Could Sean McDermott’s game management cost the Bills a shot at the title?

Players win games. The coaches lost them. This is an NFL saying.

And Bills coach Sean McDermott just lost another one.

With about a minute and a half left in Sunday’s game, the Bills still had a long way to go to take the lead, but quarterback Josh Allen was playing so well that a comeback seemed possible. Closer, perhaps. As the Bills entered the deep red zone with about 75 seconds left, FOX Lead NFL Analyst Tom Brady even said that Buffalo was “in a good position.” The Bills are down nine points on the road. And they still had all three timeouts.

Brady, the greatest player in the history of the game, laid out his path to victory: throw for a touchdown, complete a PAT, punt, stop the Rams with a three-and-out after each play and bring the ball into field goal range for the win.

Brady warned: No matter what the Bills do, they won’t be able to run the ball down the goal line.

But that’s exactly what they did.

At the 1-yard line with one minute and six seconds left, Allen ran the ball with a QB sneak. The Rams stuffed Allen, and the Bills had to call a timeout. Their chances of victory are diminishing.

“Now you’re eligible for an onside kick. We have a 3% chance on onsides. … That changes the whole complexity of the last minute and two seconds of the game,” Brady said. “Even if they score, what’s the big deal? You have to play onsides. I didn’t like that at all. That would have cost them the game right away.”

It does.

Allen had six touchdowns (three passing, three rushing), but the Bills couldn’t pull out the win.

“His back is going to break,” FOX Sports analyst LeSean McCoy said of Allen in “The Facility.” “He’s carrying the whole stadium, the owners, the coaches, the coaches. He’s carrying Nathi. He’s carrying everyone.”

The Bills shot themselves in the foot again in the final seven minutes of the game when they called an interception attempt and only had nine men on the field due to a turnover error. That was the Buffalo coaches kicking their players down.

But back to the goal line. It’s not like McDermott made a call that some would consider controversial — or one that would argue is a product of hindsight. It’s surprising that the Bills shouldn’t have run the ball. Why? Because of the cost of failure. Even offensive coordinator Joe Brady seemed to understand that on Monday.

“You look at us at the 1-yard line this year, and we haven’t been stopped on the QB sneak outside of this play. The only thing that didn’t work going into this play was the illegal formation. … the point – percentage-wise – the highest percentage play was the QB sneak, but at the same time, the cost of not getting it cost us the game,” Brady said. “So I’ve got to do a better job in that situation. And it’s something we’re continuing to evaluate. … We’ve got to be better. I’ve got to be better.”

Good for Brady to put the blame there. But this is what great coaches do. McDermott, who is not a playmaker, has to step in to get his coordinators out if they don’t see the big picture. McDermott let the mistake happen.

This is not the first time this has happened.

Too often under McDermott, the Bills lost sight of the forest for the trees. They worry so much about what they need in one game that they forget to manage the game as a whole.

Just go back to the Bills’ loss to the Houston Texans in Week 5. At the end of the game, the Bills threw the ball, repeatedly, when they should have run it.

The Bills backed up at their own 3-yard line with 32 seconds left, and the score was tied at 20-20. The Texans have three shutouts. And Buffalo threw three consecutive incompletions to run out 16 seconds on the clock before giving the ball back to Houston, who needed only five yards to get into the end zone and kick the game-winner. After the game, McDermott pointed out that the Bills needed to be down first no matter what because of the timeout. But every yard counted and it always did. The Bills’ three failed passes put the Texans in perfect scoring position.

Regulations are the only team in the last 45 years to be tied or leading in the final minute of a game, inside the 5-yard line and throw three straight passes, via ESPN research.

Did McDermott agree – or communicate with Brady during the sequence?

“I’m not going to get into that. I don’t think that works right now,” McDermott said after the game. “Overall, again, that’s on me. We’ve got to do a better job. I’ve got to do a better job in that situation.”

“We needed to run out the clock and move the chains and that’s on me. Overall, that’s on me. I’ve got to do a better job in that situation.”

Go back and you will find more problems.

There was a collapse of the Bills in the last 13 seconds against the Chiefs in the divisional round of the playoffs following the 2021 season. The Bills were celebrating on the sideline as if they had won the game and Patrick Mahomes was on the other sideline planning his game winning campaign. The score was 36-33, and he had three timeouts – it was far from over. The Bills played a blocking defense, which allowed Mahomes and Tyreek Hill to pick up 19 yards on easy throws. On the next play, Buffalo stayed on defense and made it easy for Mahomes to get another 25 yards from Travis Kelce. It was an amazing play of the situation. And Harrison Butker took the game into overtime, when Mahomes won it.

The Bills finished that season and postseason 0-6 in one-score games.

There are plenty of other examples of McDermott’s problems, including one where a bad decision backfired in 2017 in his first season as a head coach. It was snowing, about six inches on the ground, and the Bills needed a win to stay in playoff contention. There were four minutes left in overtime (with their tie game remaining), and McDermott picked a fourth-and-1. The Bills looked like they had a draw when they needed a win to get into the postseason. The consistency was sad. But it worked. The Bills finally got the ball and got a touchdown from McCoy. But the victory came despite that decision to bat – not because of it.

After the Bills’ loss to the Rams, McDermott is 88-50 as a team head coach (including the postseason), but is 35-31 (53%) in one-score games (including the postseason).

For a point of comparison, Andy Reid is 130-103-1 (56%) and Bill Belichick is 135-102 (57%) in one-point games. Those are today’s heroes of game management. McDermott is not in the mix.

So let’s go back to the present.

Where do these Bills come from?

Allen is the best football player in the world. Buffalo can’t afford to waste another postseason with mid-game mismanagement. Because you know who is hiding to exploit that? Reid and Mahomes. They have won 15 consecutive one-goal games. The Bills beat the Chiefs this year, which was one of the best examples of McDermott’s progress. He went for it on fourth down in the fourth quarter – and Allen ended up with a touchdown and a nine-point lead that put the score on Mahomes. (And anyway, I was in the building for that last minute and there was absolutely no sense of relief until the clock struck zero. Because the Bills know what Mahomes could do: anything. They learned a lesson in 2021 about celebrating early.)

“There’s going to be certain things that come up at times that you’d rather not,” McDermott said Monday about game management. “But you’ve got to fix them. You’ve got to fix them. That’s what we’re trying to do in the next few days.”

The Bills’ philosophy has been to trust Allen in these situations – even when it doesn’t make sense. And maybe that’s where they need to step back and rethink How they make decisions. Because it’s possible that Buffalo’s decision-making schema isn’t working. Instead of plugging the leak, the Bills need to find out why the leak is happening.

It’s not enough to look at their mid-game failures and say: We can’t do that again. Every game is different. Every decision is different. McDermott may need a better infrastructure to be able to control the quality of its consultants.

The Bills haven’t been forthcoming about how they handle their late game situations without showing that defensive coordinator Bobby Babich calls the defense and Brady calls the offense. It is worth noting that Marc Lubick has the title of sports management coach. He’s been with the Bills as long as McDermott but stepped into a game management role in 2020. However, it is not clear how much Lubick is involved in these situations and decisions.

“Those aren’t all easy situations. There’s a lot of communication that has to happen. … [We’ll] tweak our process a little bit and hone that a little bit closer,” McDermott said.

That process is what the Bills are all about. This is a Super Bowl-caliber team. Its coach needs to be ready to make Super Bowl-caliber decisions. And he has no consistent record of doing so.

Before joining FOX Sports as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots at USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.

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