The Buffalo Bills are promoting offensive coordinator Joe Brady to be the franchise’s next head coach on a five-year deal, the team announced on Tuesday.
Over the last two seasons, Brady’s offense has produced a league MVP quarterback and a rushing champion. Running back James Cook gained 1,912 scrimmage yards and scored 14 touchdowns last season, while quarterback Josh Allen threw for 3,668 yards and 25 touchdowns against 10 interceptions. He also rushed for 14 scores.
The Bills this season ranked fourth in scoring and total yards. They ranked second in yards per rushing attempt and third in yards per pass.
Buffalo fired head coach Sean McDermott on Jan. 19 after nine seasons, following the Bills’ overtime loss to the Denver Broncos in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs.
Brady interviewed for almost three-quarters of this year’s head coaching vacancies, including the Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Las Vegas Raiders and Miami Dolphins.
Brady has been an NFL head coaching candidate since winning the 2019 national championship as Louisiana State’s passing game coordinator. In his lone LSU season, Brady had quarterback Joe Burrow, running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire and receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson — all first-round draft picks.
After one season as Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator, Brady interviewed for five NFL head coach vacancies in the 2021 cycle. Within a year, the Panthers’ offense languished, and they fired him with five games left in the season. Brady’s quarterback was Sam Darnold, while star running back Christian McCaffrey missed 10 games.
Brady, 36, joined the Bills in 2022 as quarterbacks coach. When offensive coordinator Brian Daboll left to become head coach of the New York Giants, he took assistant quarterbacks coach Shea Tierney with him. The Bills replaced Daboll with quarterbacks coach Ken Dorsey, creating the space for Brady to come aboard.
In 2023, Allen and the Bills were a disappointing 5-5 and out of the playoff picture when they fired Dorsey and made Brady the play caller. Allen wasn’t running as much, was inconsistent week to week, and at times seemed disconnected.
With Brady in charge of Buffalo’s offense, the quarterback was reinvigorated. Allen’s passing numbers were pedestrian down the stretch (60.4 percent completions, 238.5 yards a game, seven TDs and six interceptions), but he ran considerably more, gaining half of his rushing yards and scoring eight TDs over those six games. The Bills lost in overtime to the Philadelphia Eagles, then finished with five straight victories to overtake the Dolphins and win another AFC East championship.
A year later, Allen was voted Buffalo’s first league MVP since Hall of Fame running back Thurman Thomas in 1991.
Bills go with in-house candidate
After taking almost an entire week to conduct interviews, the Bills landed on Brady, who has worked with Allen for the last four seasons. With Brady getting head coaching interviews for several years, the Bills must have felt they had an in-house gem, as they did not even extend a second interview to any other candidates throughout the process. Brady has long had the advantage of being the candidate who has worked with Allen the most recently, even though Brian Daboll and Davis Webb had previous working relationships with Allen before they left Buffalo. Brady quickly gained Allen’s favor upon his appointment as the team’s quarterbacks coach in 2022, and once they fired offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey in 2023, Brady was the only real candidate to take over that job because of his tight bond with Allen. Now, Brady and Allen will forge ahead together as head coach and quarterback.
Without hesitation, the Bills will need to answer some questions about why they felt that the answer to their problems throughout the 2025 season was on their staff all along. Their delineation as to how complicit Brady was for the results in the 2025 postseason, as opposed to McDermott, is something many will wonder. The Bills’ offense had a very good 2024 season with room for improvement, though their 2025 campaign took a definite step back in their ability to challenge a defense two-dimensionally. The receiver room was an issue all season, which challenged how much the Bills could use their top-tier quarterback to push the ball down the field. Even as questions about Brady’s job status as the team’s offensive coordinator popped up and persisted throughout the 2025 season, his former boss, McDermott, pushed aside any thought about making a change there, saying that Brady was a good coach. Now Brady will be tasked to do what McDermott could not in his nine seasons — to get an Allen-led Bills team to the Super Bowl. — Joe Buscaglia, Bills beat writer
