Sean McDermott Says If the Controversial INT vs Broncos Led to His Bills Firing

Sean McDermott settles into the chair across from Rich and gets the question every fired NFL coach gets first. Do you still want to coach? Absolutely, McDermott says. Loves it. Misses being part of something bigger, part of a team. He has been on a team since he was knee-high, and now there is a year where the calendar he memorized for two decades just stops. His family is ready for him to back off the leaning-in a little. That is natural, he says.

Rich works the conversation toward the rest of the offseason map. Are you doing media this year? Some suitors, McDermott says, scheduling it out. What about the Vrabel-Saleh route, sitting in with another team during the season the way Vrabel ended up in Cleveland and then New England, the way Saleh slid into a defensive coordinator chair? People have reached out, McDermott allows. But this gap year is something he never thought he would entertain. Rest. Reflect. Research. Talk to leaders inside other organizations and outside of sports entirely. The window to do that work shrinks when you are on the job. He has the window now.

Then Rich pivots to the moment everyone wants to ask about and nobody wants to be first on. The simultaneous catch ruling against Denver. Both men deflect to each other through laughter. Rich finally steers it. How much do you think about that moment, because that could have been a different road, for the team and for you professionally? McDermott answers like a coach who has rehearsed the answer in his head for months. He thinks about it for the team, for Bills Mafia, for the work that went in. The moment itself, he does not dwell on. Beyond his control.

Rich pushes on the counterfactual anyway. If the catch goes your way, you win that game? We win the football game, McDermott says. Believe it. Rich keeps going. New England the following week, massive snowstorm, do you make the Super Bowl? Fully confident in our team. Twice he says it. And if you win that game, are you still the coach of the Buffalo Bills? You never know, McDermott says. You never know.

Rich asks the harder version. Did you ever get an actual satisfying answer as to why? No, McDermott says flatly. When you are in the position I am in as a coach, you do not get an answer. You move forward. Every setback is a chance for a comeback. Nine years in one chair in the NFL is its own kind of accomplishment, he says, and he is going to take a lot from it. The button on the segment is quiet, not bitter. A coach in a gap year, not a grievance.