Organizational incompetence in Buffalo

Saturday 1/24/26

Observing the incompetence at the ownership level in Buffalo in following from the dismissal of Sean McDermott is comical. There are very few people in the world who aren't terrible at their jobs. Why do they have what they have? Again: Other things. It's almost always other things than some ability they're supposed to have in keeping with their job or position. Whether you're an NFL owner, a university president, partner at the firm, radio host, a writer at The New Yorker, TV panelist. Other things.

The owner, Terry Pegula, fires the coach and promotes the obviously incompetent general manager. Watching that press conference, it was as if someone had double dared said owner to say the worst possible things at that moment. Like it was deliberate. He even trashed a guy currently on the roster.

These owners, man, are some stupid fucking people. And it's not like they're caught up in the grind of life, with their daily focus on surviving and getting by. They have all this time to learn not to be a fucking moron, but it's like they use those advantages to invest their mental capital in becoming an even bigger moron. You also need to have zero life skills--no clue how to interact with humans, no awareness of how you come across--to sit at a podium, your freshly promoted GM and fellow incompetent beside you, and say what this jackass said.

There you were as a Bills fan, pleased, at last, that you were the new boss, to fly in a line from the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," the rulers of the division for the next decade, with the Patriots now beneath you...and now you sit watching the Patriots on the verge of going back to another Super Bowl, while you and your precious guy, Josh Allen, the Josh-iest Josh ever, still haven't made it, and now you have to think that they never will.

Josh Allen is part of Buffalo's problem, though. He isn't a big game player. Or not big enough. And he still does knucklehead things on the field. Sure, he does five great things, but that means a knucklehead thing is all the likelier to be coming. That's just who he is.

If it wasn't who he is, it would have been learned out of him, if you will, by now. He'll always be that guy. You reach a point in a player's career, and if the bad thing is still there, the bad thing is sticking around for the duration. You can still win with that player, but you'd need to find a way to win "around" that bad thing. In spite of it. Or by rendering that bad thing moot because of this other thing you had, whatever that was--your top-tier defense, luck/favorable bounces, a player's bad quality not catching up with the good stuff they do in time to do harm/end your season.

I like Josh Allen personally. He seems like a good fellow. I'm not expecting him to ever win a Super Bowl, though, and if he does win one, I'm feeling like it'll need to be somewhere else. He'd have to go the Matthew Stafford route. Stafford was a player you never thought would win a title. He didn't seem the type.

Allen was named one of the five finalists for the MVP award, which I think is kind of silly. It's an odd list. Trevor Lawrence? Really? That's a perfunctory nod. Like they wanted to include him just to have some new blood and show some "diversification" of talent, like it's some fashion brand promoting a new style among the more familiar looks for its fall quarter. You know, a soft launch on the back of the established stuff. We'll just thread this in here, too.

It's a two-man race--Stafford and Maye. I thought for a long time that Stafford would win, and then I thought Maye would for about ten days there at the end of the season until the final game, and now I think it'll be Stafford again. That's fine. Maye fumbles too much and Stafford is more reliable. But without Maye, the Patriots would have won nine or ten less games, and to me that makes him more valuable, but I'd have no problem with Stafford winning the award.

I do have an issue, though, with all the people who just assume Maye will win his, or some. You don't know that. Marino won one, Elway one one, Fouts won none, Brees won none, Jim Kelly won none. You can be plenty good and never win an MVP. Chances are if you get close the one time, you never get close again. Unless you're someone who is in the running a bunch, but then that's Manning, Brady, Rodgers, Mahomes, and Mahomes is probably done in terms of MVP contention. I guess Allen could win another. That wouldn't shock me.

I'd written way back in these pages that I thought McDermott could get the heave after this year even if the Bills made the playoffs. Sometimes, you need to make a change and it's not the fault of the person you're, well, changing. Things run a course. A shake up can help. A jolt. What in sports is often called a new voice.

This phrase is deployed as an attempt to make things easier on everyone, without anyone actually having to say the truth. People in life love this idea, though not saying the truth and pretending something is other than what it is makes people miserable and fucked up, though they're not smart enough to understand this thing that they would never consider, never think about, because why think if you don't have to, and who could even if they wanted to at this juncture?

The Bruins, for instance, use this "new voice" line a lot. With the firing of Bruce Cassidy, what "new voice" really meant was someone who isn't as mean to our soft ass players, and then Cassidy immediately went out and won a Stanley Cup with another franchise. But McDermott isn't why the Bills aren't playing in Foxborough tomorrow.