Orchard Park, N.Y. — Pete Carmichael Jr. took his seat inside an LSU meeting room back in 2018 after delivering a speech to the entire Tigers football program.

Carmichael Jr., the New Orleans Saints’ offensive coordinator at the time, visited campus as the main attraction. Coaches had their notebooks out, hoping to learn from Carmichael Jr. and the group he had brought upriver.

“I got a call from (LSU coach) Ed Orgeron,” Carmichael Jr. remembers. “He says, ‘Hey, will you come down and speak to our staff, and I want you to speak about red zone.’”

Orgeron was still a season away from winning a national championship with Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and Justin Jefferson. He asked Carmichael Jr. if he had anyone on the Saints’ staff who could talk about the RPO offensive concept. Carmichael Jr. and then-Saints coach Sean Payton weren’t running the run-pass option with quarterback Drew Brees. But a young offensive assistant who just finished his first year on the staff had been impressing everybody from Brees to Payton in meetings.

That assistant was new Buffalo Bills head coach Joe Brady.

“I was like, ‘Well, we got a young guy,’” Carmichael Jr. said. “And we went down to LSU, I did my little bit with the offensive staff … and then all of a sudden Joe, it was his turn to talk. The whole building was in there. I was like, oh, we were just the opening act for (Brady)–for this rockstar. And I’m telling you, I started taking notes, just listening to him talk. I mean, you knew early on that this guy was gonna be pretty good.”

Carmichael Jr. told this story on Thursday at his introductory press conference at One Bills Drive after Brady hired him as the new Bills offensive coordinator last week. The two coaches reunite eight years after their stint together in New Orleans.

Brady recalls that speech to LSU staffers. As he prepared to walk to the podium to begin his presentation, he noticed Dave Aranda, one of the top defensive coordinators in the country. He quickly realized the opportunity in front of him and switched up his approach. He treated that session like a job interview.

“I’ll never forget,” Brady said Thursday. “I got in the car after and Pete Carmichael looked at me and was like, that guy’s probably gonna hire you pretty shortly. I kind of brushed it off and it ended up working out that way.”

Brady’s contributions to the LSU offense in his only season in Baton Rouge, La., earned him the offensive coordinator job for the Carolina Panthers in 2020. He was fired before the end of his second season but the short stint with the Panthers was a small roadblock in an otherwise meteoric rise through the coaching ranks.

He arrived in Buffalo in 2022 as quarterbacks coach and was promoted to OC in 2023 after Ken Dorsey was fired after a 5-5 start. In Brady’s two full seasons calling plays in Buffalo, Josh Allen won the MVP award in 2024, and running back James Cook led the NFL in rushing this season.

Now Brady is embarking on another new journey after the Bills tabbed the 36-year-old as their new head coach after owner Terry Pegula decided to fire longtime coach Sean McDermott after another divisional round playoff loss.

The reporting structure in Buffalo between Brady and Carmichael Jr. may be different than their time together in New Orleans, but the reunion is rooted in their shared vision for running an offense. Brady is going to call the plays but Carmichael Jr. is used to that structure after spending most of his tenure in New Orleans under Payton, who called the plays for the Saints.

But Brady said Carmichael Jr. will be heavily involved in the play-calling process. From the early game-planning to the team meetings and even on game day, Carmichael Jr. will approach the week like he’s calling the game himself.

“It’s not like he’s just sitting waiting around for me to make decisions,” Brady said. “He’s taking control and he’s rolling with it. (We’ll spend) a lot of time in the offseason of sharing, understanding what the vision and what we’re building and putting it all together so that the offensive staff can continue moving forward when I’m not in the room. I know Pete can do that because I’ve sat there and seen how the train keeps moving, even when Coach Payton wasn’t in there. He’s as bright as they come. He’s as organized, and he’s great communicator.”

Carmichael Jr. took notice of Brady early in his tenure with the Saints. During Brady’s job interview for the offensive coaching staff—while he was still a graduate assistant at Penn State—Carmichael Jr. knew Brady belonged in the quarterbacks room with Brees.

“Just hearing him talk, the way he communicated, could paint a clear picture,” Carmichael Jr. said. “Early on in his time in the QB room, whether Sean Payton was talking, Drew Brees was talking, Joe … whoever was talking, he had his head down and he was writing notes. Maybe Sean might ask him a question and you’d hear the answer and you’d be like, oh. Then the questions became more and more because he could create a clear picture—he had knowledge of the game and he could create such a good picture with his communication.”

Brady will lean on Carmichael Jr.’s 30-plus years of coaching experience as he takes over a Bills team that’s made the playoffs in eight of the previous nine seasons. The veteran coach is fired up to be back with his former assistant and he thinks he’s got the goods to be great as a head coach.

“I just love his passion,” he said. “He loves the game, he loves to be around it. His ability to communicate to the players, I mean, there’s just so much about it and early on when we started working together, you could tell right away that there’s something special about this guy.”