JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – First-year Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott looked about as disappointed as you’ll see an NFL head coach following a playoff loss.
No opening statement, nothing remotely approaching a smile, and not much patience either, to be frank. Who could blame him?
McDermott ensured everyone from Day 1 in the spring that his talent-short Bills weren’t thinking about tanking, or rebuilding, or doing anything but trying to win right away. Those players he could convince, remained. Others? Gone.
His Bills fought tenaciously in most games all season – hitting above their weight, in boxing terms – in finishing 9-7 and reaching the playoffs for the first time since 1999.
Sunday’s 10-3 AFC wild-card loss to the Jaguar clearly was still stinging strongest about 20 minutes after the final whistle, but couldn’t McDermott look back with pride and think, yeah, as coaches we wrung out about as much from these players as anybody could?
“You know what? First of all, there are no moral victories,” McDermott told Postmedia. “I don’t believe in those. What I do believe in is continuing to build. We’re not done yet.
“When we came in here, we set a vision, and put forward a plan to accomplish that vision. And we’re not there yet … We’ve got a lot of work to do. But there are things that we can learn from that, that will help us as we move forward. Playoff experience is important. Home playoff games are important. So there’s a lot we can build on – and we’ll do that moving forward.”
The Bills’ principal locker-room leader and inspiration, 12th-year Buffalo defensive tackle Kyle Williams, said he, his family and the club will talk soon about whether he continues his pro career for a 13th year in Buffalo, and left it at that.
“It was a lot of fun,” he said of the Bills’ run to make the playoffs for the first time in his career. “Wish we could have done more, and coming up on the short end of the stick is tough to end the season that way. We had our opportunity and we just didn’t make it happen today.”
McDermott went out of his way to praise running back LeSean McCoy, who somehow played and played effectively on an ankle injury (presumably a bad sprain) so debilitating, he literally could barely walk from the shower to his locker-room stall to talk to reporters afterward.
“I thought I played solid,” said McCoy, disappointment marked all over his face. “Just a little pain though. Overall I think it was solid. It’s not the reason we lost. We just didn’t play well.”
BILLS MAFIA IN FINE FORM
It wasn’t exactly Buffalo South, but thousands and thousands among the announced crowd of 69,442 at EverBank Field on Sunday weren’t cheering for the hometown Jacksonville Jaguars.
Rather, the visiting Buffalo Bills.
Optimistic guesses from the press box suggested as many as a fifth, or even a quarter, of all fans present were dressed in blue and red and cheered on their beloved Buffalo Bills. Certainly more than that in some sections.
Bills fans by the thousands gobbled up tickets on line this past week, many proudly proclaiming on social media – and here at hotel after hotel packed with Bills fans – to have paid many hundreds of dollars for each ticket.
On an unseasonably cold weekend for Northeastern Florida – overnight freeze warnings extended everywhere, and the game-time temperature was 12C – many over-bundled Jags fans even brought in blankets wrap themselves in, while many Bills fans were coatless, or wore shorts and short sleeves.