OverDrive - Edwards on the Bills seeking a winning season, the Coach of the Year sweepstakes and the Chiefs' next steps

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

ESPN NFL Analyst Herm Edwards joined OverDrive to discuss the headlines around the NFL, the Christmas Day matchups, the Bills' outlook towards the Super Bowl and Josh Allen's skill set, the NFL Coach of the Year award sweepstakes, the Chiefs' next steps and more.

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Merry Christmas, Herm. How are you? Thank you for doing this. Well, thank you. I'm sorry, I couldn't get on FaceTime, but I'm not at home. I'm at some in-laws' house, and background wouldn't be that good. You're all good. You're all good, man.

We can't thank you enough for doing this for us. Of course, a very busy night with family and friends Christmas Eve is. but I'm curious to know your thoughts on the bills. Do you view them as the team to beat in the AFC? Well, I think they have a chance. Look, I'm going to, you know, say this, and so I hope the fans understand. Josh Allen is, he's my favorite player.

I mean, so I'm biased when it comes to Josh Allen. I just wish he had a better supporting cast. And that there lies the problem. He has a really good runner in Cook. But when they break the huddle, no one scares you except for Josh Allen and Cooks, to be quite honest. Defensively, you know, they're a little light up front. They can't stop the run on defense. They're 30th in the league.

That's not a good number to be at, especially now when the weather changes because running games and obviously good defense propel you to win playoff games because of the elements. And so, you know, they're going to play Philadelphia, who's a team that, It has struggled some. I mean, their record is 10 and 5. There's a reason. They earn that 10 and 5 record coming off a Super Bowl win, but they've struggled as well. You know, they don't stop the run very well.

So that's a good thing for Buffalo. They're 21st in stopping the run. But this would be an interesting game. You know, they're 10 and 5, the Buffalo Bills are 11 and 4. I do believe they're one of the better teams on the AFC side of it, but I just worry about can two players on offense carry them through the playoffs? Yeah, no, that's a huge concern. And obviously, Herm, we live in the Bills region here in Toronto,

and a lot of people follow this team very, very intensely. The other concern from a lot of viewpoints is the coach, who's had his list of career clock management issues going back to 13 seconds, the infamous 13 seconds against the Chiefs a few years back. And there's a feeling that, you know, Sean McDermott maybe isn't cut out to be a guy who can carry a team or coach a team, X and O a team to a Super Bowl. You would know better than us. So, you know, how do you review the Bill's coaching staff as you look at the way they performed in recent years?

Well, obviously, when you're successful as they've been, I mean, and if you haven't got to the big game, that always becomes part of the equation, right? He can only take them so far. And I get that conversation. I mean, you know, that's the conversation. It always happens around the water cooler. you know, when people are viewing their team and going, well, we lost getting into playoffs, right?

And so that's kind of, and then people forget how it's hard it is to get in the playoffs. And then all of a sudden, you know, they switch coaches. Then all of a sudden they hit this spell of two or three years not being in the playoffs anymore. And they go, oh, well, guess what? So I get it. It's just part of the profession. I know a coach, you know, he's done a fine job up there in Buffalo. But it's kind of like those years that the Buffalo bills,

getting into the Super Bowl, they couldn't win one, right? I mean, it's just, so these fans have seen this story, and then they're like, when can we win one, right? Or when can we get to the playoffs now and win the playoff game and get to the championship game and win the championship game and go to the Super Bowl? And so this, Bill's fan base is a great fan base, by the way, and it's a great venue to play out when you go play Buffalo up there. But I can understand the conversation.

Herm Edwards, our guest here in the first hour of overdraft. I think one of the most compelling awards discussions term is coach of the year. And I think you can make a case for seven or eight guys right now. I mean, Denver and New England and Jacksonville, certainly the Seattle Seahawks at the top of the NFC, the Bears, maybe Dave Canales and the Carolina Panthers, if they can win the division. How about what Shannon has done with the San Francisco 49ers?

When you look at that race, is there one name that sticks out as someone maybe who's done the best job and should be the coach of the year? Well, you know, I think all of them are worthy candidates. There's no doubt about that. I mean, when you can look at the transformation of what they've done in Chicago, I mean, it's like, wow. I mean, during the division where you got the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions, and I can promise you, you know, all these gamblers that they would have bet on Chicago being in the first place,

they'd be rich right now. No one did it, especially in the NFC North, right? No one anticipated them to be 11 and 4, so you've got to give them a lot of credit. San Francisco I say that in a sense They were beat up early in the season They were wounded Having played with both

That are starting receivers Since the season Right And McCaffrey has been Kind of a workhorse for them On offense defensively They're good But when they've only got

18 sacks As a defense I mean And they sit here at 11 and 4 And maybe the best division In the NFC When you think about The Rams are sitting there

at 11 and 4. Obviously, the Seattle Seahawks are 12 and 3. So those two, to me, are the coaches, in my opinion. Not seeing those other guys aren't worthy, but I'm just looking at, you know, what they've accomplished were the 49ers being beat up in Chicago. I mean, 11 and 4. And it's like, wow. That's really good for Chicago Bears, by the way.

