Bills Coach Ranking Reveals Steep Drop After Major Change
In 2023, the Buffalo Bills were led by QB Josh Allen but were also anchored by one of the finest defenses in football. They finished fourth in the league in points allowed and ninth in yards given up, culminating in a successful 11-6 campaign.
Advertisement
That was with head coach Sean McDermott calling plays.
But ... in 2024? A major change.
In his first season since being hired as defensive coordinator and play-caller, Bobby Babich did to his credit keep Buffalo's defense competing despite several major injuries throughout the year.
At the same time, Buffalo suffered a significant decrease in almost every statistic across the boat.
To wit ...
The Bills finished 17th in yards allowed and 11th in points given up during the 2024 campaign. And no position group saw a steeper decline from the prior year than Buffalo's secondary, as that group finished 24th in the league in both passing yards allowed and touchdowns.
Advertisement
That is why one site ranks Babich as the 19th-best coordinator in the league going into 2025.
"In his second season of calling defensive plays for the Buffalo Bills, Bobby Babich has the chance to cement himself as one of the top ascending coaches in the NFL," the site said. "Buffalo's defense was in the middle of the pack in 2024, but Babich's work as a positional coach has been impressive over the years."
Those are some rather positive words, given the stat decline.
There is, however, reason to believe that Babich will have more success in his second season as a play-caller. Buffalo addressed several needs on the defensive side of the ball, muscling up with free agent acquisitions like Joey Bosa, Michael Hoecht, and Larry Ogunjobi.
Advertisement
With an infusion of talent coming from the draft (highlighted by first-round corner Maxwell Hairston), the Bills are giving Babich some more of the sort of assets needed to field a top unit this season.
And once the football bullets start to fly? Buffalo's young coordinator will be under the microscope - stats-related and more - in 2025.
Related: Josh Allen and Hailee Steinfeld Earn Major Award Nominations
Related: Bills Trade for $36 Million 'Seamless Fit' Expected to Lift Josh Allen
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 1, 2025, where it first appeared.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
22 minutes ago
- USA Today
2 Cowboys make ESPN's 'Bag Hall of Fame' for winning at football finances
Among its ranks of fortunate players, the NFL famously stands for "Not For Long." The typical on-the-field career is incredibly short, even under ideal circumstances. Add in the extreme daily physical punishment, heightened risk of serious injury, and better-than-average chance of lifelong health issues, and it's no surprise that for most players, the ultimate goal- a Super Bowl ring notwithstanding- is to secure as much financial compensation as possible for the brief time spent playing the game. Some do it better than others, with today's modern-era contracts often resulting in dizzyingly huge paydays for the most gifted athletes on the planet. But ESPN's Bill Barnwell set out to identify the best of the best, at least when it comes to the business side of pro football. He's created what he's calling the "Bag Hall of Fame," meant to honor those players past and present who, in his words, "did the best job of maximizing their leverage and getting paid for their ability. Players who pushed holdouts to the next level. Players who bet on themselves and were handsomely rewarded for doing so. Players who even managed to represent themselves in negotiations and pocket millions of dollars that would have otherwise gone to an agent." In short, sticking it to the man (read: obscenely wealthy and yet usually miserly NFL owners). And for his inaugural class of eight players from across league history, Barnwell has recognized two who did so to none other than Cowboys billionaire owner Jerry Jones. QB Dak Prescott It's practically a cheesy Disney movie: a fourth-round draft pick who wasn't even his team's first choice in that draft class bets on himself multiple times, comes back from a catastrophic injury, finishes second in MVP voting, and goes on to become the highest-paid player in the sport's history. Jones's repeated reluctance to pony up for Prescott at the earliest opportunity "probably has cost Jones nine figures in terms of lost leverage and extra money for Prescott." His current pact, signed just hours before the start of the 2024 season, set records for average annual salary ($60 million), most single-season cash ($86.3 million), cash over the first three years ($174.1 million) and the largest signing bonus ever ($80 million). And it came with no-trade and no-tag clauses. As Barnwell notes, fellow franchise quarterbacks Josh Allen and