And another team made it at 9-7. There's almost always a participant at 9-7 or worse.
But the point is saying that a coach who did, in fact, break the longest playoff drought in the NFL at the time, and has put up a regular season record of 77-41 in his career, will be known as "just someone who coached Josh Allen" is f***ing stupid.
McDermott will coach in the NFL next year, even if it's not for Buffalo, unless it's his choice not to. His story is far from told.
What McDermott did for the Buffalo Bills is something that two other coaches did during the drought: he took them to 9-7. He didn’t control tiebreakers or have some magic spell to propel a below-average team into the playoffs. Maybe they might have had a better record that year, and wouldn’t have needed the ludicrous tiebreak luck, if he hadn’t thought Peterman was an NFL quarterback, much less a better starting option than Taylor, which anyone with a brain could see wasn’t the case (note: revisit our Bills thread from that time for a very fun read as to who thought what at the time). Alas, he couldn’t see it and threw away that Chargers game, so they did indeed finish that season needing a miracle to get in.
Luckily, he was gifted one of the best quarterbacks of the last several decades and has since planted himself firmly on his coattails when he isn’t planting his feet in the ground and yanking on them.
Will he be coaching next year? Sure, probably here. The owner is content. He’ll get a next job, too, assuming he doesn’t retire. It takes a while for that shine to wear off even for the most middling of coaches (we hired Rex for God’s sake). Without a future hall of famer at QB he’ll be a sub-.500 coach and retire before his legacy is ruined entirely, and if he’s mentioned favorably it will only be in reference to how the Bills teams with Allen were good but couldn’t get it done under him.