Bills’ latest stunning gaffe will only raise more questions about Sean McDermott’s ability to lead them to a Super Bowl

Sean, Sean, Sean. Come on, what was that?

The question of Sean McDermott’s ability to lead the Buffalo Bills to their first Super Bowl championship as head coach will only continue after a loss like Sunday’s.

The Bills fought their way back into the away phase after being several points behind against the Houston Texans… only to end the game with a stunning sequence.

With 30 seconds left in a 20-20 game and the ball on their own 3-yard line, the Bills decided to…throw? Three times in a row? And all three rounds were incomplete and the clock stopped each time?

After a 56-yard punt and a 13-yard return, the Texans didn’t need to gain much yardage to score a game-winning field goal attempt, which they made, winning 23-20. There is no way to know if the Bills would have won this game in overtime don’t even come there is an absolute coaching mistake by McDermott.

After the game, McDermott at least had the means to blame himself for how the game ended. “That’s on me,” McDermott said after saying the right move would have been to let the clock run and just get to overtime.

Look, anyone can understand why it would be tempting to try to make something happen when Josh Allen is your quarterback. There were many moments when Allen performed Herculean feats of athleticism on the field, but this was a laughably unnecessary risk. Throwing the ball out of your own end zone is hard enough, especially when risking a safety would end the game in a loss. With these plays, the margin for error is very low even before the throw. It was senseless to try in such tight circumstances.

Although McDermott is generally a positive influence on the Bills, his game management blunders are likely to leave people unsure about his ability to lead the Bills to the big game. Who knows if McDermott had memories of the Bills fumbling at the goal line against the Vikings a few seasons ago, which led to their loss, but it’s a decision that will further fan the fire on this particular issue. It was so obvious that this was wrong that the doubters will be deafeningly loud this week.

It was also strange that he decided to make this move when the passing game hadn’t been working all game. Before the three incomplete passes, Allen completed just 9 of 27 passes on Sunday and was unable to get anything through the air other than a 49-yard touchdown to rookie Keon Coleman on a fourth down conversion attempt. Relying on a part of the offense that didn’t work in a spot where it didn’t need to be used anyway is coaching misconduct and directly led to the Bills losing this game.

Luckily for the Bills (3-2), the rest of the AFC East has been so incompetent this season that they should still be cruising to a division title, but they need to stop doing silly things like this. immediately. Winning games in the NFL is hard enough and they lost a game to the Ravens last week by a score of 35-10 – don’t shoot yourself in the foot playing against the other top teams in the conference and have the chance to at least make it over time. The Texans (4-1) are now tied above the Bills in a tiebreaker, which could be important later in the season when it comes to playoff placement.

After that loss to the Texans, Buffalo’s season isn’t over yet or anything, but they need to start acting sensibly before they screw up any more games they don’t need. It starts with the head coach, who allowed his team to act completely incompetently.