The Buffalo Bills are in the AFC playoffs for the seventh straight season, looking for the first Super Bowl in franchise history. And in a season with no Patrick Mahomes, no Lamar Jackson, and no Joe Burrow in the postseason, Josh Allen and company have as good a shot as ever at making the Big Game.
All football fans know that on any given Sunday… but the AFC playoffs this season feature Bo Nix, Drake Maye, Trevor Lawrence, Aaron Rodgers, C.J. Stroud, and Justin Herbert. One of those quarterbacks is 42, and the others have three combined playoff wins, which is fewer than half of Allen’s seven postseason victories.
These playoffs are uniquely set up to have the Bills make a Super Bowl run, and once they get there, who knows? Maybe they will finally avenge the ghosts of Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, and Bruce Smith’s Super Bowl past.
However, the Bills do have a fatal flaw that can stop them from getting to the Promised Land, and possibly even end their season on Sunday afternoon in Jacksonville.
It’s certainly not reigning MVP Josh Allen or 2025 rushing champ James Cook. It’s not Buffalo’s lack of a go-to wide receiver. It’s not even the team’s porous run defense. The Bills' fatal flaw in the AFC playoffs comes down to one word: coaching.
Bills head coach Sean McDermott and offensive coordinator Joe Brady are the fatal flaw
While the AFC quarterbacks listed above are old, inexperienced, or have failed in postseasons past, the AFC coaches are a different story.
Sean Payton and Mike Tomlin have Super Bowl trophies, Jim Harbaugh has been to a Super Bowl, Mike Vrabel has taken a team to an AFC Championship (with Ryan Tannehill at QB), DeMeco Ryans has never lost a first-round playoff game, and Liam Coen is an offensive mastermind who turned around Lawrence and the offense, taking the team from 4-13 to 13-4 in one season.
While this isn’t all about resumes, it is worth noting that Bills head coach Sean McDermott has never been to a Super Bowl, never done anything without Josh Allen, has lost in the first round, and is not an offensive head coach who can scheme up solutions when his offense is struggling.
And that last part is key. McDermott is a “defensive guru” whose defenses regularly underperform, especially in the postseason. It is the defense that choked up an Allen-provided lead with just 13 seconds left in the 2021 AFC Divisional Round. The unit that allowed 172 rushing yards at home (in the snow!) in a playoff loss to the Bengals and has spotted the Chiefs 139 points in four postseason matchups.
So, it wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that the Bills, with the most postseason experience here and the second-longest-tenured head coach of the bunch, easily have the weakest head coaching situation in the AFC playoffs this year.
It’s not just on paper or on the scoreboard, either, where McDermott has come up short. There have been more than a few questionable late-game calls over the years that have cost the Bills games. He often gets way too conservative late in close games and has made multiple head-scratching timeouts and clock management calls through the years.
What compounds this problem in 2026 is that the coach running the offense hasn’t been any better this season.
Joe Brady was a massive upgrade over Ken Dorsey. All Bills fans agree on that. However, he still hasn’t reached the levels Brian Daboll did early in Allen’s career, even though Allen is decidedly a better quarterback now.
This season in particular, without Stefon Diggs or any semblance of a go-to WR, Brady has struggled. Yes, he’s leaned on the run more, which is good, but the passing game is in shambles. Rub routes and bubble screens seem to make up the majority of his play calling, and any pass plays with receivers downfield only seem to work when Allen scrambles around and makes something happen outside of the play’s structure.
Yes, some of this is on the personnel, but some of it is on Brady as well. Throwing a bubble screen on (what seems like) every 3rd or 4th-down with three-plus yards to go just isn’t getting the job done. And while he should get credit for calling successful hook-and-ladder plays in crucial spots this season, the creativity has been lacking in the other 99% of situations.
Ultimately, this year’s AFC playoffs will come down to Allen putting on his Superman cape as the best football player on the planet right now and beating the other team. Bills fans have seen this happen before and are always confident that their superhero can do it. That said, if Allen has to overcome the other team AND his own coaching staff, that may be the Bills' fatal flaw that stops them from getting to the Super Bowl yet again
