3 Unanswered Questions Bills Must Solve Before Training Camp

The Buffalo Bills spent the offseason answering the one question that mattered most: what comes after Sean McDermott? Now, with training camp approaching, three bigger questions decide whether the answer was the right one.

McDermott is gone. Joe Brady is in. The defense is getting torn down and rebuilt from scratch. And the team’s most talented tight end still can’t stay off the injury report. Here’s where the Bills stand on all three fronts as they push for a Super Bowl trip that has eluded Josh Allen’s entire career.

Was Firing Sean McDermott the Right Call?

McDermott’s exit still stings for a lot of Bills fans, and the numbers explain why. Before he arrived in 2017, Buffalo had missed the playoffs for 17 straight seasons — the longest active drought in North American pro sports at the time. Under McDermott, the Bills made the postseason in eight of his nine years and finished 98-50 in the regular season, the second-most wins of any franchise since 2017, according to ESPN.

None of it produced a Super Bowl. Buffalo reached the AFC Championship Game twice under McDermott and lost both times, and the finish was always the same kind of gut punch. His final game came in the divisional round, a 33-30 overtime loss to the Denver Broncos on a disputed fumble-or-incompletion call on Josh Allen’s first possession of overtime. McDermott told reporters afterward he didn’t understand how the ruling on the field held up without a longer replay look.

Owner Terry Pegula fired McDermott two days later. “Sean has done an admirable job of leading our football team for the past 9 seasons,” Pegula said in a statement shared by ESPN, “but I feel we are in need of a new structure within our leadership to give this organization the best opportunity to take our team to the next level.”

The locker room didn’t universally agree. Defensive tackle Jordan Phillips posted on Instagram that the decision was “so stupid honestly sickening,” calling McDermott the best coach he’d ever played for, per the New York Post. Safety Damar Hamlin called him “a true leader of men” on X. More than 29,000 fans signed a Change.org petition urging the team to reverse the decision, according to the New York Post.

McDermott has since said he plans to take the 2026 season off before re-entering the coaching market, Yahoo Sports reported, though the Tampa Bay Buccaneers reportedly checked in about a staff role before he made that decision, per a Fox Sports report cited by the New York Post.

Whether the move was justified depends entirely on what happens next. GM Brandon Beane, who was retained and promoted to president of football operations, handed the job to a 36-year-old first-time head coach who has never called defensive plays in the NFL. That’s either the move that finally gets Buffalo over the hump, or a step backward from a coach who — whatever his playoff shortcomings — never had a losing season.

Can Joe Brady Turn the Bills Into Champions?

The Bills didn’t look outside the building. On January 27, they promoted offensive coordinator Joe Brady to head coach on a five-year deal, making him the youngest active head coach in the league. Brady’s path to the job ran through the same building he’s now running: quarterbacks coach in 2022, interim offensive coordinator midway through 2023, full-time playcaller from 2024 on.

The results speak for themselves on paper. Buffalo’s offense ranked in the top five in scoring in both of Brady’s full seasons as coordinator, and running back James Cook led the NFL in rushing yards in 2025 under his direction, per Wikipedia’s season summary of the hire. Cook told NFL Network’s Good Morning Football that Brady has brought “a new energy in the building” since taking over.

The bigger swing so far has been on offense, not the sideline hire itself. Buffalo traded a 2026 second-round pick to the Chicago Bears in March for wide receiver DJ Moore, sending back a fifth-rounder in the deal, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported. Moore, who played for Brady in Carolina, is coming off a down year in Chicago but gives Allen a proven outside target after the Bills ranked 22nd in the NFL in wide receiver target share a season ago. Not everyone loved the price. ESPN’s Seth Walder gave the trade a D grade at the time, calling it an overpay for a receiver who hasn’t topped 1,000 yards since 2023, per Buffalo Wdown’s rundown of the reaction.

Brady inherits a roster that has won double-digit games in five straight seasons and a quarterback playing at an MVP level. He does not inherit any margin for a teardown-and-rebuild. As ESPN put it flatly, McDermott’s teams were good enough to make six straight divisional rounds and it still wasn’t enough — which means there’s no learning curve built into this job, per ESPN’s assessment of the opening.

How Fast Can Buffalo Adjust to a New Defense?

McDermott’s defense ran a 4-3 for nine seasons. That’s gone. New defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard, hired away from the Denver Broncos’ staff in late January, is switching Buffalo to a 3-4 — three down linemen, four linebackers — a scheme built around disguised pressure and five-man rush packages he picked up under Broncos DC Vance Joseph, Leonhard told the team’s own site.

“We’re going to be an attacking defense up front, in the back end,” Leonhard said, according to a report from Sports Illustrated’s Bills coverage. “We’re going to attack the football. We’re going to be aggressive.”

It’s a real teaching challenge, not a coat of paint. Players built for one-gap, straight-ahead rushing under McDermott now have to learn to play multiple gaps and drop into coverage. The Bills have split their old linebackers group into separate inside and outside linebacker rooms to handle it, per the team’s site. Beane has already pointed to special-teamer Javon Solomon as a player who could benefit from a role change, telling reporters he now looks more like “a standup 3-4 outside backer” than a traditional pass-rushing end, per Yahoo Sports.

History carries a warning here. Buffalo tried a version of the 3-4 a decade ago under Rex Ryan, and it went badly — sacks dropped, the run defense collapsed, and the Bills missed the playoffs, Sports Illustrated’s Onsi noted in looking back at that stretch. Leonhard says he’s built flexible 3-4 looks going back to his time at Wisconsin, and the roster Buffalo has now is deeper than the one Ryan inherited. Still, new terminology, new gap responsibilities and a new coordinator all landing in the same offseason is a lot to install before Week 1.

2025 Bills Under McDermott vs. What’s Changing in 2026

Buffalo will also christen a brand-new Highmark Stadium this season, with the old venue currently being torn down next door, per Clutch Points. A new building, a new coach and a new defensive front all arriving in the same summer is a lot of change for a roster that’s been a top-tier AFC team for years.

Does Dalton Kincaid Solve Buffalo’s Biggest Weakness?

If there’s one X-factor who could make the new-look offense click, it’s the tight end who can’t seem to stay upright. Dalton Kincaid has missed nine games over the past two seasons dealing with a torn PCL originally suffered in 2024, an injury a teammate confirmed was more serious than initially known, Sports Illustrated reported back in January.

Kincaid opted against surgery this offseason. “I’d say it’s probably the best I’ve felt in my career at this point in the year,” he told reporters, per Sports Illustrated’s Onsi. “Not having those thoughts of the knee like last year — at this point, I feel really good.”

Brady isn’t promising a clean bill of health so much as a plan to manage around the injury. Speaking at the NFL League Meetings this spring, Brady acknowledged load management remains on the table for Kincaid in 2026, according to Sports Illustrated. When healthy last season, Kincaid was one of the most efficient pass-catchers on the roster — his receiving EPA ranked 14th among all NFL pass-catchers, per SI’s Onsi coverage of Buffalo’s minicamp — but “when healthy” has been doing a lot of work in that sentence for two years running.

That’s the whole equation for Buffalo entering camp. A new coach who’s earned real trust from his players. A defensive scheme that could unlock talent that was miscast for years — or repeat a decade-old mistake. And a tight end who, when he’s on the field, gives Josh Allen the safety valve this offense has been missing. Training camp won’t answer all of it. But it’s where Buffalo starts finding out.