Sean McDermott just 3-4 on MNF as head coach

Significant playoff implications are afoot as the Cincinnati Bengals host the Buffalo Bills this Monday night. The Bills have rattled off six consecutive wins going into this weekend, but none of those victories have come against a team as potent as the Bengals, who have won seven games in a row themselves.

In what might be the most anticipated game of the NFL season, both the Bills (12-3) and Bengals (11-4) need a victory Monday to keep their respective AFC seeding. The Bills currently hold the one seed and the Bengals the three seed. 

A Bills victory would also give Sean McDermott a .500 winning percentage on Monday Night Football. McDermott, who has the Bills highest winning percentage as a head coach in team history, is currently a mediocre 3-4 on Monday nights.

Bills MNF losses include “The Slip” versus the Titans, “The Wind Game” versus the Patriots, and the “COVID” game versus the Chiefs which was originally a Thursday night game that was pushed to Monday early-evening for COVID reasons.

The fourth Monday night loss came against the Patriots in 2018 where the Bills were forced to start Derek Anderson at QB while a rookie Josh Allen sat out due to injury.

Bills wins over that time are all by double digits: 34-24 over San Francisco in 2020, 38-9 over New England in 2020, and 41-7 over Tennessee earlier this year.

One should consider McDermott’s Monday night record an anomaly and nothing to do with the pressure of playing in front of a national audience. Since the transformation of Josh Allen to an elite quarterback in 2020, McDermott and the Bills are 13-6 in all nationally televised games.