Update: Sean McDermott apologized to his gamers for his 9/11 analogy, in response to ESPN. However, the World Wide Leader mentioned the Buffalo Bills head coach “regretted mentioning 9/11 in my message,” although Go Long reported that he cited the hijackers as “a group of people who were all able to get on the same page to orchestrate attacks to perfection.”
Alaina Getzenberg mentioned that “multiple players” on the group on the time confirmed it, whereas others “did not recall it.”
“It was mentioning 9/11 in the context of the team meeting,” McDermott mentioned.
“The goal of the team meeting was the importance of communication and being on the same page as a team.”
In every week filled with dangerous analogies, Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott has taken the crown and run with it.
Independent journalist Tyler Dunne launched a three-part investigative characteristic on his Go Long publication titled “The McDermott Problem,” detailing the cultural issues that exist inside the Bills group. The work, primarily based on 25 conversations Dunne had with nameless gamers and staffers, spans everything of the McDermott tenure.
One of the anecdotes that’s publicly circulated on-line came about in the course of the Bills’ 2019 coaching camp. To create an analogy about teamwork and togetherness, McDermott cited the terrorists who orchestrated the Sept. 11 assaults as “a group of people who were all able to get on the same page,” in Dunne’s phrases.
McDermott requested particular person gamers particular questions concerning the orchestrators of the fear assaults that killed practically 3,000 folks.
“What tactics do you think they used to come together?”
“What do you think their biggest obstacle was?”
Players who spoke anonymously to Dunne had been greatly surprised by the “horrible, horrible reference.” One coach added that McDermott “doesn’t have bad intentions. He’s just so clueless that he couldn’t believe that it was a big deal when the players were losing their minds.”
Other gamers tried to rationalize it from McDermott’s perspective. “In his brain it was, ‘If evil can accomplish this, then imagine what we can accomplish’ doing things the right way. The message was just f—ked up.”
You can learn Parts I, II, and III at Dunne’s Substack, Go Long.