WHAT!? John Murphy has turned heel on the Bills!?
I’m shocked.
I’m sure most of you know Murphy was the longtime voice of the Bills and, for years, hosted The John Murphy Show, which eventually became One Bills Live or Lie as I like to call it. And if you’ve followed me long enough on X, you know I’ve always poked fun at Murph and really anyone whose paycheck came from the Bills while also being paid to talk about the Bills.
Murphy suffered a stroke in 2023 and eventually had to step away from the radio booth. At that point, making fun of the guy for being Captain Bills Positive obviously wasn’t as much fun anymore.
But this is a change of pace.
Murphy wrote for News 4 Buffalo that Joe Brady and this new coaching staff aren’t ready for the Super Bowl because of a lack of experience.
John Murphy!? Saying the Bills aren’t ready for the Super Bowl!? And saying it is because of Joe Brady?! He must have hated Brandon Beane or loved Sean McDermott.
HEEL TURN!
Maybe this is Murphy unchained. There were reports in the past that he got suspended after criticizing the Sabres for firing coaches, basically making the point that constantly changing coaches hadn’t exactly worked wonders for the Sabres when someone called in to complain about Sean McDermott.
Which, come on.
That’s hardly standing outside the White House waving a “TRUMP IS IN THE EPSTEIN FILES” sign as the president walks across the lawn. It’s about as mild a criticism of your employer as you can possibly make. That was always the weird part about Bills-produced content. How critical could anyone really be when the team being discussed was also signing the checks?
Murphy doesn’t have that problem anymore. Maybe this was his reciept towards the Bills for suspending him, or the team leaving WGR, or his protege Sal getting replaced. Or maybe he’s gonna be unbiased and not be afraid.
Either way..what a difference a take makes when the employer who is paying you to make those takes end up changing.
Now to dissect his point about the lack of experience. Most first-time NFL head coaches aren’t walking into ready-made contenders.
They’re usually getting the job because the team wasn’t very good in the first place.
So using immediate success—or lack of it—as an argument against an inexperienced coach feels a little misleading. The math isn’t exactly mathing.
Since 2000, the numbers definitely seem to back that up: first-time coaches overwhelmingly inherit teams that missed the playoffs the previous season. That matters when we start comparing their Year 1 results to coaches who walked into established playoff rosters.
Now, when we venture into the Joe Brady lack-of-experience narrative, the context changes dramatically.
Brady isn’t your typical first-time head coach taking over a four- or five-win team and being asked to build something from scratch. He’s inheriting a perennial playoff team with Josh Allen at quarterback and a Bills team that has won double-digit games in seven straight seasons.
And once you narrow the historical comparison to first-time head coaches who inherited playoff-caliber teams, the sample size plummets.
The question shouldn’t be whether inexperienced coaches generally succeed. It should be:
What happens when an inexperienced coach inherits a team that was already winning?
That’s a much smaller—and much more relevant—group.
I found what Murphy said right in a lot of ways but yeah the heel turn. Well against the bills lol I rather it be that way give me Hollywood John Murphy all day, well not all day here and there 😂