Jan 26, 2025; Kansas City, MO, USA; Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott against the Kansas City Chiefs during the AFC Championship Game. Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Bills' Sean McDermott ranked surprisingly low among NFL head coaches again

Originally posted on Buffalo Bills on SI | By Owen Klein | Last updated Jun 29, 2025 10:50 AM ET

Sean McDermott has led the Buffalo Bills to five consecutive AFC East division titles in the 2020s, but some believe he may be holding the team back from achieving its ultimate goal: winning the Super Bowl.

That sentiment continued on Sunday when WalterFootball released a YouTube video featuring Charlie Campbell's latest NFL head coach power rankings, in which he had McDermott ranked 12th among the 25 returning head coaches.

Campbell, a WalterFootball Senior Draft Analyst, said their success in the AFC East comes with an asterisk because it's a generally weak division. Since 2020, the Bills have been pushed to the last week of the season for the AFC East title just twice, in 2021 and 2023.

"They get to the playoffs and they lose, they don't get to the Super Bowl," said Campbell. "They have an MVP quarterback, I think defensively, they're a very conservative team and I think that McDermott has done a good job, but not a great job."

With said MVP quarterback, Josh Allen, at the helm of the offense, the Bills have had the second-best win percentage in the NFL since 2020 at 61-22, second only to the Chiefs. However, they're just 7-5 in the postseason and haven't made it past the AFC Championship Game in that span, and some blame McDermott for these shortcomings.

Above McDermott on Campbell's list are Jim Harbaugh, Kevin O'Connell, Dan Campbell, Kyle Shanahan and the seven head coaches who have won at least one Super Bowl, an accomplishment that has eluded McDermott.

"I really think that if you've won a Super Bowl, you're kind of in another league," said Campbell. "It's a champion's league, to borrow a term from soccer."

Suppose the Bills and McDermott will be recognized in that "champion's league." If that'll happen, they'll have to go through a top-heavy AFC featuring the Ravens and Chiefs, the latter of which has been an insurmountable hurdle for them in the postseason throughout the McDermott era.