Loyalty: More common in the Torah than in the NFL

What would happen after a) Moses sinned by hitting the rock in the desert instead of speaking to it; b) Aaron fashioned a Golden Calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai; c) David sinned with Batsheva by sending her soldier-husband to the front lines of war, then sleeping with her?

If they were responsible to owners in the National Football League, and not to G-d, they would be fired.

This scenario came to mind this week after the coach of my hometown Buffalo Bills, Sean McDermott, was fired by the team two days after the Bills lost a heart-wrenching overtime game to the Denver Broncos in the second round of the playoffs. This, after McDermott had led the Bills to the NFL playoffs in eight of his nine years with the team (ending the team’s 17-years-in-a-row playoff drought); after a carousel of seven Bills head coaches in the previous two decades had failed; after he had compiled the third-best winning percentage of all current coaches in the league; after he had compiled the longest-current streak of 10-or-more-victories seasons; after his team recorded the second-most wins in the league during his years as head coach; after he had guided quarterback Josh Allen from the status of a “project” in need of development to serving as the NFL’s ranking MVP.

All of this did not save his job. He did well – but not well enough.

A class act, McDermott expressed gratitude after he was fired: “God gave me and my family an incredible opportunity” and “we all know that He has a plan.”

McDermott’s departure is Buffalo’s loss.

Cynics suggest that NFL stands for Not For Long. I suggest, Not Forgiving League.

(As a Buffalo sports fan, I am familiar with unexpected firings of head coaches: Dolph Schayes, the Hall-of-Fame Jewish player, who coached the now-long-departed NBA Buffalo Braves, was fired after the opening game of the 1971-72 season, a 33-point loss to Seattle. That still stands as the NBA’s quickest in-season head coaching exit.)

In a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? sports culture of immediate and continued success, McDermott’s firing was not an aberration and not a surprise. He was only the latest NFL head coach casualty in a season that witnessed the departure of many men who had proven their capabilities with long records of success in the league, but unfortunately for them, failed to produce teams that reached, or progressed far in, the playoffs in 2025-26.

Among them:

• Mike McDaniel, hailed four years ago as a young coaching genius when he began his tenure with the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins’ record this year: 7-10..
• Mike Tomlin, coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers. The team won the Super Bowl in 2008, and never had a losing season during Tomlin’s 19 seasons as coach. This year they lost in the first round of the playoffs; his departure from the team was described as a mutual decision, but it was widely understood that he was pressured to leave.
• John Harbaugh, who served atop the Baltimore Ravens 18 seasons, and led them to the Super Bowl title in 2013. This year they missed the playoffs because of a loss on the last day of the regular season.
• Pete Carroll, coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, who previously had won a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks. The Raiders’ record this year: 3-14.

That list of fired coaches with impressive NFL résumés does not include less-successful head coaches who also lost their jobs this year.

How much of a premium on win-loss performance and the latest W-L record, and not on loyalty or sustained excellence does the NFL put? Don Shula, the NFL head coach with the second-most career victories in the league’s history, and Tom Landry, in third place (George Halas of the Chicago Bears, in first place, does not count, because he owned the team), were fired during their careers, despite proven success. Fortunately, Shula, who was still young, was given a second chance, in which he proved his competence; Landry, at retirement age, stayed retired.

If coaches say they are “hired to be fired,” they knew what to expect.

That’s not what the Torah teaches.

People sin, they fall short, they disappoint … even the greatest among Klal Israel. And G-d forgives. He gives second chances. (In the NFL, and in other professional sports leagues, second chances often come with other teams, often on another head coach’s staff of assistants.) If the Torah expected perfection, or at least high-level performances all the time, the leaders of the people would inevitably lose their positions … and the Children of Israel, who had descended to idolatry while enslaved in Egypt, would not have merited to participate in the exodus to the Promised Land. Where they also failed to assiduously to honor the Divine commandments.

While setting high standards, Judaism does not expect, or demand, perfection.

G-d is loyal. G-d is patient. G-d is realistic – the Creator realizes that His creations are not, like Him, perfect.  The Torah makes clear that G-d, while admonishing, while punishing people who displease Him, does not immediately remove them from their leadership posts, does not berate or embarrass them, and certainly does not kill them. (The generation of the Flood, and of the Spies, all of whose adults died in the wilderness before Bnei Israel entered the Promised Land, were major exceptions – in both cases, the people, en masse, demonstrated that they did not have faith in G-d’s judgment, were irredeemable.)

In this vein, the Talmud and Midrash provide many guidelines for how Man can emulate G-d: while He holds the people who are closest to Him, who are in prestigious and powerful positions, to high standards (“G-d is exacting with the righteous like a hair’s breadth” – Yevamot 121:b), but G-d was forgiving with remorseful David (Yoma 22:b), and that, while strict, “in the end” – when a person’s reward or punishment is determined, “kindness (chesed) … belongs [to Him]” (Rosh HaShanah 17:b). Further, G-d tempers His characteristic of strict judgment [din] with mercy [rachamin]: “If I create the world with [just] the attribute of mercy, there will be many sinners; if [just] with the attribute of strict justice, how will the world endure? Rather, I will create it with [both] the attribute of justice and the attribute of mercy, would that it will endure (Bereishit Rabbah 12:15).

And Jewish storybooks are full of inspirational examples of men and women who erred, who strayed from a proper path of behavior, who were extremely disobedient, but were forgiven by authorities (parents, rabbis, teachers, friends, heads of yeshivot), then were not expelled from their family or school, and made the most of their second chance to make a success of their lives.

One failure did not spell dismissal for them.

This is a lesson that the people who run NFL clubs has not absorbed.

Unlike do-or-die loyal fans of the notoriously-falling-short-in-the-end Buffalo Bills. Hundreds of Bills’ fans – the “Bills Mafia” — greeted the team at Buffalo’s airport when the players returned last week from their loss in Denver. Just as Bills’ fans had cheered for placekicker Scott Norwood, at a well-attended Thank-You-Bills downtown ceremony, after his “wide right” attempted, last-seconds field goal miss would have won the 1991 Super Bowl against the New York Giants.

The Bills’ fans are loyal. And forgiving. More than the team’s management or ownership.

Next year, my Bills will have another head coach wearing the headset on the sideline of the team’s games. And McDermott, with his proven coaching bona fides, will probably find gainful employment leading another NFL team.

It will pain me, as a fan who appreciated his success and consistency and menschlichkeit in Buffalo, to see him wearing the jersey of another team.

But it will please me that another team demonstrated loyalty. And gave him a second chance.