Force-Choking for Fun and Profit (A Coaching Carousel Saga)

There’s a recurring motif in The Empire Strikes Back that finds Darth Vader using the Force to choke several commanding officers for their failures throughout the film. Each time, Vader immediately promotes a near-at-hand next-in-command and orders him to do better.

Vader did not have the authority to indiscriminately Force-choke officers who ticked him off in Star Wars: A New Hope; General Peter Cushing shut Vader down when he tried to do so at a staff meeting early in the movie. But General Cushing died in the Death Star explosion, while Vader survived because he was off freelancing in his X-wing fighter. So Vader earned a promotion, perhaps to some role like President of Evil Operations. If Emperor Palpatine had questions about how Vader survived, why he let some rando smuggler get the drop on him, why he was unable to use his magical powers to identify his own children and so forth, they were addressed off-screen. Palpatine ruled by vibes, anyway.

The constant promotions-by-choking made Vader look cruel and badass, but also a little stupid. Why should Vader expect Admiral B to do a better job than Admiral A? If Admiral B had any say in the decisions that ticked Vader off, then he was clearly part of the problem, not a solution. If Admiral B had no say at all, despite his role as a high-ranking fleet officer, then he was probably an overpromoted functionary unfit for command.

Vader should have conducted an empire-wide search for smarter officers, but he and Palpatine didn’t exactly create a workplace environment that attracted the best and brightest.

I’m using Star Wars metaphors to discuss – what else? – the Buffalo Bills. Terry Pegula is the dippy emperor. Brandon Beane is an unimposing Dark Helmet who just earned a promotion by tailspinning away from another explosion. Sean McDermott got Force-choked a few weeks ago.

Beane conducted an unconvincing coaching search; the Philip Rivers interview really hung a lampshade on the dog-and-pony process. Everyone paying even cursory attention knew that Beane planned to choose between Brian Daboll and Joe Brady, the two executive officers whose names he had bothered to learn over the last six years. Brady, the more malleable of the pair, got the job by being both obsequious and nearby when a decision had to be made.

Brady is a world-champion upward-failing coattail-rider. He attaches himself to outstanding quarterbacks – Joe Burrow at LSU, Josh Allen in Buffalo – then clings for dear life, fattening his reputation off their success and riding them as far as he can go.

Brady appeared to be on the fast track to a head coaching gig when he left LSU, but he glommed onto Matt Rhule’s Panthers by mistake. Rhule, who plummeted from hotshot to laughingstock faster than an old car battery sinking to the bottom of an irrigation pond, fired Brady midway through the 2021 season.

Sam Darnold played for Brady in Carolina. I guarantee you that Brady took credit for “developing” Darnold when interviewing for his current role, with Beane stifling a chuckle and playing along. Keep talking, buddy. T-Pegs will lap that one up.

Ever the survivor, Brady became Allen’s quarterback coach in 2022, then replaced Ken Dorsey as offensive coordinator midway through the 2023 season. Brady spent much of the 2025 season dickering around with short passing concepts to ineffective wide receivers against opponents the Bills should have clobbered before halftime, then watching Allen shout “Shazam!” and save his ass in the second half.

Two Bills decision-makers have now earned promotions as a result of the team’s disappointing 2025 season. One of them already climbed one rung on the depth chart as a result of his superior’s dismissal. You should not need a diagram to figure this situation out. Historians call it an Ides-of-March scenario. Anyone citing defensive DVOA or some other on-field explanation as to why McDermott was fired and everyone around him was promoted is going out of their way to miss the point. These are foolish, ambitious guys doing foolish, ambitious-guy stuff. So it should not be surprising that the mighty machines these guys build in between back-stabbings keep blowing up.

Kwesi, We Hardly Knew Yi

• Kwesi Adofo-Mensah chose J.J. McCarthy over Sam Darnold.
• Darnold will play in the Super Bowl next week.
• McCarthy turned out to be a glitchy, malware-laden Trojan Horse instead of a franchise quarterback.
• Therefore, Adofo-Mensah was fired.

Reasonable assumption. Spicy take. Tidy syllogism. Awful organizational philosophy.

The Darnold-McCarthy decision turned out to be catastrophic in hindsight. It could have been mitigated in many ways. (Re-signing Daniel Jones, for example, could have softened the blow of McCarthy’s unreadiness/fragility/incapability.) Adofo-Mensah screwed up. But he did not make the Darnold-McCarthy decision in a vacuum. Kevin O’Connell surely endorsed it on some level. Rob Brzezinski at least signed off on it. Yet only Adofo-Mensah took the fall for it.

Also, the Darnold-McCarthy decision did not get any worse over the last three weeks, only the perception of it did. I can’t help but picture Adofo-Mensah, Brzezinski, various Wilfs and others watching Seahawks playoff games, waiting and wishing for Darnold to go on a turnover jag that would “vindicate” their decision to let him leave as a free agent.

If Adofo-Mensah was really fired for “a cumulative set of decisions,” as Wilf said in Friday’s press conference, then he would have been dismissed on or around Black Monday so the Vikings could spend a few weeks ice fishing for a replacement.