Brock Purdy have each had their turn at the plate since Prescott's deal; neither came away with anything resembling that. "Between 2021 and 2024," Barnwell points out, the man who was once the biggest bargain in pro football "took home a staggering $212.3 million, nearly $47 million more than any other player." Is Prescott worth it? He hasn't yet secured a sixth Lombardi Trophy for the lobby of The Star, but the organization knows that paying him gives them a better chance than starting over with someone else. And in the meantime, Prescott has secured more leverage for himself than any player before him. CB Deion Sanders Sanders was both an athlete and a businessman at an unprecedented level, so much so that he convinced a total of nine teams that he was the ultimate answer to success. Across two different sports. Juggling a nine-year career in Major League Baseball with 14 seasons, nine Pro Bowl nods, six first-team All-Pro accolades, and eventually a gold jacket in the NFL, Sanders was the Loch Ness Monster in an entire herd of unicorns. Already a superstar and a Super Bowl champ by the time he came to Dallas, Sanders became the highest-paid defender in league history when he joined the Cowboys. His seven-year, $35 million deal in 1995 would translate to "something like... a seven-year, $263.4 million deal with a $97 million signing bonus under the current cap." For a cornerback. Who moonlighted as a return man. And sometimes a wide receiver. The contract was massive enough to elicit complaints from other teams, and even Jerry Rice. Emmitt Smith's agent reportedly used the Sanders contract in their own haggling with the club over Smith and the franchise tag. And yet that deal ended with a championship parade through the streets of Dallas and merely added to the legend of Sanders, the three-way NFL star who also hit homers and stole bases in the bigs as just a side hustle. Follow Cowboys Wire on Facebook to join in on the conversation with fellow fans!
New York Times
26 minutes ago
- New York Times
Mike Brown has faced pressure before, but this time might be different. Welcome to the Knicks
Mike Brown is familiar with pressure. He coached LeBron James to his first MVP and NBA Finals appearance. He was the Los Angeles Lakers coach tasked with steering the final years of Kobe Bryant's greatness in the right direction. He was right next to Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry as they orchestrated the league's latest dynasty. Advertisement He's been to the finals as a head coach. He's won four NBA titles as an assistant/associate coach with the San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors. He made a dysfunctional franchise respectable as a head coach. He's been fired after one year as a head coach. He's been fired in the middle of seasons. The New York Knicks wanted experience when looking for Tom Thibodeau's replacement, per league sources, and that's why Brown is now their guy. On Wednesday, multiple league sources confirmed to The Athletic that Brown and the Knicks are working on finalizing a contract to make him the franchise's next head coach. The hiring comes weeks after New York fired Thibodeau following the team's first Eastern Conference finals appearance in 25 years. But there's pressure, and then there's New York. Brown's about to learn what it's like to be a Knick. The 55-year-old coach isn't just walking into one of the NBA's most followed and starved franchises. That's pressure in itself. But he's now the head coach of the team that made it very clear that doing something it hadn't done in a quarter century still wasn't good enough. The Knicks, per league sources, are singularly focused on winning a championship. They believe Brown gives them the best chance to do that. Whether Brown will be an upgrade over Thibodeau for this iteration of New York basketball is yet to be seen. We're months away from learning that. What we do know, though, is that everything that comes with being in New York, Brown has gone through something similar. LeBron. Kobe. The lights don't get much brighter than when standing next to those two. The two-time NBA Coach of the Year was the only candidate the Knicks ended up bringing back for a second interview, per league sources. It was a patient search that featured multiple twists and turns. New York's front office led by Leon Rose reached out to employed head coaches (like Houstons' Ime Udoka and Dallas' Jason Kidd), assistant coaches (like Minnesota's Micah Nori, Dallas' Sean Sweeney and New Orleans' James Borrego), recently fired head coaches (like Brown and Taylor Jenkins) and even held a conversation with South Carolina women's basketball coach Dawn Staley. Rose and Co., per league sources, didn't feel rushed to make a hire since the Knicks were the only team in the NBA with a vacancy. Advertisement New