Bills rumors: Tom Pelissero outlines obstacles for Mike Tomlin hiring in Buffalo

After another gut-wrenching playoff loss, the Buffalo Bills fired Sean McDermott. Buffalo was tremendously successful in McDermott’s nine-year run as head coach. The Bills made the playoffs eight times and winning five division titles. However, the team wasn’t able to reach its ultimate goal of a Super Bowl Championship.

Now the Bills are on the hunt for a new head coach. And Mike Tomlin is unattached to a team for the first time in 19 years following his departure from the Pittsburgh Steelers. This has some fans floating the veteran coach as a potential replacement for McDermott. But there are a number of obstacles to Tomlin taking over in Buffalo.

“Question one is, would the Rooneys even trade Mike Tomlin to Buffalo,” Tom Pelissero noted on the Rich Eisen Show. “That is very close geographically and it’s one of your AFC rivals. They’d have to be willing to do it. Even if they were, do the Bills want to go into the defensive-minded, 50-something-year-old coach bucket for a guy who, quite frankly – he hasn’t had Josh Allen – but he’s not had as much success over the last nine years as Sean McDermott has.”

Mike Tomlin unlikely to coach Bills in 2026

Pelissero acknowledged that, unlike McDermott, Tomlin has reached the Super Bowl twice and won a championship. But his recent track record is actually outshined by the former Bills coach. ‘[Tomlin] hasn’t won a playoff game in nine years. The nine years that Sean McDermott won eight playoff games and got fired for it, is the nine-year stretch in which Mike Tomlin has not won a single playoff game.

“The third part of it is whether Tomlin is willing to listen. Yes, you would think if there were a place that he could contend right away that has the quarterback, that’s the type of job that would be interesting to Mike Tomlin,” Pelissero said.

While the Bills job is attractive, the long time head coach has indicated that he plans to take a break from the NFL grind.

“At this point, I don’t believe that Mike Tomlin is in a mental space where he wants to coach in 2026. If that changes this week, next week, a month from now, there’s all kinds of different things that could happen. But… a lot of these coaching searches right now are full steam ahead. They’re going to be moving relatively rapidly over the next week or two,” Pelissero added.

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