It appears “likely” that former Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott plans on taking a year off from coaching after being fired by the Bills following a successful nine-year run in Western New York.
That according to a recent report from NFL Network National Insider Ian Rapoport.
Many of the head coaching openings have already been filled this offseason. Besides Buffalo’s vacancy, the Arizona Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, and Las Vegas Raiders are all searching for their next head coach, and McDermott’s name “no doubt would be one of the top candidates for basically any job around if he wanted to take one,” Rapoport said.
But, from everything Rapoport has heard, McDermott is perfectly content to stay off the coaching sidelines during the 2026 NFL season before potentially re-entering the head coaching cycle.
“To my knowledge, he has not engaged on any of these openings,” Rapoport said. “Based on the conversations he’s had, the people he’s talked with who have taken a year off after a long head coaching stint, all have said it was beneficial and worth it.”
The Bills fired McDermott on January 19, two days after Buffalo’s season ended with a 33-30 overtime setback against the Denver Broncos in the AFC Divisional Round. While McDermott had guided the Bills to the playoff in eight of his nine seasons, including seven consecutive playoff appearances, he failed to take a team quarterbacked by reigning NFL MVP Josh Allen to the Super Bowl in any of those seasons. Buffalo twice made it to the AFC Championship game before being eliminated by Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
McDermott’s Bills made history as the first team to win a playoff game in six straight years and not win a Super Bowl. McDermott, who took over in Buffalo for the 2017 season, ended his Bills tenure as the second-winningest coach in franchise history, posting a 98-50 record in the regular season, and going 8-8 in the postseason.
At the time of his firing, McDermott still had two years remaining on his contract, which was worth roughly $8 million per season. Buffalo still owes McDermott around $16 million, which makes it easy to understand why, if he wasn’t intrigued by the Cardinals, Browns, or Raiders openings, he would opt to take a year off from coaching and reexamine his options next year.
