Bills HC Sean McDermott Could Be on the Hot Seat: NFL Analyst

For a team employing Josh Allen as their QB, with Dion Dawkins and James Cook supporting him, it’s truly surprising that for nearly half a decade, the Buffalo Bills haven’t come close to winning anything tangible. It’s always the same: the Bills dominate the regular season, while Allen continues playing the best football of his career. And yet, year after year, the ending has remained unchanged, a playoff exit that leaves the Super Bowl dream unresolved.

Under HC Sean McDermott, Buffalo has repeatedly fallen short against the AFC’s elite. Mahomes and the Chiefs ended their runs in 2020 and again in 2021, including that infamous 13-second collapse. The following year brought a divisional-round loss to Joe Burrow’s Bengals, and in 2024, Mahomes once again shut the door on their maiden Super Bowl dreams.

In many ways, those losses were understandable because there is no shame in losing to certified future NFL legends like Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes. Moreover, those versions of the Chiefs and the Bengals were no scrubs either. But this postseason is different, and that’s exactly why the pressure feels heavier than ever on McDermott.

This year’s AFC playoff field is missing the names that have haunted the Bills for seasons. No Patrick Mahomes. No Joe Burrow. No Lamar Jackson. And that’s why ESPN NFL analyst Ben Solak, during his appearance on Up & Adams, expressed that McDermott will be on the hot seat if the Bills continue their postseason failure.

“If the Bills make an AFC playoff field that lacks Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson, and then they lose one-and-done to the Jaguars… I could see not that like McDermott will be fired on the tarmac, but there’s going to be a big sit-down. It’s going to be a conversation. How did this all go wrong?” Solak professed.

While Solak acknowledged that the Jaguars have been a darn good football team this season, he also admitted that, in ownership circles, losing a playoff game to this team would sting. Especially when the Bills were “unfairly set up for very high expectations” simply because the AFC’s usual gatekeepers weren’t present.

Host Kay Adams didn’t mince words either.

“That is embarrassing,” she said, referring to the idea of Buffalo wasting this opportunity. “What are you doing with the best quarterback, the reigning MVP, and you don’t have the defense? It’s an embarrassment that you don’t have that.”

With the reigning MVP in his prime and the path finally cleared, excuses are running thin for McDermott. Injuries, matchups, and bad luck no longer carry the same weight, and that’s why the head honcho’s seat is beginning to get warm.

So another early exit, especially a one-and-done scenario in Jacksonville, could trigger the very domino effect Solak is warning about. Because at this point, the question stops being why the Bills lost and starts becoming why they keep losing.