Why Bills owner Kim Pegula believes 2020 was `just the floor'
Buffalo Bills co-owner Kim Pegula is not the type of person to make wild statements and set unreasonable expectations based on the temporary highs of winning playoff games or anything else.
That's why her statements Monday in an appearance on NFL Network's Good Morning Football were so powerful.
Pegula was sincere in her statement that the best is yet to come for the Bills, who reached the AFC Championship Game in January.
For the record, she said: "I do know that this year the 2020 team really set the floor for us. That's not the bar, what happened this year. The bar is much higher. The floor was set with the success that this team had. Kind of really having to dig deep and especially not knowing where the salary cap is going to fall is going to be a big job for these guys because the bar has been raised for previous years like I said. It's going to be a lot of tweaking, a lot of impact and understanding where we're going to be with our team, our salary.
"Those are things I leave up to other people. But I know the expectation is pretty high right now as the standard which we're going to be moving forward."
For the record, that was not her trying to motivate the team like the late George Steinbrenner used to do with his New York Yankees or Pat Riley not-so-subtly suggesting his Los Angeles Lakers might win a third NBA title in a row after winning a second straight in 1988.
This was simply Pegula showing conviction in Bills coach Sean McDermott and quarterback Josh Allen. Both took major steps forward in their evolution in 2020.
Allen finally put together all of his tools at one time, helping him finish second in the NFL MVP voting. McDermott won as a head coach in the playoffs for the first time by beating Indianapolis in the divisional round, then followed it up with a victory over Baltimore to get his team within on game of the Super Bowl.
Pegula is convinced better days are ahead because of their leadership.
"Both of them stepped up their leadership ... in their quiet and calming way," she said.
"Josh this year really showed on the field a calmness and consistency, never letting the game get too big, and that's hard to do when you're having success, to keep things calm, to keep things in perspective, and I think Josh did a great job with that all season long.
"Same for Coach McDermott. I mean, here is a guy that's so well detailed, so well thought out and planned. The pandemic, it didn't stop him. ... He had west coast games, he had a multitude of night games that we don't usually have. ... So to have a leader in Coach McDermott that keeps the team, the organization in this calm place that really just focuses on the next team week to week, that was really great to see those guys really step up this year."
Nick Fierro is the publisher of Bills Central. Check out the latest Bills news at www.si.com/nfl/bills and follow Fierro on Twitter at @NickFierro.
