{"id":692194,"date":"2026-01-20T22:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/692194\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T22:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:22:16","slug":"sean-mcdermott-reportedly-irked-bills-gm-owner-with-criticism-of-roster-before-firing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/692194\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean McDermott Reportedly Irked Bills GM, Owner With Criticism of Roster Before Firing"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, the Bills made the surprising decision to simultaneously fire Sean McDermott<\/a> and promote general manager Brandon Beane, giving the latter even more power within the organization.<\/p>\n

The firing of McDermott comes after he coached the team for nine seasons, leading the Bills to eight playoff appearances and a postseason win in six straight seasons. Ultimately, his failure to win or make a Super Bowl with Josh Allen at quarterback led to his demise.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the promotion of Beane and the chilly nature of how the Bills have treated the firing that stands out most, between the typo<\/a> in owner Terry Pegula\u2019s statement to barely acknowledging all the success McDermott achieved in Buffalo. After much criticism and a long delay, the Bills finally put out a \u201cthank you\u201d post<\/a> for Sean on social media on Tuesday afternoon. <\/p>\n

According to multiple reports, tension emerged between McDermott and the front office because McDermott expressed concerns with the talent level on the team\u2019s roster. <\/p>\n

Ian Rapoport reported for NFL Network<\/a>, \u201cMy understanding is McDermott himself had some questions about how much talent the Bills had, I\u2019m not sure that sat well in the building considering most teams believe they are stocked full of talent.\u201d <\/p>\n

Vic Carucci of WGRZ<\/a> similarly wrote, \u201cDespite the common outside view that Josh Allen\u2019s supporting cast was what has mainly held the Bills back in their Super Bowl quest, Beane managed to convince Pegula that coaching was the primary culprit. … I\u2019m told that during a meeting held five weeks ago between McDermott, Beane and Pegula, the coach pointed out what the roster lacked to win a Super Bowl. I don\u2019t know the specifics McDermott mentioned, but I\u2019m told neither Beane nor Pegula was pleased with McDermott\u2019s assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Publicly, McDermott has notably been complimentary of the Jaguars\u2019 midseason acquisition<\/a> of Jakobi Meyers in press conferences, the kind of move the Bills front office didn\u2019t pull off and left the team too reliant on castoff receivers in the postseason. Beane previously was defensive<\/a> of his lack of moves at the receiver position last spring. Though that and the team\u2019s flawed roster came back to bite on the field, it\u2019s apparent that Bills ownership took Beane\u2019s side over McDermott\u2019s, leading Buffalo to make McDermott the scapegoat and retain Beane. <\/p>\n

More NFL on Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Monday, the Bills made the surprising decision to simultaneously fire Sean McDermott and promote general manager Brandon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048],"tags":[215,214,53,2086,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-692194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-bills","8":"tag-bills","9":"tag-buffalo","10":"tag-buffalo-bills","11":"tag-buffalobills","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115929766174771838","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}