Joe Brady's Ready To Lead Bills To Super Bowl, Even If He's Not Thinking About It

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Joe Brady wanted to be a player, not a coach. He spent his life fighting his way onto the field, battling through injuries, proving himself to coaches who overlooked him. He even had to show his dad at times that he shouldn’t be benched. Brady thought his time was coming, too, at the start of his junior year as a wide receiver at William & Mary. That was the same time that Tre McBride showed up. He was clearly a future pro, who even Brady could see "shouldn’t have been playing at William & Mary." He had it all — the size, the skills, the untapped potential. Everything Brady didn’t. Brady was a lanky receiver who, his head coach at William & Mary, Jimmye Laycock told me, was "hard-working and tough, but not the most gifted athlete we had." And it was clear to everyone that McBride, even as a freshman, was in Brady’s way. So Brady did the only thing he could. He helped McBride become even better. "He really helped me a lot, making sure that I knew exactly what I had to do from an assignment and an alignment standpoint, every game," McBride recently told me. "He was my go-to. If I had a question on the field, off the field, it was Joe Brady that I was checking in with. And he was always anticipating too, like he was watching me close. Whatever it was on my mind, he was ready for that." It was, McBride admits now, a remarkably generous choice — especially since he didn’t exactly welcome Brady’s help with open arms. They fought at times, but Brady was relentless, making sure his more talented teammate knew every little detail about the Tribe’s offense, and was always aware of exactly what he was supposed to do. "Joe was mature beyond his years," Laycock told me. "He wasn’t the best player we had, but he could basically run the meetings for the receivers.  He would help the other ones out, knowing where they were supposed to be, alignments, assignments, whatever. He had a great understanding of the whole game." And the results were impressive. McBride became the first freshman receiver to play for the Tribe in six years. As a sophomore, during Brady’s senior year, he caught 55 passes for 897 yards and a touchdown, and started to get early attention from NFL scouts. Brady, meanwhile, played in 21 games with McBride over those two seasons at their small FCS school in Williamsburg, Virginia. He caught just three passes for 34 yards. But Brady reveled in McBride’s success. He never stopped trying to make him better. He never thought about the playing time that maybe he could have had. "Yeah, it was probably wrong, or different," Brady told me. "But I felt like if he’s better, it’s going to make me better, and we’ll go from there. It gave me the opportunity to be like ‘All right, maybe I can form some of these guys.’ " And just like that, Joe Brady realized something else too: He might turn out to be a pretty good coach. Nobody back then would have imagined that just 15 years later, Brady would be the head coach of the Buffalo Bills at just 37 years old. He got the job back in January when his old boss, Sean McDermott — another William & Mary alum, by the way — was fired after the Bills went 12-5 last season and lost in the divisional playoff round. Brady was part of that failure. He had spent the previous four years as McDermott’s assistant — two as his quarterbacks coach and two as offensive coordinator. But he obviously impressed Bills owner Terry Pegula and general manager Brandon Beane by how he ran one of the NFL’s best offenses, earning franchise quarterback Josh Allen’s trust. Still, there was a risk in handing over one of the NFL’s best teams to someone so young and so inexperienced. Even by today’s NFL standards, with 30-something coaches becoming more common than ever, Brady has had a meteoric rise. But to those who know Brady best, and watched him along the way, there’s nothing shocking about it. "The fact that he got to where he’s at so quickly has surprised literally nobody on our team," McBride told me. "I guarantee nobody is surprised he wound up having massive success. And it’s no surprise that he became a brilliant football mind." "It didn’t take me long to see it either," added Kevin Rogers, who was the offensive coordinator at William & Mary when Brady took his first coaching job as a graduate assistant. "He’s a unique guy. I mean holy smokes, you talk about success in droves in your career. It’s amazing." In fact, the run of success has been dizzying. Brady got his first coordinator job at LSU at age 29, just three years removed from being a graduate assistant at Penn State. And in one year in Baton Rouge, all he did was turn his quarterback (Joe Burrow) into a Heisman Trophy winner and help the Tigers win the national championship. That led to two more offensive coordinator jobs in the NFL, including the last two years in Buffalo, where the Bills were one of the highest-scoring teams in the NFL. And now Brady has rewarded his bosses’ faith by getting the Bills off to a 3-1 start, as they head into a showdown against the Rams in Los Angeles