The Bills have a new coach this season and Sean McDermott is different from their last coach in several ways, including his taste for offseason braggadocio.
Rex Ryan had quite the appetite for it with the Jets and he didn’t lose it when he took the Buffalo job, as evidenced by last summer’s declaration that the Bills “won the offseason.” The fact that Ryan is no longer coaching the team is a pretty good indication of how much that was worth and McDermott didn’t bite when he was asked if he’d make the same statement this year.
“I don’t know if we’ve won the offseason. I’m not into that,” McDermott said, via the Buffalo News. “I’m into the process, and I’m into where we are in our process and focused intently and only right now on that. It’s important that we win off the field first. That’s how you set yourself up to win on the field. Now we handle this time off the field with class, No. 1, and then we put in the work to earn the right to win as a football team, myself included. That’s what I expect. The players know that, the coaches know that.”
In addition to hiring McDermott, the Bills made a change at General Manager and brought in several new defensive backs to fit McDermott’s defensive scheme. If those things should lead to an improvement on the in-season results that Ryan brought to Buffalo, that will be enough to make the offseason a winner for the Bills.