Sean, Sean, Sean. Come on, what was that?
The questions about Sean McDermott’s ability to lead the Buffalo Bills as their head coach toward their first Super Bowl championship will only continue after a loss like Sunday’s.
The Bills clawed their way back on the road against the Houston Texans after falling behind by multiple scores … just to have a baffling sequence end the game.
With 30 seconds left in a 20-20 game, and the ball on their own 3-yard line, the Bills opted to … throw? Three times in a row? And all three passes were incomplete, stopping the clock each time?
After a 56-yard punt and 13-yard return, the Texans didn’t have to gain much yardage for a game-winning field-goal attempt, which they hit, to triumph 23-20. There’s no way to know if the Bills would have won this game in overtime, but to not even get there is absolutely coaching malpractice from McDermott.
After the game, McDermott at least had the wherewithal to blame himself for the end of the game. “That’s on me.” McDermott said, after saying that the correct move would have been running the clock and just getting to overtime.
Look, anyone can see why it would be tempting to try and make something happen when Josh Allen is your quarterback. There have been plenty of moments when Allen has had Herculean feats of athleticism on the field, but this was a laughably unnecessary risk. Throwing the ball from your own end zone is hard enough, especially when the risk of getting a safety would end the game with a loss. These plays have such a small margin for error even before the throw is made. Trying it in such a tight circumstance was nonsensical.
As positive an influence that McDermott is on the Bills in a general sense, his game management gaffes should have people unsure if he’s capable of leading the Bills to the big game. Who knows if McDermott was having flashbacks to the Bills’ goal-line fumble against the Vikings a few seasons ago that caused them to lose, but this is a decision that’s going to stoke the fires on that specific topic. It was so obvious that was the wrong thing to do that the doubters are going to be deafeningly loud this week.
It was also curious that he decided to pull this move when the passing game hadn’t worked all game. Prior to the three incomplete passes, Allen completed only 9 of 27 passes Sunday, unable to get anything going through the air outside of a 49-yard touchdown to rookie Keon Coleman on a fourth-down conversion attempt. Leaning on a part of the offense that wasn’t working in a spot where they didn’t need to be used anyway is coaching malpractice and directly led to the Bills losing this game.
Luckily for the Bills (3-2), the rest of the AFC East has been so incompetent this season that they should still cruise to a division title, but they need to stop doing silly stuff like this, immediately. Winning games in the NFL is hard enough and they dropped a game to the Ravens last week by a score of 35-10 — don’t shoot yourself in the foot against the other top teams in the conference with a chance to at least get to overtime. The Texans (4-1) now hold a tiebreaker over the Bills, which may matter later in the season when it comes to playoff seeding.
The season isn’t over for Buffalo or anything after this loss to the Texans, but they need to start acting with some sense before they blow any more games that they don’t need to. That starts with the head coach who allowed his team to act with complete and total incompetence.
