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WHAT THE HECK?!
The Buffalo Bills just aren’t right. This season began with the expectation Buffalo would be an elite Super Bowl-worthy team that just had to get past the Chiefs in the AFC. Now they’re a middling 6-6 team that fired its offensive coordinator, is struggling against much worst competition, and had myriad issues entering the playoffs — assuming they can squeeze in at all.
At the center of this is head coach Sean McDermott, who has more than worn out his welcome. McDermott can be credited with the brightest moments in Bills’ history in almost 30 years, but has also failed to capitalize on his roster and get over the hump.
It’s here that independent journalist Tyler Dunne comes in. In what is destined to be a seminal piece of football journalism, Dunne has gathered more information than anyone on what makes the Bills tick in his series “The McDermott Problem” and inside it is an anecdote so unbelievable you just need to read it.
“At St. John Fisher College in Pittsford, N.Y., McDermott’s morning address began innocently enough. He told the entire team to come together. But then, sources on-hand say, he used a strange model: the terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. He cited the hijackers as a group of people who were all able to get on the same page to orchestrate attacks to perfection.”
YES, THIS MAN ACTUALLY USED THE MEMBERS OF AL QAEDA WHO HELPED ORGANIZE THE 9/11 TERRORIST ATTACKS AS A POSITIVE EXAMPLE OF TEAMWORK.
Football coaches are notoriously out of touch people who invest every second of their energy into the game, and little else. Still, the cognitive dissonance it requires to think this was a good message to send absolutely boggles the mind.
McDermott didn’t stop there. He followed up by quizzing the players about what positive things the terrorists did to achieve their goal, asking for specific examples of tactics — as well as what obstacles they had to overcome in order to murder American citizens.
Later in the near-20,000 word, three part story an unnamed player refers to this moment as “the 9/11 speech,” and says the team doesn’t like to talk about it — which is absolutely understandable.
If you want to understand why the Bills are a mess in 2023, just read this. It’s a damn miracle this organization didn’t implode 10 times over by now because of McDermott’s ineptitude.
