I am still so upset over the Buffalo Bills firing Sean McDermott, I think the team is going to be sorry. From the New York Times.....
Bills fallout, the real officiating issue and more divisional-playoff madness: Pick Six
The Buffalo Bills’ owner declared that an NFL official “should be fired and never allowed to work another game” after making “a rotten call that cost us a chance for the Super Bowl.”
That was Ralph Wilson Jr. in 1975.
Terry Pegula, the Bills’ owner since 2014, did not go full Ralph after his team landed on the wrong end of the officials Saturday in a divisional playoff loss at Denver. Lots of people wish he had.
Officials’ hurried handling of a Broncos overtime interception that the Bills believed was a catch at the Denver 20-yard line — in range for a winning kick attempt — was the talk of the divisional round, challenged only by Caleb Williams’ miracle touchdown pass for the Chicago Bears, who took the Los Angeles Rams to overtime but did not prevail.
The Pick Six column sorts through the divisional-round madness, starting with fallout from Buffalo’s latest brutal postseason defeat, and what might come from it. Monday, the first shoe fell, as the Bills fired coach Sean McDermott.
The full menu:
• Bills drowning in pool report
1. What’s next for the Bills after this? Let’s hope the NFL does the logical thing with officiating, at least
McDermott was unwavering in his insistence that officials got the critical call wrong.
“Not even close,” McDermott said
McDermott expressed frustration with the process, not just the result, along with confusion over what role officials at the league office played.
Leaning into the officiating angle after his team committed five turnovers, including four by reigning MVP quarterback Josh Allen, left the impression that McDermott needed all the traction he could get after his Bills became the first team in NFL history to reach the divisional round in six consecutive seasons without playing in a Super Bowl.
If this were McDermott’s third season and the team were ascending, it might be easier to discount the officiating. We don’t make excuses here; control the controllable. But when your superstar quarterback lands on a list like the one below, officiating makes for a more inviting topic.
Late in the regular season, I asked executives whether they thought McDermott, John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin would all return next season. The consensus was that at least one would not, on the thinking that failing to make a deep playoff run would prove costly during a season when Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs were not a factor.
Now, Harbaugh, Tomlin and McDermott are all out.
"The only way I could see them moving on from Sean is if somehow (offensive coordinator) Joe Brady is in the mix for a job (elsewhere) and Terry (Pegula) would rather keep Joe than Sean," one of these execs said Sunday, a day when Brady interviewed virtually for the Dolphins', Raiders' and Ravens' openings.
Another exec said he thought Buffalo needed to upgrade at receiver and evolve the offense so Allen isn't straining with so much on his back. Having Dalton Kincaid on the field for less than 40 percent of the snaps during the regular season was confounding for this exec.
Even with Allen's four turnovers, which cost the team a massive -13.6 EPA, the quarterback finished the 33-30 defeat with 9.6 EPA, most for any QB in the divisional round. The Bills as a team finished this game much better on offense (+4.7 EPA) than on defense (-5.4). That is how we can fault Allen for his turnovers while acknowledging he was a leading reason Buffalo had a chance to win this game anyway.
Not that such nuance matters when the playoff defeats keep stacking up.
Allen has a winning playoff record (8-7) but has yet to advance beyond the AFC Championship Game in eight seasons. He's one of eight quarterbacks with at least four Pro Bowl selections in their first eight NFL seasons without a Super Bowl appearance: Lamar Jackson, Andrew Luck, Philip Rivers, Michael Vick, Peyton Manning, Warren Moon and Fran Tarkenton.
Manning broke through and won it all in Year 9, before going to three more (winning one). Tarkenton finally reached the Super Bowl in Year 13, the first of three appearances (all losses). The others — aside from Jackson, who also just completed Year 8 — never made it that far, although none was a league MVP, as Manning, Tarkenton, Jackson and Allen are. How long will Allen’s window remain open?
As for McDermott, his officiating commentary was strong stuff by today's standards, but nothing compared to the distant past, when more owners lived and died with each week's results, without billions in net worth to cushion their disappointment.
The Bills were fighting for a playoff spot in December 1975 when head linesman Jerry Bergman whistled a play dead, nullifying a fumble by the Dolphins' Mercury Morris. Bergman also levied a 15-yard penalty against the Bills' Pat Toomay for elbowing him after the play.
The Dolphins scored two plays later. Game over. Buffalo missed the playoffs.
"I will not again send my team out to play a game that he's working," Wilson said.
Confusion reigned Saturday in Denver after Broncos cornerback Ja'Quan McMillian wrested the ball from Bills receiver Brandin Cooks as the two tumbled to the ground in overtime. Cooks caught the ball and was contacted by McMillian as they fell, but rules require a receiver to either take a third step, make an act common to the game or maintain control upon hitting the ground to complete the catch. Officials ruled Cooks did none, losing possession to McMillian upon hitting the ground.
"The call was right," an exec from an NFC team said. "But the officials gave the appearance that it was nonchalant when it was clear they had not reviewed it."
The NFL said Bergman got it right in 1975. Referee Carl Cheffers' crew got it right Saturday.
So, what's wrong?
Once the game headed to overtime, the league pushed back the kickoff for Saturday night's San Francisco-Seattle game by 20 minutes. Some execs thought officials hurried through the rest of the Buffalo-Denver game to beat the new deadline. Whatever the case, the expedited administration of a key play in a pivotal spot, with no explanation, felt like fast-forwarding through the most compelling scene in a movie. The optics were bad.
"McDermott has a great beef there — they should explain it," the first exec said.
League replay officials must confirm all turnovers and scoring plays before a game proceeds. They also initiate all reviews in overtime (coaches may not challenge). In the 80 or so seconds after the play, the CBS broadcast showed slow-motion replays from four angles. That was seemingly enough time for replay officials to confirm the turnover, so why no explanation until after the game?
There was going to be another dreaded pool report no matter how officials interpreted what happened on this play.
Under pressure in 1975, the NFL began making referees available to a single pool reporter to explain controversial rulings upon request. (In a famous early instance, Vito Stellino, then of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, got exclusive access to referee Jim Tunney after side judge Don Orr ruled Oilers receiver Mike Renfro out of bounds against Pittsburgh in the 1979 AFC Championship Game, which the Steelers won to reach their fourth Super Bowl.)
Cheffers was in the pool-report spotlight Saturday, even though, like Tunney way back when, he wasn't the official making the ruling on the play in question.
It was par for the NFL, which apparently hasn't found a way to monetize transparency, or else these details might have been resolved long ago.
What insight could Cheffers possibly offer regarding a sequence that transpired 36 yards past the line of scrimmage? Not much, since his duties as referee entail standing behind the line of scrimmage to watch the passer before, during and after the pass, assuring that defenders do not hit the QB high, low, late or land on him with their full body weight. The pool reporter in Denver, Jeff Legwold of ESPN, might as well have asked Thunder, the Broncos' Arabian horse mascot, for his view of the play.
The league's replay officials should have been the ones explaining what happened.
NFL rules analyst Walt Anderson appeared on NFL Network on Sunday morning to go over the play and the ruling, as he often does the day after a controversial call.
Why wait so long? Why not have Anderson address critical rulings immediately after a game to improve transparency and consistency?
"Put yourself in Buffalo's shoes right now," the exec said. "You don't think that game was taken from you? Whether it was or not."
Mike Sando joined The Athletic in 2019 as an NFL senior writer after 12 years with ESPN. He is a selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, an officer for the Pro Football Writers of America and has covered every non-pandemic Super Bowl since the 1998 season. Follow Mike on Twitter @SandoNFL
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