Promoted from within, to keep a star quarterback comfortable, and to do the one thing his predecessor could not.
The résumé. Passing game coordinator for the 2019 LSU team that won the national championship, a season still discussed as one of the best college offenses ever assembled. A short and unhappy spell as Carolina's offensive coordinator followed. He joined Buffalo in 2022, took over the offense during 2023, and by last winter was withdrawing from the Saints’ search rather than leave.
The record. Sean McDermott was sacked despite sustained success, for the specific failure of never reaching a Super Bowl. Terry Pegula made that call; Brandon Beane, promoted to president of football operations, made the appointment. The logic was straightforward: Josh Allen is a former MVP still in his prime, the offense is established, and the last thing Buffalo needed was somebody arriving to change it.
The scheme
The interesting thing about Brady is what he stopped doing. The 2019 LSU offense was spread and quick, built on getting the ball out fast; the Buffalo offense he built is nothing of the kind. The Bills ran the ball more often than any team in football last season and led the league in rushing yards, and his run rate since taking over sits around forty-four per cent, fourth in the NFL.
So he arrives on the near side of the condensed, heavy, under-centre trend examined in this issue's Long Read rather than the far side of it. With Allen, the offense has always bent around what he can do rather than the other way round, and there is no reason to expect that to change now the coordinator has moved up a chair.
The 2026 problem
Everything and nothing. Buffalo do not need fixing; they need finishing. Brady inherits a roster built to win now, a quarterback in his prime, and a fanbase whose patience is measured against a single January afternoon that keeps not arriving.
The genuine test is the part of the job he has never done. Hiring a staff, managing a defense he does not coach, handling the fourth-quarter decisions that decide playoff games. McDermott was very good at most of those things and was sacked anyway. Brady has to be at least as good at them while also being the reason the offense improves.
It is the hardest kind of first head-coaching job: one where the only acceptable outcome is the one nobody has managed.
Sources: NFL.com hiring assessments, Yahoo Sports, NFL Network. Figures as of Aug 2026.
Printed in Issue 4 of The Grid and released free on 22 September 2026. The text is as it appeared in the magazine, lightly edited for the web.