The Buffalo Bills are keeping the band together. On Friday, the team announced that they’ve extended general manager Brandon Beane and head coach Sean McDermott through the 2027 season. According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, these contracts have “been done for some time.”

Although the Bills have failed in their Super Bowl pursuit in recent seasons, Beane and McDermott have turned Buffalo into one of the NFL’s premier franchises — and their joint extensions represent a vote of confidence from the club’s ownership group.

The Buffalo Bills Have Become an Elite Team Under Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott

It’s almost easy to forget how lackluster the Bills were before Beane and McDermott came to town in 2017. Buffalo wasn’t necessarily a laughingstock, but they were largely irrelevant.

When the Bills went to the playoffs after the 2017 campaign, they snapped an 18-season postseason drought. From 2000-16, Buffalo never won more than nine games in a single season and finished better than third in their division just twice.

Since that time, the Bills have become a powerhouse. Over the last six seasons, only two teams — the Kansas City Chiefs and the New Orleans Saints — have posted a better regular-season winning percentage than Buffalo.

Beane and McDermott have built the Bills’ roster via a slow, methodical approach with targeted signings in free agency, but the defining moment of their tenure was inarguably the selection of Josh Allen in the 2018 draft. Following a putrid rookie campaign, Allen has ascended to become one of the most prominent quarterbacks in the league and the centerpiece of Buffalo’s offensive attack.

McDermott has relied on successful coordinators like Brian Daboll and Ken Dorsey to run the offensive side of the ball, but he’ll be taking a more active role on defense in 2023. After Leslie Frazier opted to step away from the Bills, McDermott will take over play-calling for a unit that ranked second in scoring and sixth in yardage last season.

Beane and McDermott Will Be Judged by the Bills’ Playoff Success

While the Bills have been dominant during the regular season, Beane and McDermott’s tenure will ultimately be assessed based on their playoff success. In each of the past three seasons, Buffalo entered the postseason as a Super Bowl favorite, only to be eliminated before the final game of the season.

After losing the AFC title game to the Chiefs in 2020, the Bills suffered an even more devastating defeat at Kansas City’s hands in 2021. In the Divisional Round, Buffalo allowed Patrick Mahomes to get into game-tying field-goal range with just 13 seconds left in regulation and eventually lost in overtime. Then, last season, the Bills got stomped by the Bengals in a 27-10 Divisional Round loss.

The NFL playoffs can often be a crapshoot where anything can happen. Buffalo has consistently put itself in a position to compete for a Lombardi Trophy, but it probably won’t mean much until they actually secure a Super Bowl win.

Without these extensions in place, Beane and McDermott could have become lightning rods for criticism if the Bills went down in the postseason again after the 2023 campaign. The new deals don’t necessarily mean that Beane and McDermott can’t be fired after the season, but ownership groups are often unwilling to cut the cord so quickly after inking their decision-makers to fresh contracts.

Still, it’s not as if Buffalo’s path in the AFC is about to get any easier. The Chiefs and Bengals remain their primary foes, but teams like the Dolphins, Jets, Ravens, Browns, and Chargers all have Super Bowl visions in 2023, too.

It’s entirely fair to say that the Bills might have already missed their most accessible Super Bowl window. Allen’s salary cap charge will blow past $45 million in 2024 and remain there for the foreseeable future, making it far more difficult for Buffalo to add additional pieces in free agency.

That will put the onus squarely on Beane and McDermott — Beane will have to find affordable contributors in the draft, while McDermott will be required to get the most out of the roster handed to him.

Of course, the Bills have been through this before. Marv Levy infamously took Buffalo to four consecutive Super Bowls from 1990-93 but failed to win any of them. Can Beane and McDermott finally achieve a breakthrough and avoid the Levy stigma? Only time will tell, but their legacies will ultimately be centered around whether they end up hoisting the Lombardi.