Buffalo Bills firing Sean McDermott shows desperation – Josh Allen’s next coach faces huge pressure, says Neil Reynolds

The craziness of the NFL coaching cycle continued this week with the Buffalo Bills firing head coach Sean McDermott after nine years at the helm. I must admit I was totally surprised by this one.

I was watching the Bills game against the Denver Broncos on Saturday night and even when it looked like Buffalo were going to lose I never really felt the head coach was on the ropes.

I would have thought that the pressure would be on general manager Brandon Beane because I don’t think Buffalo have given Josh Allen nearly enough to work with. When you look at the lead up to the AFC Divisional Round game against Denver there was a ringing of hands from Bills fans and Bills media because wide receivers Tyrell Shavers and Gabe Davis were likely to not be in the line-up through injury. With respect you shouldn’t really be worrying about whether those two players are going to be on the field or not.

Look at who Josh Allen was working with on Saturday night. Brandin Cooks had two catches, Keon Coleman has been wildly inconsistent and had just one catch, and then you’re dealing with the likes of Mecole Hardman and Curtis Samuel at wide receiver.

So yes, Brandon Beane has built a good offensive line, the NFL’s rushing champion in James Cook and they have a couple of really good tight ends in Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox. But wide receivers are vital in the NFL. Just look at what the Los Angeles Rams have done with Puka Nacua and Davante Adams. Look how ineffective Houston were without Nico Collins last weekend.

You haven’t given Sean McDermott enough ingredients to cook the right meal in my opinion. Buffalo have come up short, yes. They have lost in the playoffs to the Kansas City Chiefs far too many times for them to want to recall, and they lost to the Cincinnati Bengals at home during the postseason. So maybe this is where the pressure was on Sean McDermott in that they were expected to get past Bo Nix. They were expected to go to the Super Bowl in a year where the AFC playoffs didn’t feature Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson or Joe Burrow. But this feels wildly unfair.

I think this is a coach, 51 years old, who is going to go on to very good things in the future but now he’s going to have to do it without the game’s most dynamic quarterback. Buffalo did not build a good enough team around Josh Allen and they have wasted quite a few of his years now. Allen is to blame a little bit for turning the ball over as much as he did in Denver on Saturday.

He’s going to be 30 going into next season and he’ll be in his ninth campaign in the league. We will be getting into stages where he’s not going to be able to hurdle defenders and be as physical and be as imposing as he is right now. Those are a few years off but that’s coming and there’s still no Super Bowl yet. So maybe there’s a desperation creeping in in Buffalo – this certainly feels that.

You’ve got to always be careful what’s behind door number two. This is incredible to me that when you think about the most dynamic players in the NFL, I’m thinking Josh Allen, I’m thinking Lamar Jackson – how do both of those teams have job openings at head coach? This has been bad for John Harbaugh and for Sean McDermott.

But whoever comes in, what a situation to inherit. You have an instant playmaker at the most important position in the game. That’s unheard of.

So often if you are a head coach you are taking over a bad team. There’s a reason they fired their coaches in the first place. This season we had the Pittsburgh Steelers who were in the playoffs and are now looking for a replacement for Mike Tomlin. Albeit it was him stepping down, but would he have been pushed anyway? We don’t know.

You have got the Bills who got to the second round of the playoffs and very easily could have advanced to the AFC title game, now looking for a head coach. And you’ve got the Ravens who have always been in the playoff mix over the past decade or more looking for somebody to guide Lamar Jackson to the next level. That is unique and it’s special for the coach coming in. But that coach better deliver because they will be expected to win and win big.

The bar for the Ravens, the bar for the Buffalo Bills is not to get to the playoffs, put up a good fight and then exit. These are teams that, when you have Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson at the helm, will be expected to win the Super Bowl next year.

Whoever comes in to lead those teams has got a wonderful situation but also a pressure-packed one.

Watch the Denver Broncos face the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game and the Los Angeles Rams against the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game, live on Sky Sports NFL from 7.30pm on Sunday January 25.