ON TODAY'S SCORECARD
Out to Pasture

The Buffalo Bills will be roaming with Sean McDermott who was fired after nine seasons as head coach.

GM Brandon Beane will lead the search for a new head coach. 

McDermott helped end the team’s 17-year playoff drought before enjoying plenty of regular season success. He went 98-50. In the end, his inability to reach a Super Bowl — in possession of superstar QB Josh Allen — proved to be his downfall. No coach and no QB have won more playoff games without a Super Bowl appearance.

Teams typically move on from coaches who cannot get to the promised land by this point of their tenure. Only eight head coaches in NFL history who’ve coached 9+ seasons have a higher winning percentage than McDermott. But only three coaches in the Super Bowl era have won their first Super Bowl with a team in Year No. 9 or beyond.

• Bill Cowher in his 14th year with the Pittsburgh Steelers (2005).

• Tom Landry in his 12th year with the Dallas Cowboys (1971).

• Hank Stram his 10th year with the Kansas City Chiefs (1969). (Note: Stram did win an AFL title before.)
  

It was time to move on. 

The collection of coaches who’ve lasted nine seasons in one place and never won a Super Bowl is much longer. This group includes: Don Coryell in San Diego (nine seasons), Bart Starr in Green Bay (nine), Marty Schottenheimer in Kansas City (10), Bud Grant in Minnesota (18), Jason Garrett in Dallas (10), Wayne Fontes in Detroit (nine), John Robinson with the L.A. Rams (nine), Dennis Green in Minnesota (10), Jim Mora in New Orleans (11), Chuck Knox in Seattle (nine), Marvin Lewis in Cincinnati (16), and, of course, Marv Levy in Buffalo (12).

It wasn’t looking good for the Rams after their first overtime possession ground to a halt with a two-yard loss on 3rd & 1, but Sean McVay’s team was able to overcome it to reach another NFC title game.

The Rams escaped snowy Soldier Field with a 20-17 OT win despite the late game heroics of Caleb Williams in regulation

“We start off, you feel like you’re getting a little bit of momentum,” the coach explained. “I make a terrible third-down-and-1 call. No excuse for that. Should’ve used the timeout.”

Remember this, though. At age 39, Rams HC Sean McVay now has 10 postseason wins, double the number of postseason wins of any NFL coach under the age of 40. John Madden, Jon Gruden, Mike Tomlin and Zac Taylor each had five postseason wins before they turned 40.

McVay turns 40 on Saturday, one day before the NFC championship game.

TRENDING TODAY
The Fleeting Cost of Fame

So you want to know the real reason behind Miami’s success the college football season?

Sure, Mario Cristbal had the Canes in the National Championship game last night.

But, given the war chest UM allotted him, so would a lot of head coaches

Cristobal had his Hurricanes on the doorstep, just one win away for their first national title since 2001 thanks to a stellar defense, a blazing fast offense and the veteran leadership of quarterback Carson Beck. But assembling a national championship roster didn’t come cheap.

According to On3 Sports, the “payroll” of the Miami Hurricanes roster through NIL deals this year is reportedly in the range of $30 million. Around 13% of that figure is invested into Beck, who was offered $4 million to leave Georgia and join the Hurricanes at the end of last season.

Miami once paid-for-play in the shadows, now the blueprint (legally) reveals the Hurricanes’ investment into the 2025vroster clearly paid dividends, especially with Beck, who had one of the most prolific passing seasons in Miami’s storied history.

It may be an overreaction though. If they would have won the title, it was never getting stripped from them this time around. No one is going to remember how much money the Hurricanes paid to assemble the winning roster. The only thing people will remember is the roster itself.