Which Other Tragedies Can Sean McDermott Use to Inspire the Bills?

Unlike everyone else online who seems extremely disturbed by Sean McDermott giving props to Al-Qaeda, I get it. I’m glad there’s another person out there who saw ISIS videos and thought “damn those guys have a stellar A/V department.” Or, how it seems like the new Taliban PR team is doing a great job humanizing them (They’re bored at work? They’re just like me).

While I’ve never considered myself much of a motivational speaker, I do think I’m great at exploring lesser known tragedies. And that got me thinking, what else could Sean McDermott use as inspiration for the Bills? So here are my suggestions on tragedies McDermott can use when the Bills need some team inspiration.

2004 Boxing Day Tsunami

A well played blitz can be a thing of absolute beauty. Seeing six or seven burly meat mountains display their 4.5 40s toward an overprotected quarterback is one of life’s purest schaudenfreuder moments. But the blitz can also be very difficult. It’s high risk, high reward. Hit it right and you can get, at minimum, a 5 to 7 yard loss. Play it wrong, and the quarterback throws a 40-yard bomb.

That’s why McDermott can use the 2004 Indonesian Boxing Day tsunami as the perfect example of a blitz. Now, maybe he could use the Japanese tsunami of 2011, but that’s a better example when you obviously put 7 men on the line. Here, this is the secret blitz where you hold your linebacker away from the line, to fool the offense as much as possible. This is the blitz that not even Tony Romo could have seen coming during that time he was predicting everything. (Side note: He’s fallen off in that respect. Makes sense because it’s been a while since he played. Still sad that Tik Tok wasn’t around because we would’ve gotten cold Tony Romo announcing highlight edits).

The thing with the Boxing Day tsunami is that it really came at the most destructive time. A bunch of European tourists on the beach, living it up the day after Christmas. Absolutely zero warning to tell people what was coming. This wasn’t a system tsunami, this tsunami came in and put the team (orcas, I assume) on its back. That’s at least a 15-20 yard loss. And there’s enough video where McDermott can break down film.

Munich Olympics Tragedy

Sure, 9/11 was well planned and executed by our favorite cave-dwelling terrorists. But here’s the question for Sean – was it bold enough? Did the hijackers who killed 2000 Americans show enough boldness to really push a football team that extra yard? That’s why, when McDermott is really in trouble, he should use the Munich Olympics.

Imagine this, it’s early in the season, the guys aren’t really firing together yet, and you need some inspiration from guys who were really able to put it all together in September. Why not bring up Black September? Those guys really dominated the ’72 season early on, and stayed relevant after the German team tried to stop their progress. This would an especially helpful metaphor if the lads were playing Germany. While they’re singing Country Roads, the boys are thinking about global conflict between two countries (depending on which school of Palestinian statehood you subscribe to).

We know Sean loves a good terrorist attack from Middle East-based groups. While there’s less footage than the tsunami, imagine showing Josh Allen the pure relentlessness of these guys in the Olympic Village.

Erfurt Latrine Disaster of 1184

This season hasn’t been great for the Bills. I wrote a blog about how Josh Allen and the rest of the team are breaking my heart. For the past 3 or so years, they’ve been my Super Bowl pick. There are a lot of reasons, but the main one is, I just like the Bills.

McDermott needs to go in there and remind the boys that sometimes, failures can be funny. I can think of no funnier disaster than the Erfurt latrine disaster. This is actually the second disaster to have taken place in Germany in this blog (they kind of have a thing for disaster, don’t they?). But by far the best disaster is when a bunch of aristocrats fell into poop, 60 of which drowned in, again, poop. This is what happens when you make a country called the Holy Roman Empire which is neither Roman nor holy nor an empire. I do digress, I’m just very passionate about the naming of the Holy Roman Empire.

Sometimes you lose to the Broncos (even though they’re kind of good now) and it feels like you drowned in a pool of literal shit. This is a great learning opportunity for McDermott. Sure, at the time, 60 people drowned, and I have to emphasize this again, poop. But now, I’m here in a country that is also three words (I don’t count “of”) writing about how a sports coach got really into hijacking tactics, and I think the Erfurt latrine disaster is amazing. It’s up there with the multiple defenestrations of Prague. It’s a learning moment that not everything lasts forever, including drowning in poop.

McDermott: Innovator, Scholar, Poet

Every great leader and innovator, at one point, is widely panned for new and problematic tactics. Where would we all be if George Washington hadn’t decided to cross the Delaware on Christmas Eve? Where would we be if Hannibal hadn’t thought about crossing the Alps with elephants (the forerunner to modern tanks)? Where would we be if Steve Apple hadn’t forced his workers to put all our music in an electronic box, and then use Chinese child slaves to break their fingers and contemplate death, so I could scroll through tik toks about British gender reveals for three hours?

The man is a genius ahead of his time. I can only imagine what would have happened to Peyton Manning on the day Ray Lewis learned about the Trojan Horse in the locker room (this counts as a disaster in my book – RIP in pieces Troy). It’s actually probably not a great sign that someone leaked this. Either way, we need to recognize the genius while he’s still in the league.

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