Bills championship window wide open as stumbling, bumbling AFC East foes struggle to find their way
The Bills have become a model franchise while the rest of the division is in shambles.
www.nytimes.com
The bossman of the Buffalo Bills’ stablest division rivals needed to release a statement, declaring Sunday he will not fire his head coach or general manager.
When an organization is compelled to announce “We actually still like these guys,” stuff’s not going well.
About 90 minutes after Miami Dolphins superstar Tyreek Hill informed a group of reporters “I’m out, bro” because he wants to win, owner Stephen Ross felt obligated to tell the world coach Mike McDaniel and GM Chris Grier would keep their jobs. Hill’s emotions were running hot, the Dolphins having just lost to the lowly New York Jets and failing to qualify for the postseason. Hill also seemed to remove himself from the game, a notion McDaniel didn’t refute. So maybe Miami’s best player and three-time captain is a quitter too.
This, at the moment, is the healthiest AFC East organization outside of Orchard Park.
The Jets and Dolphins were chic preseason picks to win the AFC East in 2024. They featured big names, enjoyed organizational stability and were propelled by upward-trending arrows. The New England Patriots, meanwhile, were digging in for an honest rebuild. Owner Robert Kraft got credit for resetting “the right way” with his hand-picked successor for Bill Belichick.
Buffalo supposedly was due for some lumps. Josh Allen lost his two best receiving weapons and his trusted center. The defense lost two beloved captains and a longtime cover cornerback, and required substantial interior line help.
Four months later, it’s obvious the Bills’ organization is a galaxy ahead of its division foils. So great is the distance that the concept of a closing window for the Bills’ championship dreams never has sounded more preposterous.
Even if the Bills fall short of next month’s Super Bowl, they remain positioned for prolonged greatness. If that’s not enough for perennial contention, then the rest of the AFC East’s decrepitude will keep that window wide open.
Kraft fired coach Jerod Mayo after one season, and rookie GM Eliot Wolf’s exact role hasn’t been confirmed. New England could’ve locked down the coveted first overall draft choice Sunday, but managed to beat Buffalo and slid down to the fourth slot. New England has won eight games over the past two years, something Buffalo does every two months.
Jets owner Woody Johnson axed coach Robert Saleh in early October following a 2-3 start and fired GM Joe Douglas during the Week 12 bye. The Jets own the NFL’s longest ongoing playoff famine at 14 years and will be hiring their 10th coach (if you count interims and Belichick quitting at his introductory news conference) and eighth GM since Johnson bought the team in 2000.
That’s the last season the Dolphins won a playoff game, so long ago that it predates NFL realignment. They beat the Indianapolis Colts, who still were in the AFC East.
This year’s Dolphins collapsed three spots shy of the postseason despite the NFL’s softest schedule by a lot. Their opponents combined to win only 121 games.
Buffalo this year was the prizefighter dropping his gloves, sticking out his chin and daring any of three opponents to land a haymaker. The punches were delivered with the force of a featherweight and a couple bantams.
The NFL’s 31 other organizations by now are fully aware of what has happened in Buffalo under coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane, an envious transition in 2017 from laughingstock that went 17 years without the playoffs to a juggernaut – seven postseasons in eight years and five straight AFC East crowns.
Most clubs would love to replicate the Bills’ top-to-bottom culture vibe, none more than their three division counterparts. The Dolphins, Jets and Patriots all know what they’re up against, just as the Bills have pursued and attempted to surpass the Kansas City Chiefs since the AFC Championship Game four years ago.
The Jets thought Aaron Rodgers would help them break their playoff drought, but that didn’t work out as planned. (Bryan M. Bennett / Getty Images)
From the start of the Bills’ playoff streak in 2019, they are 71-28 and have scored 841 more points than they’ve surrendered. The Dolphins are 52-48 and minus-70 points. The Patriots are 45-55 and plus-86 points. The Jets are 32-68 and minus-664 points.
Inside the division over that span: Buffalo is 29-9 and plus-365 points; Miami is 19-18 and minus-58 points; New England is 18-19 and plus-4 points; New York is 8-28 and minus-311 points. New England owns the AFC East’s best record against Buffalo at 5-8, including a playoff loss.
Yet the rest of the AFC East, despite repeated efforts in the face of its unpleasant exposure to Beane’s roster-building, to McDermott’s coaching and development acumen and to Allen’s offensive mastery, never has been farther away than today.
Not only have these hapless franchises been unable to decipher the Bills, but also they can’t even figure out themselves.
Buffalo fans understand how thin the line between stability and dysfunction can be.
In the four major North American sports leagues, the Buffalo Sabres are the lone team that can match the Jets’ playoff ineptitude. The Sabres have the Eastern Conference’s lowest point percentage at the 2024-25 halfway mark, well on track for a 14th straight unsatisfying campaign in a league where over half the clubs qualify.
Terry Pegula owns the Bills and Sabres. Based on his management/coaching choices aside from McDermott and Beane, you can’t help but believe Pegula simply got stone lucky with his football team.
