I just find it so funny Bills fans have completely turned on McDermott “because he can’t get them over the hump”.
Bills have made the playoffs the last 5/6 years. Panthers haven’t had a winning record in that same time.
The Bills have won at least ten games each of their last four years. The Panthers haven’t even had back to back winning seasons in their entire history.
I don’t mean to wallow here, but it just makes me realize how hopeless this team has become. What I wouldn’t do as a Panthers fan to have a coach with half as many playoff berths. Maybe the Bills will do the dumbest thing possible and he could come back to Carolina. I would imagine there will be about ten other teams in line before the Panthers though.
I think this post is the EXACT issue with most people’s opinion of coaching.
McDermott (and Staley) are the exact coaches that should have the most heat because they have a ton of talent and aren’t really sniffing the Super Bowl (the Bills have had a top 3ish roster the last few years and the closest they’ve gotten is a two-TD loss in conference championship). Talent is 75% of the equation. There hasn’t ever been a single coach that has consistently made a talentless team into a playoff contender, but there are plenty of coaches that ride the coattails of their talent and stay safe while underperforming the talent of the roster.
I don’t think you can accurately judge a coach (unless their players hate them and/or they kick their players) until the GM has built a roster that could win 8 games with Nicole Tepper as coach.
The order of importance in an organization goes: 1) GM, 2) QB (great QBs can win 6/7 games on their own, …big gap… 3) coach (great coaches can win an extra 3 games) …big gap… 4) everything else.
When a team is underperforming, look at the talent first. If it’s not there, it’s really hard to judge anything else. If it is there (Chargers and Bills) and you are consistently getting beat by teams of similar talent, then you look at coaches.