The night began with a slow offensive start for the Buffalo Bills — a growing theme in the past month of the 2023 season.
It ended with a Wil Lutz walk-off field to give the Denver Broncos the 24-22 Monday Night Football road win, which was set up by two defensive penalties on the Bills’ side.
Now, many across the NFL world are wondering if head coach Sean McDermott is sitting on a seat that’s intensifying with heat.
NFL World Calls Out Sean McDermott, Including Believing the Buffalo Bills Should Fire Him
McDermott came to Orchard Park, N.Y., as a defensive whiz from his Carolina Panthers days. The former defensive coordinator came in to reawaken a franchise that had a lengthy playoff drought and reamplify a rabid fanbase that had gone quiet.
In seven seasons, he’s won 71 games and took the Bills to the AFC title game for the first time since their run of conference titles in the early 1990s. But now, his team sits at 5-5, and, as ESPN’s Joe Buck said after the MNF contest, the math for the Bills is starting to get ugly.
MORE: Bills Fans Furious After Lackluster Start on MNF
The NFL world came down hard on McDermott all over social media. What helped set off that chain reaction was when NFL analytics expert Warren Sharp called out the Bills head coach.
“Sean McDermott meddled so much on the offensive side of the ball it’s become an unrecognizable disaster. Then he got [former defensive coordinator] Leslie Frazier to walk. Now he’s calling all-out blitzes on 3rd down when Denver isn’t close to FG range…and leaving 12 men on the field to lose the game,” Sharp posted on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Bills React to MNF Meltdown
Bills quarterback Josh Allen delivered some notable facial expressions on the night and one of them was with four seconds left after the 12-men-on-the-field call.
Allen ended his night going 15-of-26 in the air but settled for just 177 yards, now his second-lowest output this season. He was also intercepted two times by Fabian Moreau and Justin Simmons. And Allen didn’t mince words about the performance by him and the Bills.
“Um … it sucks. We should’ve never been in that position in the first place. A lot of bad football,” Allen told the Buffalo media.
12-men on the field 😱 pic.twitter.com/z9OYHMh0b7
— Pro Football Network (@PFN365) November 14, 2023
But how did McDermott feel after the loss? He acknowledged that the illegal substitution call that set up the winning field goal was “inexcusable.” He even shared how the Bills practiced “two to three times this week” for those moments in switching from a dime look on defense to rushing the field goal block team onto the field.
But McDermott was blunt about the performance.
“It wasn’t good enough. You can’t turn the ball over period. It’s not good enough,” McDermott said. “We’ve got to play better and move the football and score points on a more consistent basis.”
He also gave honesty about the performance of the quarterback he once took seventh overall to help build the Bills around, saying, “I think he’s played well at times and at times he hasn’t. You can’t turn the ball over. We gotta figure that out.”
McDermott, though, has a plethora of things to figure out moving forward. All five Bills losses have been against AFC foes. And the woes that have plagued the team — from slow starts on offense to mental-mistake penalties — surfaced again against a team that was once 1-5 but is now one game behind Buffalo in a crowded wildcard race.
And now, a growing population within the NFL world has begun to see enough of McDermott. In three words, ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark summed up the Bills’ playoff hopes postgame.
“Buffalo is dead.”
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