Sean McDermott and the Bills might be melting down before our eyes.
Buffalo safeties Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer had a testy exchange with a reporter during a postgame press conference. Their frustration was understandable, given the bizarre nature of how the Bills lost to the Patriots on Monday night, but the reporter’s question — about whether Buffalo should be embarrassed by New England racking up 222 yards on the ground — was a fair one.
But it’s McDermott’s remarks about Patriots head coach Bill Belichick that really will raise eyebrows.
Belichick led his team to a 14-10 victory despite swirling winds and only three pass attempts from Mac Jones. It was one of the finer coaching performances from Belichick’s Patriots career — plain and simple.
Yet McDermott said this during his postgame press conference:
“Let’s not give more credit than we need to give credit to Bill Belichick in this one. Whether it was Bill or anybody else, they beat us, right? But you sit here and you tell me when we start with an average starting field position of the 40-yard line and he starts with the 23-yard line — I’m rounding up in both cases — and we were 1-for-4 in the red zone and they were 0-for-1 in the red zone? You give me that ahead of time, I’d say I like my chances. I like my chances. I don’t think, with all due respect, it’s not a Bill Belichick-type thing. It’s, what are you doing with the opportunities you got? What are you doing with the opportunities you got? We turned the ball over on the plus-30-something yard line. Sloppy football. Sloppy football. I’m very comfortable in that situation.”
Then, when asked why he made his top two punt returners inactive, McDermott referenced the decision-making that led to Patriots receiver N’Keal Harry muffing a punt return in the first half.
“The same reason that they turned it over on their punt return team — I wasn’t willing to do that,” the Bills head coach told reporters. “So, I wanted to put a guy back there that I trusted that was gonna make good decisions with the ball.”
That’s enough salt to treat the Buffalo roads following Monday’s snowfall.
The Bills will need to move on and prepare to face Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next Sunday afternoon. The Patriots, who lead both the AFC East and the conference standings as a whole, will enjoy their bye week before visiting the Indianapolis Colts on Dec. 18.