on Monday night. He was the first Bills coach ever to start his career by winning his first three games. And he has everyone in Western New York believing that he will win a lot more. Coaching was always a thought for Brady, but never part of his original plan. He wanted to play quarterback, at least until he threw out his arm. Then he switched to wide receiver, where he had to work his way up from the bottom of the depth chart at Everglades High School in South Florida. He was eventually good enough to draw interest from the Air Force Academy, but he broke his wrist in the first scrimmage and missed his freshman year. He ended up transferring to William & Mary, only to then break his foot in his first spring drills. Brady refused to give up on playing, though, even though coaches rarely saw the 6-foot-3, 210-pounder as much more than a scrappy special teamer. "He was a tough player," Laycock told me. "Any time we needed a wide receiver to block down on a linebacker, we’d substitute Joey in there. He was good at that." But he wasn’t good for much more on the field. Yet he still emerged as the leader of the "Bomb Squad" — the Tribe’s receiving group. He mentored younger players. He was a teacher in the meeting rooms. Of course he wanted to play, but he understood the reality and eventually accepted his fate. "Joe was just a team guy at his core," McBride told me. "And he wanted us to win more than anything. And if he could see where it was going, the trajectory, I have no problem believing that he would just buy into the success of our overall team over his particular situation." "Once I realized I wasn’t playing at this level," Brady told me, "I was like, ‘All right, I want to coach.’" And so he did, starting from the bottom, as a grad assistant at William & Mary, just weeks after his playing career ended. He made it clear, too, that he was willing to learn everything — offense, defense, special teams, whatever. He was willing to do anything, too. Laycock saw that just a few weeks into Brady’s tenure, when he was preparing to host some new recruits on a Saturday morning. When the head coach got to the office before breakfast, his grad assistant was already at work. "Joe was already in there, had the vacuum cleaner out, and was cleaning up the recruiting lounge at 6 o’clock in the morning, just to make sure everything was set," Laycock told me. "That wasn’t anywhere near his responsibility whatsoever. That hit home with me. I’m thinking, ‘This guy’s got something to him, he really does.’" Things like that got the notice of the entire staff, too. When the full-time linebackers coach job opened up that summer, Brady asked about it, and Laycock told me he laughed him out of the room at first. But then his other assistants kept asking, "What about Brady?" and they wouldn’t let up. "Basically, what I had always done is encourage [former players] to go somewhere before I hired them back, just because I wanted a little bit more of a separation from student-athlete to coach," he told me. "But both the offensive and defensive coaches harped on me about it. "The defensive coaches really wanted him." Hiring him turned out to be "an excellent move," Laycock told me. Brady was only 23 when he got the job, barely older than his old teammates, but he made a smooth transition. "He related well to his players, but he knew the difference between player and coach," Laycock told me. "Sometimes a guy, once he’s finished playing and you give him the title of coach, he all of a sudden thinks he’s a hard ass. Or it could go the other way, that he’s so damn friendly they’re his buddies. Those are the things that would bother me. "But he walked that line very, very well." Brady spent two more seasons at William & Mary before James Franklin offered him a grad assistant job at Penn State, just a couple of weeks before practices began in 2015. And from there, the opportunities kept rolling in. Two years later, there was an opening on Sean Payton’s staff in New Orleans for an offensive quality control coach. Brendan Nugent, the Saints assistant offensive line coach and the William & Mary assistant who once recruited Brady as a player, recommended his former receiver for the job. And even though the quality control job in the NFL is like a grad assistant in college, but with slightly better pay, Brady saw that only as a great opportunity to learn. Before long, he was sitting in on quarterback meetings with offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael (now the Bills' 54-year-old offensive coordinator) and learning everything he could from watching and listening to Payton and Saints quarterback Drew Brees. "I was so fortunate that I wasn’t a quality control coach that was just given ‘This is what our game plan is going to be’." Brady told me. "I sat in the room and saw Sean come up with it. The only reason I was able to go have success and install an offense and run an offense was because I sat there and saw Sean and Pete and how their brains just worked and the connections they had with Drew and how they knew each other. It was so cool. "I literally say this line all the time: I got my Master’s