York went into the initial stages of the hiring process with Brown's name circled. Per league sources, the Knicks liked Brown's extensive résumé and the fact that he's worn many hats in the NBA. New York, led by stars Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, liked that Brown has worked with James, Bryant and Curry. The Knicks liked that Brown came up under Popovich, worked alongside Kerr and won championships with both. New York was impressed at how Brown turned the Sacramento Kings around and helped them win 45-plus games in back-to-back seasons for the first time in the lowly franchise's history since 2006. Before he was fired by Sacramento after 31 games last season, Brown helped turn De'Aaron Fox into an All-Star. In 2022-23, Brown and the Kings had the best offensive efficiency since tracking began in 1996. Now, Brown is tasked with pushing the Knicks to the next level, into a tier of champions. The Knicks' offense, while it finished the regular season with the fifth-best rating in the NBA, was a bit deceiving. Things started hot for New York on that end of the floor until around the top of the calendar year, when teams started regularly guarding Towns with smaller, athletic wings and putting their centers on Josh Hart. The Knicks' offense, despite all of its firepower in the starting lineup, ranked just 16th from Jan. 1 until the end of the regular season (Brunson missed a month due to injury in March). In the postseason, veteran-laden New York struggled with the up-and-coming, injured Detroit Pistons in the first round of the playoffs. In the second round against the Boston Celtics, the Knicks found themselves down by 20 points late in both Games 1 and 2 before pulling off miraculous comeback wins that helped them eventually take down the defending champions. Ultimately, New York ended up in the Eastern Conference finals. That's an achievement worth celebrating. However, even with that success, it's also easy to understand how the franchise's decision-makers looked at how the Knicks got to that point and came to the conclusion that this team needed a shake-up in order to get to the next level. *Enter Mike Brown* Advertisement The Knicks are positioned as well as any team in the Eastern Conference to make the leap next season. On paper, New York should be one of the conference's last two teams standing. Yet, there's so much more that goes into winning a championship than names on a sheet. There's talent. There's luck. There's health. The Knicks aren't promised another trip back to the conference finals, but they're expecting one. Brown comes into a situation that he can only come out of as a superhero if he takes New York to the NBA Finals or beyond. That's it. Anything less will be considered a failure, unfair or not. New York's decision-makers put those expectations on their new head coach. The fans didn't. The media didn't. The pressure is tremendous. The Knicks feel like they got the right person to end a 50-plus year title drought. And maybe they do. We won't know that answer, though, for quite some time. What we do know right now is that of all the coaches available to the Knicks, no one was more familiar with the gravity of the situation than Brown. That's at least a good start.
Fox News
30 minutes ago
- Fox News
Knicks pick Mike Brown as franchise's next head coach after Tom Thibodeau's shocking dismissal: report
The New York Knicks hadn't advanced to the Eastern Conference finals since 2000 before doing so in May. New York ultimately lost to the Indiana Pacers in six games. Shortly after New York's playoff exit, the Knicks announced the organization would be moving on from coach Tom Thibodeau. A wide-ranging coaching search ensued, which included multiple interview request denials. On Wednesday, the search reportedly culminated with the selection of Mike Brown. According to ESPN, the Knicks are expected to name Brown as the franchise's next head coach. A contract for Brown has yet to be finalized, but both sides appear to be making progress on a formal agreement. Brown's pending arrival in New York City comes nearly one month after Thibodeau's exit. Brown spent the past three NBA seasons coaching the Sacramento Kings. He also had two stints as the Cleveland Cavaliers' head coach and led the Los Angeles Lakers from 2011-12. He was named the Golden State Warriors' associate head coach in 2016. Brown coached several notable NBA greats, including LeBron James, Stephen Curry, the late Kobe Bryant and others in his career. Brown also spent multiple seasons learning under five-time NBA Finals-winning coach Gregg Popovich during the early portion of his career. Brown has led a team to the NBA Finals just one time in his coaching career. Popovich and the Spurs swept Brown and Cavaliers in the 2007 finals. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
