Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Coaches...
I'm going to take an unusual step here with this blog and for the first time, I'm going to be less objective and go with gut emotion as a response or basis rather than focusing on staying more centered. Whenever an issue comes up with another program, a franchise, a coach, etc., I will take that information and bring it back to center and focus on how it might relate to rowing, my own career, or experiences and generally avoid tying emotions to it. I work to stay in the lane I know, coaching rowing, and will always preface that I'm a fan, but not an expert when it comes to other sports.
This issue though, days later, still bothers me and the more I read, the more I hear, the more the decision baffles me and illustrates how coaching is an incredible difficult profession to be in, one where successful individuals, wildly successful individuals can still get the boot.
I'm sure you may feel what's coming, so let's just get into it.
McDermott's record in Buffalo is 98-50. He's been to two AFC Championship games, and won 8 playoff games for a franchise that prior to his hiring, had missed the postseason for 17 straight years. 2000 to 2016. To put that into perspective, there's is a generation of kids born and raised in Buffalo who went through grade school and were off to college or the working world before they saw the Bills qualify for the postseason.
Further perspective. I graduated high school in 2000, and was in my 15th year of coaching in 2017, the year they returned. They'd gone through 9 head coaches before McDermott hauled them into the playoffs in his first season. After 17 years of futility, Coach McDermott led the Bills to 8 postseason births in 9 years winning at least 1 postseason game in 6 of those 8 playoffs.
In 2020, the McDermott led Bills won their first AFC East title since 1995 under the excellent Marv Levy. Coincidentally, the last time the Bills won a postseason game was in 1995. Marv Levy, the GOAT Bills coach won 6 AFC East titles during his tenure including 4 in a row when the Bills went to the Super Bowl four straight years. McDermott won 5 AFC titles, all five in succession until this season when they still posted 12 victories.
That's enough exposition and backstory, but it's important to see some of these stats and facts to understand how...bizarre this decision is. How knee jerk this decision is. And Pegula's press conferences attempting to explain this decision as well as his decision to promote the main decision maker who drafts the players that Sean McDermott and his staff coached to all those victories and playoff appearances have fallen well short of PR 101.
Often times, when decision makers make these emotionally based decisions, they realize after the bravado or gumption wears off that they will need to support or defend and offer credibility to this decision. And this is where decision makers, Terry Pegula in this case, try and make an emotional decision sound like a rationale, thoughtful, calculation based decision. They attempt to put lipstick on a pig, paint on a tumbled down shack, wax on a junker, etc. They attempt to sound smart, smarter than anyone in the room, and it plays poorly. They realize, as Pegula has, that it sounds as knee jerk and irrational as it is, and rather than slow the roll and try and divert from the wreck and make it less impactful, they quadruple down, and cause more damage.
Pegula has not only painted a massive target on his back, but Beane's back, and alienated one of his wide receivers by telling the world, "Our staff I just fired believed in him, but the GM and I did and do not." He tried to amend this by saying, "Well, we may have drafted him anyhow, but..." But the damage is done.
When you start a trainwreck, you're going to wreck. But when you make emotional decisions, knee jerk decisions and you recognize that you're heading toward a cliff, the best you can do is divert as much as possible to minimize the impact. You're going over the edge. That's a done deal. But you don't have to add more coal to the fire. Pegula, and many decision makers, will do this because of ego. They recognize they made a bad call. Likely an historically bad one that may have just crippled their franchise for a good long while - we'll get to this in a moment. Their ego told them that because of who they are, because they are "beloved" in the business or community or what have you, that everyone would simply accept their decision.
What they fail to take into consideration is that the scenario playing in their minds is not the scenario that will play out in real time.
You fire someone who is a culture drain, or is bad for the environment then yes, that will likely happen. You walk in one day and realize that someone has to go, there isn't time for the long debate, then yes, you will likely get some of the accolades your ego is convincing you will come with.
And sometimes quicker decisions are necessary. Two years ago, I removed an athlete from the program. They were a culture drain - let's leave it at that - and I took too long of an approach to drop them. It was suggested I take the time to do so in order to build an ironclad case against them, which I did, but it certainly cost the other athletes throughout the season.