degree at Penn State, but I got my doctorate in New Orleans." Brady "was always a sponge-type of guy," Laycock told me. "He wanted to know what was going on, on either side of the ball. He had a good understanding of it, but he always wanted a little more." And what he learned was that he had a knack for knowing how to teach. Brady was still in his first season with the Saints when LSU head coach Ed Orgeron wanted to learn more about the New Orleans offense that was already one of the most dynamic in the NFL. He was particularly interested in how they used quarterback/tight end Taysom Hill when they ran RPOs (run-pass option plays). Carmichael agreed to run a clinic for the LSU coaches, but he made sure to bring Brady along. Carmichael spoke first. But when Brady got his turn, he dazzled the LSU staff with his film breakdowns, the research he provided from his time at Penn State and what he learned scouting other NFL teams. He knew what the offenses planned, how the defenses adjusted, and how the offense could counter. He was just 28 and had only been coaching for about four seasons, but he had a room full of NFL coaches hanging on every word. "Ed Orgeron calls me up after, asks me what I knew about Joe Brady," Rogers told me. "I said, ‘He’s a can’t-miss. There’s no way you’re going to hire a better guy than Joe.’" Two years later, Orgeron took that advice and hired Brady to be the Tigers’ passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach. That, of course, is where Brady’s career really took off. He used a quick-pass system and his matchup wizardry to transform an offense that had been stagnant a year earlier into a juggernaut. They averaged 568.9 yards per game. Joe Burrow, their senior quarterback, threw 60 touchdowns and won the Heisman Trophy. Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase both topped 1,500 receiving yards and combined for 48 touchdowns. And the Tigers went 11-0 and won their first national championship in 12 years. Brady was suddenly a rising star in the coaching ranks. He won the Broyles Award as the top assistant coach in the nation. He was going to be able to call his next shot. But he had already chosen his path long ago. "Joe always wanted to be an NFL coach," Rogers told me. "He didn’t care what kind of job a college offered him, whether it was back at his alma mater or coaching at Notre Dame. Joe wanted to coach in the NFL." He got his shot less than 24 hours after the national championship game when he was hired by new Carolina Panthers coach Matt Rhule, who was coming out of college himself after seven years as head coach at Temple and then Baylor. But it didn’t work out. The Panthers' offense struggled under his direction. There were unexpected challenges of coaching during a pandemic that certainly didn’t help him. It also hurt that the quarterbacks he got stuck with were an aging Teddy Bridgewater, a still struggling Sam Darnold, and a washed-up Cam Newton trying to hold on to the end of his career. "That," Rogers told me, "was the only time he stubbed his toe." He also learned a lot from his failure. "Covid hit and I didn’t spend a lot of time with my guys," Brady told me. "I was way more Xs and Os driven than I was about anything else. I’ve kind of flipped that. The Xs and Os still hit me, but I spend way more time with my guys, learning what makes them tick, what they need. And they can feed off of that." So when McDermott called and offered his fellow Tribe alum a chance to coach Josh Allen as Buffalo’s quarterbacks coach after Rhule and his staff were fired in Carolina, Brady leaned hard into that relationship. And that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Brady used to hang around Rogers’ office at William & Mary and asked him about his time coaching Donovan McNabb at Syracuse and Brett Favre in Minnesota. He had a front-row seat to the Payton-Brees dynamic. He had his own special relationship with Burrow at LSU. He knew how coaches could get the most out of their quarterbacks because he understood what players need, and how to push their buttons. It was a skill he got from pushing McBride all those years ago. He just has a knack for relating to his players. It’s why Allen calls him "the most real guy you’ll ever meet." "The realness that he has, I’ve been able to live it in the quarterback room for the last 3 ½, four seasons," Allen said. "He’s a real human that guys can get behind and understand and play for." It helps that Allen, of course, has had remarkable success with Brady at his side. The quarterback has finished in the top 5 in the NFL MVP voting in each of their first four seasons together, and he won the MVP award in 2024. Brady’s not the only one responsible for Allen’s development, of course, but he’s had a big part in turning him into arguably the most dangerous quarterback in the league. They are close — far closer than Allen ever was to McDermott, according to several team sources — but Brady thinks they can be even closer. He still remembers the way Payton and Brees were in those meeting rooms with the Saints every day. "We’re not there yet," Brady told me. "But they were together 15-20 years and that takes time. Pete Carmichael was with Drew Brees for 19 of his 20 years in his career. This will be Year 5 with Josh. I know how he thinks. He knows how I think. But now we’re growing on the field together. With Drew and Sean, Drew would walk in the huddle knowing exactly, ‘This is what we talked about weeks ago.’ "We’re going to get to that point, but we’re as close as we can be right now." Is that enough? It almost has to be, because Brady doesn’t have time to grow on the job. He has taken over a team that has gone 88-33 (.715) over the past seven seasons, been to the playoffs seven straight times and the AFC Championship Game twice in the last six years. He is taking over a franchise that is inexorably tied to a region that is still stinging from four straight Super Bowl losses in the early 1990s, not to mention the 33 years that have passed without getting another shot. Brady was handed an MVP-caliber quarterback and a roster as good as any in the AFC, and loaded with the weight of a loyal, but tired fan base, that can and will only judge him in one way. McDermott, after all, only lost his job because he failed to deliver a championship. How could anyone, especially such a young coach, be ready for all that? "Define what ‘ready’ is?" Brady told me. "Is ‘ready’ if you had success? Is ‘ready’ if it doesn’t go well? That’s how we get judged and a lot of times it just goes to the age. But I think it’s (about) ‘What are you doing in those 10 years? What are you doing in those 15 years?’ I’ve been around some coaches that have been coaching for 30 years, but for the last 20 years this is the only way they do it. They don’t teach them any differently. So have they really been growing? Are they ready for another opportunity because they’ve been coaching for a while? "I’ve learned so much. I interviewed for jobs in 2020 and I’m such a different coach now than I was in those interviews. So, define ‘ready’. I think I’ve been proactive in my own development. I took a lot of time trying to figure it out on the fly and roll with it." "He always was proactive in his development," Rogers says.  "I don’t think he tries to emulate anything as a head coach. I think he is who he is. But he’s a hands-on football coach. He’s a guy that when he goes out to practice, he’s not going to stand there in the middle of the field and look around or get up in a bird’s nest and look down at practice. He’s going to have his hands in quarterback play, wide receiver play, and the offense in general. And he’ll always know what other people are doing and find better ways to do things. That’s just the way the kid is." One other thing about the kid that Laycock remembers is that "I don’t ever, ever remember seeing him down — you know, hanging his head or being down about anything. He always seemed to be extremely upbeat about all situations." It’s a subtle difference — the ability not to worry about what’s going wrong, but to focus on what he can do to make things go right. Good coaches do that. They make their players believe the future will be better than the past. And Laycock knows a thing or two about good pro coaches. He’s had a long line of assistants at William & Mary who eventually went to the NFL, including Rogers, Commanders coach Dan Quinn, former Giants coach Brian Daboll, and D.J. Mangas, Brady’s close friend who is currently the Bills’ assistant wide receivers coach. He also coached McDermott and long-time Steelers coach Mike Tomlin when they were still at William & Mary trying to play. What he saw in them were the same things he sees in Brady. "One trait is they’re good people. They’re very good, solid individuals," Laycock told me. "Another trait is they’re not phony. They are who they are. They don’t try to be who they’re not." Brady seems to have those traits and more. He’s proven to be a master tactician. He’s got a knack for pushing the right buttons with his players. He’s an outstanding teacher. And he can motivate people to believe that there’s much more they can do. It’s just that now he has to do it all in the biggest spotlight of his life, with no margin for error. He knows he was hired with only one goal in mind. Anything short of guiding his team to Super Bowl LXI and he knows some will view him as a failure. The expectations almost feel unfair. But that’s not the way Brady sees it. He’s been preparing for this since the day he realized that the best thing he could do for his team was help his more talented teammate. That’s when he learned to trust that if he does what he thinks is best, things have a way of working out. "It kind of goes back to your ‘ready’ question," Brady told me. "I never felt pressure because it’s like ‘Hey, I’m ready for this. Let me do everything I can to be prepared for this moment and make the most of the moment and reset from there.’ "So I don’t think about the Super Bowl. No one has higher expectations than myself. I knew why I took this job. I knew what came with it. That doesn’t mean I am talking about it every single day and I can’t handle all that comes with it. But I’m present right now. And if I just be myself, everything will go OK from there."