Buffalo Bills disaster press conference unmasked a franchise in freefall

If you wanted to teach a class on poor leadership, passing blame, and backstabbing, you'd show the end of season press conference held by Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula and general manager Brandon Beane.

After Pegula made the decision to fire head coach Sean McDermott after nine seasons, he proceeded to put every organizational failure over the last half-decade on McDermott's shoulders while simultaneously pointing at Beane for everything the organization got right. It was like at the end of Shrek when the guards have que cards telling the audience to cheer and laugh whenever Lord Farquaad spoke. Bills Mafia isn't that naive, though, and refused to metaphorically pat Beane on the back. They can see through the complete B.S. being thrown in their face.

Pegula credited Beane with the Bills being able to make it as far as they did with practice squad players getting valuable reps... even though Beane isn't the person coaching those practice squad players - that would be McDermott. 

Pegula also says he fired McDermott based on the results in Denver... but then said that the officials made a bad call on the Brandin Cooks play that was ruled an interception. So you fired a coach for a loss you then openly said wasn't his fault?

The cherry on top of this diarrhea sundae of a press conference was the burial of wide receiver Keon Coleman, a player still on the Bills' roster. When Beane was asked about the shortcomings of Coleman, Pegula interrupted and said that the decision to draft Coleman came from the coaching staff, and that Beane was being a "team player" in drafting the Florida State product. Of course, that was easy to debunk, as Beane said on video Coleman was his guy after the draft.

"When I went to bed that night [before Day Two of the 2024 NFL Draft], I was like, 'It's Keon Coleman unless someone just blows us away,'" Beane said.

Not only was it a bold-faced lie at worst from Pegula and a way to try and take some heat off Beane at best, it was Pegula very publicly bashing a player for whom he still employs. It's one thing for fans to (rightfully) belly-ache about Coleman's shortcomings as a player and to question how bought in he is - it's completely different for the team owner to throw him under the bus and, for all intents and purposes, call him a bust when - and this cannot be stated enough - he is still on the team.

This isn't to say Beane is to blame for what Pegula said. Nor does it mean he has done nothing right and deserves no praise - that would be disingenuous. He made the move to trade up not once, but twice to draft Josh Allen. He traded for Stefon Diggs. He, along with McDermott, found several quality players in the later rounds of the NFL Draft. He deserves credit for all of that, but also doesn't get to share zero blame for things that have gone wrong.

That being said, the mask is completely off the Bills as an organization. While Sean McDermott had his flaws, and you can make several valid arguments as to why firing him made sense, the lack of professionalism that has followed in the ensuing 48 hours shows just how much he and Josh Allen acted as makeup for the blemishes inside the building. 

The Bills won't completely crater as long as Allen is playing at a high level, but they went from being perceived as buttoned-up and well put together to disheveled and directionless throughout the course of a 54-minute press conference. They are under immense pressure to not only get this head coach hire right, but to put real talent on the roster, specifically at wide receiver to give Buffalo a threat in the passing game, and win a Super Bowl immediately. If they struggle in 2026, Beane and Pegula will have egg on their face. And depending on what happens in the next 2-3 years, we can look back at the last two days being the first dominoes to fall in what ends up leading to Josh Allen leaving Buffalo.

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