Sean McDermott said Wednesday he will spend the 2026 season away from coaching, taking a year to step out of the business and think hard about what came next. Speaking on The Insiders with Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero, McDermott said he wanted to exist in life out of coaching for the duration of the year and use the break to process his long run in Buffalo.
McDermott said the point of the pause was not to rush to judgment about his time with the Bills. He said he wanted to unpack his tenure, figure out what worked and what did not, and come back as a better version of himself the next time he took a coaching job. The offseason and the season, he said, were both times to process things, and he did not want to make a knee-jerk reaction about Buffalo.
That tenure was defined by steady success after a long drought. McDermott said the Bills broke a 17-year playoff drought after he arrived, changed their culture and reached the playoffs in eight of his nine seasons. He said he believed Buffalo was in a really good spot and wanted to build on what he had done there while learning how he would do things differently next time.
McDermott said the year away was also about widening his lens beyond football. He said he wanted to stay curious about different things that were out there and talk to leaders in other sports and industries to improve as a coach and a leader. He compared the break to Mike McCarthy’s year out of coaching before McCarthy returned in 2020, saying time away could create perspective in a business where the margins are so small. “When you think about working and being in this business -- so competitive, margins are so small -- and you're like, hey, I wonder what it would be like one day to be that guy,” McDermott said. “And then, all of the sudden, you're that guy and you're like, OK -- this is real.”
Family was central to the decision, too. McDermott called it a pretty good opportunity for him and his family and said he planned to capitalize on it. He also said he still had relationships with people employed by the Bills, including Joe Brady, his former offensive lieutenant, but added that Brady’s job was different from the one he had held and that he could not guarantee how Brady would do. His own next job, when it comes, will come after a year he says he intends to use to look back honestly before looking ahead.