Joe Brady finds himself in a very rare situation going into the 2026 season. After the Buffalo Bills decided to move on from Sean McDermott two days after their 2025 season ended, Brady would eventually be the one that was chosen to lead the team. With Brady getting multiple head coaching interviews already, he was bound to become one sooner than later.
Rather than seeing him go somewhere else, the Bills decided to keep him in-house and trust him moving forward.
He is a rookie head coach, so you would think that maybe he gets a little bit of grace. However, with the stage that the Bills are at in their franchise, they are Super Bowl contenders and with having Josh Allen under center, the expectations are high.
This isn’t one of those situations where Brady can come in and try to rebuild a team that may have been disappointing. He is taking over a team that he has been around since 2022 and they are closer to a championship than a rebuild.
For the fans that are expecting Brady to go further in his first year than McDermott ever did, the expectation set by Carter Bahns of CBS Sports may be underwhelming.
Expectation of Joe Brady in 2026 may not be enough for Bills fans
Bahns listed goals for all of the new head coaches who were hired in this past cycle, and when it came to Brady, Bahns wrote “Win atleast one playoff game”.
"Joe Brady can do the front office a solid and take the Buffalo Bills to the Super Bowl. That is clearly the expectation internally; otherwise, why make a change? He does not need to reach the promised land in his first year on the job, but he must at least come close for the decision to be anything less than a net negative." said Bahns.
"So long as Brady gives the organization and its fans a reason to believe the Super Bowl is attainable in Year 2 and beyond, everyone will be at peace with this leadership swap. Making the playoffs is the baseline, and winning a game or two would prevent the appearance of regression." Bahns added.
Again, it is tough to expect a first-time head coach to automatically take a team to the Super Bowl, let alone win it all. Then again, Brady has been in the building and already has the continuity in the building. When you add in the defensive changes under Jim Leonhard, there should be no reason why the Bills make a serious postseason run.
Brady is always going to be compared to McDermott and it’s going to start this coming season. When McDermott came to Buffalo in 2017, he was inheriting a worse setup than what Brady currently has. Yet, McDermott managed to bring the Bills to the playoffs that year.
Winning a playoff game should be an automatic expectation. Brady is going to have to find a way to go further than McDermott in order to prove to fans that the Bills made the right choice to move on from McDermott when they did.
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