Firing Sean McDermott is a risk. Promoting Brandon Beane is the real mistake.

Buffalo Bills fans got a gut punch Saturday in a 33-30 overtime loss to the Denver Broncos. Two days later, they got a slap across the face: The Bills fired coach Sean McDermott while not only retaining general manager Brandon Beane but also promoting him to president of football operations in addition to his GM duties.

In his statement, Bills owner Terry Pegula said McDermott did an "admiral" job leading the team. What he meant was an "admirable" job. It was fitting he had a mistake in the very first sentence of a statement announcing monumental change, because the decisions put together were a mistake, too.

Why firing Sean McDermott isn't unreasonable

The firing of McDermott isn't unwarranted. The defensive-minded head coach saw his defenses get picked apart time and time again in the worst moments: With Josh Allen as their quarterback, the Bills have allowed 31.6 points per game in playoff losses. They have lost games in which Allen was a superhero. There are thousands of little decisions that contributed to the Bills' playoff letdowns.

Josh Dubow of the Associated Press pointed out that 36 different coaches have won a Super Bowl, 32 of whom were hired after the Super Bowl era began in 1966. Of those 32, 31 won their first Super Bowl within their first eight years on the job. McDermott got nine years. The Super Bowl breakthrough didn't happen.

Could McDermott have joined Bill Cowher (14th season) as the exceptions? Maybe. We'll never know. The Pegulas determined something had to change, and that "something" was the head coach. I can understand that. This was supposedly the Bills' year with no Patrick Mahomes, no Lamar Jackson and no Joe Burrow (though that viewpoint overlooked many issues), and they didn't get it done.

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The real problem is the roster

The reason they didn't get it done, though, was much more due to Beane's roster than the way McDermott coached it.

The player at the center of the biggest play of the season was Brandin Cooks. If you had told a Bills fan that at the start of the season, they would have been very confused. Maybe even let out a nervous laugh. "What? Brandin Cooks? He isn't even on the team. Who does he even play for?"

That's right. Cooks started the season with the New Orleans Saints but requested -- and was granted -- his release. He landed in Buffalo, where he became the de facto top wide receiver, even as a 32-year-old who hadn't caught more than 60 passes or surpassed 700 receiving yards in a season since 2021.

And it was Cooks who failed to reel in a deep pass from Allen in overtime, one he got both hands on and one that would have set up a game-winning field goal. Instead, Ja'Quan McMillian ripped the ball away, and the Broncos went down the field and kicked a game-winning field goal.

This isn't really a condemnation of Cooks, who produced solidly up until that point, all things considered. It's a condemnation of Beane that Cooks was even the target there.

Beane can't control that both Gabe Davis and Tyrell Shavers tore their ACLs against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the wild-card game. But he could control that since he traded away Stefon Diggs, he has failed miserably to get Allen a viable No. 1 wide receiver.

The Bills drafted Keon Coleman with the first pick of the second round in 2024, hoping he'd be the sort of physical, contested-catch outside option Allen could rely upon. Instead, Coleman was a healthy scratch multiple times this season, was benched for being late before that and was benched for unspecified "disciplinary reasons" before that. When he has been on the field, Coleman has struggled to get open, struggled to catch the ball when he does get open and struggled to make much of an impact overall.

Firing a GM for one missed pick is like firing a coach for one bad decision: rash and shortsighted. But Beane has failed over and over again to provide Allen with the receiving options requisite for a champion. His big signing this past offseason was Josh Palmer, who was nearly invisible (22 catches, 303 yards, zero touchdowns) and struggled with injuries. Beane has tried a seemingly endless list of half-measures, too. Maybe Curtis Samuel could be a gadget piece. Maybe Davis could recapture his "Big Game Gabe" magic. Maybe this youngster so-and-so just needed a change of scenery, or this veteran so-and-so had something left.

Championship teams have several stars -- the Bills don't

The difference between what Beane hoped for and what the Bills got was gigantic. The Bills had to move on from Diggs. The relationship had grown sour, and they needed to shed salary-cap space. They didn't have to continually misfire on wide receivers afterward, though. That's on Beane: a glaring deficiency on display time and time again.

Moving on down the roster, the Bills failed to hit on impact defenders, too. In 2022, months after the Bills were infamously unable to stop a 13-second Kansas City Chiefs scoring drive, Buffalo selected Florida cornerback Kaiir Elam 23rd overall.