You know, that quarterback took 68 sacks last year now. Yeah. Remember that? Same quarterback. 68 sacks. Yeah, that's incredible. It is incredible. Herm, we were just talking before you came on about the,

but the NFL, you know, they take over whatever they want to take over, and they've taken over Christmas Day from the NBA, and yet you look at these three games, they're not exactly marquee matchups given the form of the teams in question, cowboys, commanders, lions, Vikings, and then what was supposed to be the feature game, Broncos Chiefs at 815,

it was supposed to be Mahomes against Nix. it was supposed to be Taylor Swift in prime time. What do you make of the Chiefs, Herm, when you think about, you know, Mahomes coming off the ACL coming into next year, Kelsey, 36 years old, there's speculation about whether this will be his last season. If you had to put money on that, you talked about betting, you had to put money on it if Travis Kelsey will play his last game this season or will he continue? Which way would you be swinging? I think if he watches, you know, I know, I know when I retired, you know, I watched myself play and I knew how I wanted to play and what I had done in the past and I looked at myself on film and I said, I'm done. I don't want to put that on film

anymore. Right. You know, that's not who I am. And that was just me personally. That's how I did. And I retired. I didn't get cut or anything like that. I retired. And I walked into the coach's office and he said, what? And I said, yeah, coach, I'm done. I'm going home. He said, we've got At games left, I said, nah, coach, I'm done. I'm good. I left. So, I mean, I don't know how he's going to come about doing that. I think Mahones will get, he'll be fine next year.

I mean, Brady went through this. Adrian Peterson went through the same injury. They've got to address their offensive line. There's no doubt about that. They've got to fix that. They've got to get some complimentary receivers, you know, that that are, they got some okay receivers. not great. I mean, they're okay.

They're flashy at times. Defensively, they were pretty good. But I think this team, along with the Eagles that have a little bit of this, they're tired. When you think about all the games these guys have played in the last four years, all the added games, playoffs, Super Bowls, it's a tired team. This is what happens when you continue to go into the playoffs and you get to the, you know, to the finals and you go to a Super Bowl. become weary. It's a lot of extra games over four years. Eagles are feeling a little bit of that

too when you watch them play. So I just think they'll find a way to get it fixed. They have my homes coming back. But will they dominate like they did for that run they had again? I don't know about that. I don't know about that. We'll have to wait and see. Herm Edwards with us here on overdrive. It's also bowl season officially underway. And I'm curious to know your thoughts on Fernando Mendoza. It's such an incredible season. Do you look at him as a franchise quarterback in the NFL Herm? Well, you know, it's, first of all, there's not, there's not 32 franchise quarterbacks.

Let's make that perfect as we never has been. We like to throw that word out there, franchise. Both little bills have one. They got one for sure. You know, I don't know. he's talented, love him as a person. But, you know, time will tell. Now, he'll get drafted.

I mean, there's not a big quarterback class, right? There's not a lot of quarterback, so they get shoved up. There's probably in the league right now, there is probably seven or eight teams that need a quarterback. So guess what? They just shove them up. They get pushed up. Sometimes that's a good thing if it works, sometimes not.

Right? Because then you got a guy, first round pick, high pick, and the pressure's on the guy right away. Some guys can deal with the pressure. Some cannot. We've seen this story before where guys haven't dealt with it the first couple of years and they ship them off. Baker Mayfield happens to be one. There's a bunch of them that have kind of resurrected their careers after they were somewhere else and it didn't work out for them and they went, ah, you know, I got to go somewhere. Jared golf, you know, found the landing spot. I mean, you can, there's a handful of them. So we'll just have to wait and see what happens here. Coach, thank you so much for doing this on Christmas Eve. We can't thank you enough for your time.

A very Merry Christmas, happy holidays to you and your family, and hopefully we can catch up with you again down the road. You guys have the same. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's Herm Edwards from ESPN. Christmas music to the stories behind the Christmas hits with Drew Savage. Listen to the podcast on the free Iheart radio app, your destination for all things Christmas. Merry Christmas. These are the songs that get you in the spirit.

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