Josh Allen is poised and ready to win a Super Bowl, to become a Buffalo sports figure for the ages, in what is likely his first time winning the Most Valuable Player award in the National Football League.
But what about the head coach of the Buffalo Bills?
We know where Allen ranks among the best at quarterback, alongside the two-time MVP Lamar Jackson, alongside the itinerant three-time Super Bowl champion, Patrick Mahomes. A step ahead of one-day potential MVP Justin Herbert and maybe a step behind the Cincinnati slinger Joe Burrow.
But where does Sean McDermott rank as a head coach in an AFC playoff year packed with legendary coaches?
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The quarterback-coach combination seems to rule at playoff time in the NFL.
Mahomes and Andy Reid win. They’re going for a never-done-before three-peat with the Kansas City Chiefs. They lost just one game with Mahomes at quarterback this season.
Mahomes and Reid are this generation’s Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. They are Troy Aikman and Jimmy Johnson of years gone by. They are Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll.
You usually don’t get one without the other.
McDermott has superb regular-season numbers and a rather ordinary 5-6 won-loss playoff record in eight seasons coaching the Bills.
At times, he has looked out of place in the playoffs. His decision-making and his clock-management skills have been open to interpretation.
This playoff season is a chance to change the narrative. But consider all that is going in an absolutely loaded AFC.
Mahomes and Reid are on a bye week. The Harbaugh brothers, who have coached against each other for a Super Bowl, are in the playoffs with Jim bringing the Los Angeles Chargers back and John doing what he always seems to do with the roster-deep Baltimore Ravens.
The Bills are heavy favourites to beat the Denver Broncos on Sunday in Buffalo, but you need to stop for a moment and consider who exactly these Broncos are this season.
They are coached by Super Bowl-winner Sean Payton. They are quarterbacked by the stunningly smart Bo Nix, the rookie who doesn’t play like one. The Broncos may not be ready for Allen and McDermott, but this is a test for the Bills, in frigid conditions, that won’t necessarily be easy.
Is Payton a more experienced big-game coach than McDermott? Absolutely. But the Bills will have to beat a likely Hall of Fame coach in Payton and they should do that.
But after that, that’s where the schedule could get treacherous.
We assume Baltimore will beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, but there are two basic problems with that assumption: Mike Tomlin is as great a coach as there is in football. And, historically, Tomlin has done some of his best work against Jackson and the Ravens.
Still, I’m sticking with the Ravens to win, which would set up a battle of the ages: Baltimore at Buffalo one week from now.
The Bills would have to beat Payton this week and John Harbaugh the next just to advance to the AFC championship game — likely in Kansas City against the Chiefs.
It’s entirely possible that for the Bills to get to the Super Bowl, they would have to beat Payton in the first round, John Harbaugh in the second and then Reid in the third round.
Can McDermott out-scheme and outsmart three Hall of Fame coaches — maybe with a lesser lineup than most? Is that possible?
Allen can almost win games on his own. He can be that large, that imposing, that unstoppable. He did that a few years back when the Bills should have knocked out the Chiefs before McDermott got momentary Don Cherry’s disease and lost count of those final 13 seconds.
McDermott is 50 years old now. This is his eighth season with the Bills and he has had an incredible regular-season run. What he hasn’t had is much playoff success.
Reid was in a similar position before he started winning with Mahomes in Kansas City. They’ve been in the Super Bowl four of the past five years and are favoured to get there again this year.
Reid understands winning as well as any coach of this past generation. Mahomes is the same. The combination of the two has been record-setting.
Now it’s the likely MVP, Allen, with the opportunity to be a historical figure, to do what Jim Kelly could not manage in four Super Bowl attempts.
The Bills have not been back to the Super Bowl since 1994. That’s 31 seasons ago.
If you go further back, especially to their first attempt in 1991, what remains clear all these years later isn’t the missed field goal, it’s how badly Bill Parcells outcoached Mark Levy that Sunday night in Tampa.
Coaching matters at all times in football. It matters more in the biggest of games and so we wonder: Is Sean McDermott a Super Bowl coach?
And can he beat three Super Bowl coaches along the way to get there this year?
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