Bills coach McDermott hasn't got Carolina on his mind, just beating the Panthers

ORCHARD PARK – As successful as Sean McDermott was last week in preparing his Buffalo defense to shut down the New York Jets, it paled in comparison to the way he shut down the prevailing storyline this week: His return to Carolina.

“Yeah, I acknowledge that they’re the next opponent, they’re certainly a good opponent,” McDermott said earlier this week with a stone face. “I really appreciate the time that I spent there; great people around that organization, and it’ll be a huge challenge for us to go down there and win.”

For all the emotion he showed, you’d think we were asking him about global warming, or the changes Apple is making to iTunes.

If McDermott sheds any tears when he meets up with all those Carolina players, coaches, and other administrators and friends that he developed tight relationships with during his six years cashing checks signed by Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, we’re not likely to know about it.

But that’s exactly what we expect from McDermott because that’s who he is in public. He’s going to stick to his script, answer questions as coach-speaky as possible, keep his personal feelings in the background, and do the job he came to Buffalo to do: Guide the Bills to victory over whoever they’re playing, whether it’s the Jets or his former team the Panthers.

Now, what went on behind closed doors this week is anyone’s guess. For all we know, he has a countdown clock on his laptop set to go off at 1 p.m. Sunday when the ball is scheduled to be kicked off. Maybe he has a wall calendar that has Sept. 17 circled in bright red with stars encircling the date. Just maybe, an NFL coach is lying to us – that never happens, right? – and this game means a little more to him than he’s letting on.

Perhaps we’ll find out when it’s over, though I doubt that will be the case. Don’t expect him to go all Rex Ryan, who could not have enjoyed the moment anymore following the Bills’ victory at the Meadowlands in November 2015, Rex’s return to New York to face the Jets. He could have stood up there behind the lectern all night recounting how glorious it was to beat the team that had fired him 11 months earlier, but the PR guys pulled him away.

MORE: Kuechly loved playing for McDermott

MORE: Big test for McDermott, Bills

“It's pretty satisfying,” Ryan said that night. “Now that I can say the truth, it’s kind of like being dumped by some girl you had the hots for. Every guy in the room has been dumped by some girl before and that’s what it feels like. But you move on.”

McDermott may have been dumped by some girl at some point, but he wasn’t dumped by the Panthers. He left on his own accord to take his first NFL head coaching job, and whenever you ask him about the Panthers, he has nothing but good things to say, and rightly so. Carolina enjoyed plenty of success in his six years coordinating the defense, including a trip to Super Bowl 50.

Still, you can’t tell me that this game isn’t special to him, and you can’t tell that to Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, either.

Frazier has been a head coach in the NFL, three-plus years with Minnesota between 2010-13. He has done a little hop-scotching from job to job in the NFL, and naturally, he’s had situations where his new team was playing against his old team.

Most prominently, in 2014, Frazier was working as defensive coordinator of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, hired by Lovie Smith after Frazier had been fired in Minnesota. That year, the Bucs hosted the Vikings and there was no denying that the game week felt different for Frazier.

“There are a lot of emotions, for sure,” Frazier said. “He’s got a lot of friends there, a lot of former workers, a lot of his former players, guys he helped coach and develop that are going to be on that other sideline. There will be some emotions, there have to be, for the number of years he spent there, the relationships that were built, and the success that they had as a team. ...But at the end of the day, he’s leading the Buffalo Bills football team, and he’ll be focused on getting our team ready to play.”

Essentially, that’s all that matters to McDermott. It’s all about the team, and the sideshow of him going back to Carolina, he intoned, should be the furthest thing on the players’ minds. If any of them are thinking they need to win for their coach, they should perish the thought.

“That’s the wrong approach, that is 100 percent the wrong approach,” McDermott said emphatically. “They don’t need to win anything for me. I get where you’re coming from, that’s fair and reasonable to think. I would never want them to win one for the coach, let’s just go out and do what we do, and embrace who we are, and continue to get better. That’s really the process that I want us focused on.”

If the pulse in the locker room was an indication, it was a message that has been heeded.

“The guys that I guess have been in Carolina, just talking to them, and talking to Sean about it, it’s like a regular game to them,” running back LeSean McCoy said, referencing ex-Panthers Mike Tolbert, Joe Webb, Kaelin Clay and Leonard Johnson, plus general manager Brandon Beane who worked in Carolina 19 years. “They’re just going back and trying to win. I kind of looked at it like a revenge-type of game when I played back home (against the Eagles in 2015), but these guys, their attitude is more positive, it’s more team-based, so it’s working out.”

Quarterback Tyrod Taylor was in this situation last year when the Bills opened their season in Baltimore, the place he spent the first four years of his career.

“Of course, it’s gonna be on your mind, (we’re) humans, so going back to play against the team that you’ve spent so much time with, built relationships with people there, it’s definitely gonna be on your mind,” he said. “I’ve been in that situation, but it’s about us as a unit going down and trying to accomplish something that we’ve set for the season, goals that we’ve set before the season.”

McDermott said he exchanged texts with Panthers coach Ron Rivera last week, and they probably did a little of that during the week, too. Besides that, there was no communication, and there won’t be until the Bills arrive at the stadium Sunday morning.

It will be weird for McDermott to be on the other side of the field, and the cheers he hears won’t be for him. When it’s over, win or lose, there will be hugs and fond wishes, and probably a sense of relief that this one is out of the way, no matter how much he has downplayed it.

“It’s always hard going against friends,” McDermott told a Charlotte Observer reporter. “There’s that part of it that’s hard. I’ve got nothing but very fond memories of my time in Carolina.”

MAIORANA@Gannett.com