But this was not one of those times. Sports are emotional, and the loss to the Broncos certainly was especially with the disputed calls on the field. I will say that the final catch that has been up for debate will largely depend on which team you were rooting for - the Broncos for me - and because the NFL still hasn't fully determined what constitutes a catch. By the rule implemented by the refs, that was not a catch. Two of the three required steps were completed, but by the time both players were on the ground, the receiver, to me, did not have full control of the ball or the defender had greater control. As a Broncos fan, it's an INT. As a football fan, NFL, come on.
I digress.
These decisions made in the heat of the moment are not good for anyone save the owners ego. In the moment. Today, Pegula regrets this decision. His key people have told him that he needs to stop. Stop adding fuel to the bonfire. Stop trying to make a bad decision, a knee jerk decision sound intelligent. The train is wrecked. You're simply piling more wreckage on it.
Often in coaching I tell people that decisions get you what you're asking for, and it doesn't matter if it's not what you wanted.
A simple example of this: A kid doesn't feel like working out. So they miss practice here and there. In the moment, they don't have to go through the workouts. They're not sore, they're not tired, they're not facing obstacles. But when the lineups come out and their name isn't posted or is posted in the "also ran" boat, suddenly the reality sets in. You got exactly what you were asking for. You didn't get tired. You didn't get sore. You didn't have to overcome an obstacle. But you didn't get a seat. That's not what you wanted. But it is what you asked for.
With Pegula, you got what you asked for, whatever that was. I'm 100 percent certain this isn't it. But this fall out, this viceral reaction? This wasn't what you wanted.
To circle back, when you look at Sean McDermott and his 98-50 record, when you look at 8 playoff wins, a win in 6 of 8 postseason appearances, 5 AFC east titles, 2 AFC Championship appearances, a 17 year playoff drought snapped in the first season, and that got the coach canned by an owner running by his ego rather than rationale, is this who you want to coach for?
Because if you lose your first year, fans and the media will immediately demand that you be fired. Sean McDermott won with a Rex Ryan roster. He didn't have Josh Allen. You will. He didn't have a winning culture, and athlete accustomed to success, not complacent, but demanding it. You will. He did a lot with next to nothing and you won't have that excuse.
If you're Pegula, you understand that you may have lost the trust of your athletes, especially your WR which is a bad look for a team bereft of wide receiver talent or depth. That also looks bad for the upcoming free agency market, and contracts. Here's an owner who makes knee jerk decisions.
Pegula cannot cite, "Well it's just one decision, you can't judge me on it." Because we can because you laid the blueprint there for everyone to see. You took everything McDermott had done for you and tossed it into the dumpster and fixated on one data point.
This post has gone long enough, so I'll leave you with this. I've been there as well. Nothing to the extent of what McDermott has experienced and certainly not as public, but I was part of the staff that led a collegiate team to 3rd place at nationals. And was told I would not get a second contract after mine expired in June. I was replaced for, "someone better."
That's actually happened three times to me now that I think about it.
I wasn't in love watching McDermott coach, partially because I'm not a Bills fan and am a Broncos fan. There were certainly some games that left me scratching my head. The 13 second game that people cite often isn't the game that I look to as trouble so much as a Bills vs. the Eagles game in 2023 or 2024. That was the game for me where I thought McDermott needed to work on game management. Yes, the 13 second game hurt, but for me, playoff games are where you throw a lot of things all over the shop. Not out the window, but playoffs are chaos because the stakes are so high. It's the basics, the regular season when you need to get things ironed out that I think has the greater impact. Anyone can get up for a single game or a short stretch. You hear athletes say it all the time. "If you can't get up for THIS game..." nonsense. For me, the regular season is where you're showing me what you bring into the postseason. Or what you don't.
With that said, McDermott was and is more than a serviceable coach. He's an excellent coach who did much with what he found in Buffalo. He fixed a culture that was terrible - 17 years without playoffs and 9 head coaches means you have a culture that needs to be fixed - and brought back life to a rabid fanbase. He injected confidence and swagger into a franchise that hadn't seen that since the stretch run under Levy.
It's Pegula's team. He can do what he wants, how ever he wants. We don't have to agree with the decisions or even like them.
But these don't operate in a vacuum. This isn't your business where things are done inside and internal. He forgot that, and now it's all over the news, and it won't simply disappear. There's another cycle waiting for him and the GM next fall. And it will continue to cycle until Pegula wins the Super Bowl. And it has to be with the next coach or else he's simply a meddling owner, not the owner who saw something we couldn't or didn't.
And he's going to be McDermott's biggest hater because if he wins the big game before Pegula does...
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