It was another complete miss by Beane. Elam's most notable contribution to the Bills was his last: coming in as an injury replacement last year in the playoffs against the Chiefs and getting picked on several times. The Bills traded Elam to the Dallas Cowboys this offseason, and Dallas, even as one of the worst pass defenses in the NFL, waived Elam midway through the season. The Bills also went with a cornerback in the first round of the 2025 draft, but Maxwell Hairston struggled with injuries all season and was inactive for both playoff games.

Again, not all the blame is on Beane, who, it should be noted, also discovered starter Christian Benford in the sixth round of the same draft he took Elam. But there are too many swings and misses here, too, at both corner and safety. The Bills have had some of the NFL's worst safety play the past two seasons, ever since they moved on from Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer after the 2023 season (the same offseason they moved on from Diggs and others).

The pass rush is also missing a top-tier disruptor, even though Beane has poured ample resources into finding one. He used a top-10 pick on Ed Oliver, a first-round pick on Greg Rousseau and second-round picks on Boogie Basham and A.J. Epenesa. He brought in big, aging names like Joey Bosa and Von Miller. Yet since 2018, the Bills have had just one player produce a 10-sack season, tied with the Atlanta Falcons and Indianapolis Colts for fewest in the NFL. The Falcons have moved on from multiple GMs. Colts fans wished the Colts would.

Make no mistake: Beane has found some solid players, but he hasn't delivered, either through the draft or free agency, enough stars. Look at teams like the Chiefs or the Philadelphia Eagles -- the teams that have gotten to where the Bills want to go -- and you see teams that have drafted and developed or acquired stars.

Not counting quarterbacks, the Eagles have had 18 Pro Bowl selections over the past three years. The Chiefs have had 12. The Bills have had just eight, with zero from a defender and just one by a pass catcher (Diggs in 2023).

Those stars are the ones who have shined the brightest under the brightest lights, the ones who have provided the tiniest edges when they're needed most. Think about Chris Jones' game-winning defensive plays, or Travis Kelce's clutch catches, or Cooper DeJean's pick-six in last year's Super Bowl, or the Eagles' overwhelming pass rushes.

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Promoting Beane undercuts the message

Perhaps that can be the biggest takeaway here. Beane did a terrific job building this team into what it is now: a Super Bowl contender year-in, year-out. He nailed the Allen pick, after all, and if he hadn't, he would have been gone long ago. He hit a home run with James Cook (second round, 2022) and unearthed later-round gems such as Benford, Khalil Shakir, Taron Johnson and, most recently, Deone Walker. In some lenses, the Bills have actually been one of the NFL's better drafting teams under Beane.

But don't the Bills want to be more than what they are now? Isn't that the point of firing McDermott? Beane's misses are so glaring -- the difference between a contender and an actual champion. There's a reason I wrote before the playoffs that while this looked like Allen's best shot given the absence of his peer quarterbacks, it also might be his hardest shot given the shortcomings of the situation around him.

This isn't to excuse Allen. Yes, he had to play at or near his best given those surroundings, but that's true of almost every quarterback come playoff time, and Allen wasn't close to his best against the Broncos. His fumble in the final moments of the first half is among the worst plays one will see from a championship-caliber quarterback. His third-quarter interception to P.J. Locke wiped out a prime scoring opportunity. He missed several downfield throws. Neither Beane nor McDermott can step on the field and make the plays for Allen, and Allen himself admitted he wasn't good enough.

But at least we've seen McDermott try to make the right changes. He brought in Brian Daboll as Allen's first offensive coordinator, replaced him ably with Ken Dorsey and then deftly moved from Dorsey to Joe Brady. He has often made the most of defenses undermanned due to Beane's misses in the personnel department. Since 2019, Buffalo has been a top-half scoring defense all seven seasons and a top-10 scoring defense four times. McDermott showed creativity and flexibility throughout.

And if that wasn't enough, fine. Beane and Pegula have a massive hiring decision to make, and they might get it wrong. Still, if they deemed change was necessary, that's their decision to make, and it's not a completely unreasonable one.

But Pegula is also betting big on a general manager whose biggest bets often haven't paid off, a general manager who has failed to give an MVP-winning quarterback the best possible surroundings to win a Super Bowl. Pegula's statement said he owes "the players and Bills Mafia" a new structure that can take the team to the next level. 

By not only sticking with but elevating Beane, that message rings hollow.