Pegula bought the Bills in 2014, retained president Russ Brandon (later putting him in charge of the Sabres, too) and GM Doug Whaley and intended to keep coach Doug Marrone, who instead exercised an escape clause in his contract that paid him $4 million to quit. So Pegula hired Rex Ryan. Other than Marrone later going 23-43 over five seasons as Jacksonville Jaguars coach, none of the others have worked in the NFL again. All certainly contributed to the Bills’ ongoing misery.
Fortunes changed when McDermott arrived in January 2017. Four months later, Beane came aboard. The duo fumigated One Bills Drive, meticulously incorporating their holistic vision for a winning organization, revamping the Whaley-Ryan roster, and in 2018 trading up to draft Allen seventh.
Pegula entrusted McDermott and Beane as company-wide stewards and has gotten out of the way.
Amid a massive reorganization among the Pegula family’s business enterprises in 2020, The Athletic interviewed dozens of Bills, Sabres and Pegula Sports and Entertainment employees who commended McDermott and Beane ostensibly for building a firewall around the successful culture they cultivated from blight.
“The culture is legitimate,” a Bills source told me then. “Whatever’s going on with the Sabres, I don’t care. That’s their problem. Their s— better not affect what we built.”
In the four years since, the Bills’ culture has continued to evolve, while the Sabres’ has eroded onward. Bills players, coaches and staff seem tighter and more relaxed than ever, regardless of a slew of notable departures and just a few headliner acquisitions. They traded top receiver Stefon Diggs, released center Mitch Morse, cornerback Tre’Davious White and safety Jordan Poyer and let receiver Gabriel Davis, leading edge rusher Leonard Floyd and linebacker Tyrel Dodson leave as free agents. They also moved on from safety Micah Hyde, although in December they re-signed him to the practice squad.
Skeptics warned that all that roster turnover would be too much to overcome. Nevertheless, the Bills’ ethos flourished to new levels.
McDermott isn’t as tightly wound as he used to be. Players note he’s downright jovial at times. He lets his guard down with reporters.
“You know why he’s loosened up?” former University of Michigan and Canisius College basketball coach John Beilein, a lifelong Bills fan, told me recently. “I’ll bet he feels like the players have taken ownership of the team, and then he can relax.”
As the Bills’ culture appears to be regulating itself — McDermott is not driven to micromanage every wee detail anymore — the rest of the AFC East is being run by owners who have been deeply involved and bumbling.
The Athletic recently detailed Johnson’s controversial reign. Sources spoke about “Madden NFL” ratings and his two teenage sons having influence on roster opinions, about whimsical decisions and outbursts spawning turmoil. A Jets spokesman acknowledged Johnson apologized for a particularly alarming anecdote. After their 2022 elimination loss, Jets quarterback Mike White, who played through broken ribs, slammed his helmet to the locker room floor. Players heard Johnson say, “You should throw your helmet. You f—ing suck.” White’s now the Bills’ third-string quarterback.
On ESPN’s “Manningcast” of the Week 6 Bills-Jets matchup, with Saleh freshly terminated, Belichick said of Johnson’s ownership approach, “ready, fire, aim.”
Kraft’s zeal for Pro Football Hall of Fame induction is well-documented. He’s 83 and knows that refurbishing his franchise into a Super Bowl winner beyond Belichick and Tom Brady would nail the case. The Patriots authorized “The Dynasty,” a 10-part Apple TV miniseries critics panned as Kraft hagiography and too dismissive of Belichick’s impact on their historic success. For Kraft, it was a public-relations backfire.
Kraft didn’t oversee a coaching change for nearly a quarter century, but now he has second-guessed himself into a third coach in three years. Does the quest for a next-generation Lombardi Trophy and bronze bust in Canton make shortcuts too tempting? Kraft insisted he had the right plan and the right man for the job merely 12 months ago.
At least the Patriots’ vacancy is attractive; they might have their franchise quarterback already. Whereas the tedious and aging Aaron Rodgers will leave a smoldering crater in Florham Park, 22-year-old Drake Maye fosters hope in Foxboro.
Then there’s Ross, who had Dan Campbell as his interim coach for 12 games in 2015 and decided to hire Adam Gase instead. Campbell is 39-28-1 as Detroit Lions coach and on Monday night clinched the NFC’s top playoff seed.
Three years back, Ross had an ugly falling out with coach Brian Flores, a popular candidate in this year’s hiring cycle for his work as Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator. Flores accused Ross of wanting to tank instead of win. Flores alleged the owner offered him $100,000 bonuses for each loss, thereby improving the Dolphins draft slot. The NFL cleared Ross of that charge.
Ross got busted, however, for tampering to acquire Brady (first under contract to the Patriots and again to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and Sean Payton (under contract to the New Orleans Saints). The NFL stripped the Dolphins of a 2023 first-round draft pick and a 2024 third-rounder, fined Ross $1.5 million, suspended him for two and a half months, fined vice chairman and limited partner Bruce Beal $500,000 and suspended him for the entire 2022 season.
Ross after the 2010 season courted then-Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh, failed to lure him, signed incumbent coach Tony Sparano to a mea culpa extension and then fired Sparano less than a year later.
But, hey, Ross says McDaniel is safe.
Given the state of the entire AFC East, nobody looks safer than the Bills.