along with his defenses failures in the playoffs the past six years should cost him his job. I also opined that Beane should also be dismissed along with Brady and the team should start anew. I pointed out the numerous Beane failures including Elam, Coleman and other high picks in the draft as well as Beane’s refusal to surround Josh with wide receiver talent. I felt that his free agent signings were atrocious and that he, along with Brady were living on Josh’s coat tails. With Brady I pointed out the arrogance and stubbornness of his incessant first down runs and wide receiver screens. Remember how many times he tried the inside jet’s sweep to Knox, Moore and Samuel?
At years end I was hopeful that Terry had had enough of this team underperforming. Losses to Atlanta and the Dolphins cost them the #1 seed. A loss late to the Eagles where Brady’s offense once again underperformed cost us a chance at the #5 seed and a first round game against the Steelers instead of the Jag’s. The playoff loss to the Broncos was devastating. With Brady calling his best game of the year I was excited it OT only to see him regress, once again, and call Cook running plays up the middle on three consecutive first downs which yielded a total of two yards. All year long I’d complained about this tendency of putting Josh in second and long situations. Josh got us out of it many times, including the first two in OT. Third time wasn’t a charm and we had the Cooks catch/interception.
After this loss I was hopeful that Terry would see the light. See that Sean was too conservative and that his defenses collapsed year after year in the playoffs. I’d hoped that Beane and Sean would be relaced and a new GM would come in and clean house where needed and bring in an offensive minded coach as well as a quality defensive coordinator. We all saw the press conference. Watching that shit-show made me almost puke. Beane complaining that his wife was in tears because fans saw him for what he was, a back stabbing fraud. Pegula throwing his fired coach and young wide receiver Keon Coleman under the bus. The fact that only McDermott was fired irked me but I thought at least we’d get a new Head Coach who would hopefully be an offensive guy who would clean house. “Silly Rabbit, tricks are for kids”.
The past week has brought in some of the best young minds in the NFL for coaching interviews. Davis Webb, Usinski, Daboll, and McDaniel were all good young bright offensive coaches. I thought the Brady interview was a mere formality. How wrong was I? There seems to be three different thoughts as to why the bills hired Brady. 1. Josh Allen’s choice; 2. Beane wanted a yes man; and 3. Pegula wanted someone he was familiar with. Let’s look at each:
1. Josh’s choice: There are reports from ESPN analyst Peter Schrager that while Josh was in the room for most if not all of the interviews, Josh had no say in the actual hiring of Brady. If this is in fact true then why was he involved in the interview process at all. If in fact Josh WAS involved and if in fact it was Josh that was behind the Brady hire then I’m somewhat optimistic. I look at it as follows: no one knows the Bills offense and it’s strengths and weaknesses more that Josh Allen. He has been the leader of this team the past seven years. If he truly believes that Brady gives the Bills the best chance of winning a super bowl then I’m willing to die on the Josh Allen sword. IMHO, however, I doubt very much that this was Josh’s decision.
2. Beane’s choice: This is the much more likely scenario. Beane looking for a yes man who won’t rock the boat, won’t criticize him in public like Sean did when talking about who other teams acquired at the trade deadlines and someone who will walk the company line and just be happy to be one of the 32 head coaches in the NFL. From what I have heard from inside sources, it was Beane who convinced Pegula to fire McDermott. I have been told by a very credible inside source that Beane is the one who leaked information to Tyler Dunne back n the summer of 2023 that resulted in a Dunne/McDermott hit piece. Beane is a loose cannon who takes criticism poorly. We all remember his WGR diatribe last year when he went off on the WGR host for suggesting that he’d not done enough at WR to help Josh’s offense. We all saw his failures the past three or four years in the draft as well as free agency. We heard rumbling from McDermott and the players about the lack of talent on offense and the lack of successful defensive acquisitions. Giving the job to Joe Brady was the easy out. Brady had interviewed for four other HC positions in the past week, none of which resulted in a job offer (red flag #1). Brady was someone who Beane knew and, given Brady’s youth and inexperience, would do almost anything to get a HC position.
In the history of the NFL there have been ten occasions where the coordinator was promoted to head coach. Of those ten promotions, only one, Mike Malarky at 18-14 over two years, had a winning record. Every single other promoted coordinator failed, many miserably. With all of the young coordinators and former head coaches interviewing for this job we should have been able to attract the best possible person for the job. Promoting Brady, IMHO, was a brutal choice.
3. Pegula’s choice: This is also a real possibility. Terry has a history of having two competing views being thrown at him and choosing the wrong one. Remember when Terry hired Pat LaFontaine to run the hockey department and then hired Tim Murray as GM? Again, from an inside source I trust with my life, I was told that the original agreement between the three was that LaFontaine would be running the show and that Murray’s job, as GM, would be to oversee scouting, trades, etc. Shortly after the hires LaFontaine and Murray got into a heated disagreement as to the path forward for the Sabres. LaFontaine wanted to rebuild around their two legitimate stars Ryan Miller and Thomas Vanek whereas Murray wanted to tank to have a chance at rebuilding with Connor McDavid. Eventually Pegula sided with Miller and LaFontaine quit and hasn’t spoken about this since (Evidently due to a non-disclosure agreement). This firing of McDermott and retention of Beane/Brady reeks of the same ineptitude. Pegula is like a President we all know: flatter him with praise and you get almost anything you want. Stand up to him and point out problems and you are fired. Terry Pegula has proven time and time again that he is absolutely clueless in how to run a sports franchise. Time and time again he’s made the wrong choice as to who to hire as coach or GM. As the old adage goes, “ every blind squirrel eventually finds a nut”, I hope that Blind Terry gets lucky again. I love the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres. I’ve spent countless hours and lost years on my life dying a slow death watching these teams fail under his leadership. For Josh Allen’s sake and for the sake of all of Bills Mafia please let me be, as the Fonz once said, wrrrrrrrroooooooooooonnnnnnngggg!!!
Go Bills.