The Buffalo Bills certainly weren’t alone in deciding to go into the 2026 season with a new head coach roaming the sideline. The Bills were one of 10 teams to make a change.
Joe Brady, of course, is the youngest of the new hires around the league, and he was one of the league’s most coveted coordinators, one big reason many believed owner Terry Pegula and general manager Brandon Beane were right to make the switch.
But that doesn’t mean Brady is the most celebrated hire either. Plenty of different outlets have suggested the Bills’ hiring of Brady was one of the more head-scratching decisions made by an NFL franchise this offseason. Unfortunately, it seems some of the top minds around the league agree with such takes.
Anonymous NFL executives question Buffalo Bills’ Joe Brady hire
The Athletic’s Jeff Howe recently ranked all 10 head coaching hires from around the league with some special help from anonymous league executives. Those executives ranked the Brady hiring at No. 8, which is only emphasized further as a bad decision with Todd Monken in Cleveland and Mike LaFleur in Arizona hardly recognized in their tie for last place.
“Brady obviously has a good relationship with the QB, so you’ll keep Josh [Allen] happy,” a league executive told Howe. “But how much does that do?”
True to many initial concerns within the fanbase, the Bills’ shortcomings in the postseason aren’t often tied to Allen and the offense falling short, despite how things ended in Denver a few weeks ago. So it’s natural to wonder how much more Brady can improve the Bills beyond what Sean McDermott had already done over the past nine seasons.
Still, it’s not as though Brady hasn’t done his best to convince Bills Mafia that he’s got a vision for the future worth believing in. He hired Jim Leonhard as his new defensive coordinator and brought in Pete Carmichael as his offensive coordinator, two minds that helped formulate the recent success in Denver under Sean Payton.
Overall, though, it shouldn’t be overly surprising that the Bills' hiring Brady doesn’t move the needle much on the national stage. It’s not as though anyone necessarily believes that the Bills will take a huge step back with Brady, but there are so many variables that contribute to answering whether or not he’s able to get Buffalo further than McDermott did with a meaningful quickness.
Allen is entering his age-30 season, so it’s not as though the Bills can afford to linger in their purgatorial state in the postseason. Brady not only has to live up to the standard of leading Buffalo deep into the postseason, but eventually to the stage Buffalo just watched their most competitive rivals flounder on.