The Bills 2020 season had many memorable moments and was the best season that Buffalo has seen since the 1990s. With a 13-3 season and a trip to the AFC Championship Game, many of the Bills coaches and players were recognized for their successes this season.
Here is the list of honors the Bills players and staff have received since the end of the season:
Coach of the Year – Sean McDermott
McDermott is the winner here for a second year in a row, having led the Bills to their first AFC East title since 1995, with the best record (11-3) of any team whose opponents' winning percentage is above .500. He received 7.5 votes to beat out Cleveland's Kevin Stefanski (6.5) and Miami's Brian Flores (6). "He's easy to overlook, because they've been such a steady, progressing program," an NFC team executive said of McDermott, who is now 36-26 with three playoff trips in four seasons. "But I think he still needs to get credit for a team that hadn't been in the playoffs in very long, hadn't won a division in very long and just won a division that's been a monopoly for 20 years." Despite the challenges associated with COVID-19, which shuttered NFL facilities and wiped out offseason practices and preseason games, Stefanski has turned the Browns around in his first season as a head coach. They're 10-4 and closing in on their first playoff bid since 2002; the NFL's other four first-year coaches are a combined 20-36. "Off the field's probably where he's done the best," another executive said. "The fact that it was a quarantine (but he) changed the whole culture quickly. Everyone's bought in. I just think he's such a refreshing change from what they had, and he gets it, and he's got a good staff. They don't do things just to do them -- there's always a reason." Flores also has the Dolphins in the AFC playoff picture in his second season, after somehow winning five games with a bare-bones roster in 2019. "What he's doing with that team is really impressive," said a third exec. "Defensively, they have exceeded expectations. I think they've got talent there, but they're playing above their level of talent. And they have a style and they dictate the tempo of the game." Kansas City's Andy Reid and Pittsburgh's Mike Tomlin received one vote each.
- Tom Pelissero, NFL.com
Executive of the Year – Brandon Beane
Beane pulled away from another AFC East general manager, the Dolphins' Chris Grier, to take this honor definitively, recognized by executives around the league for the great work he's done in Buffalo. Beane already had built a good team around second-year quarterback Josh Allen in 2019 but took it another level with the best trade of the offseason that paired Diggs with Allen.
Beane has consistently drafted well and decided to spend wisely and was rewarded when his assembled talent displaced Bill Belichick's Patriots as the new AFC East team to beat. This Bills group won the franchise's first playoff games since 1996 en route to the AFC championship game.
The Steelers' Kevin Colbert and the Browns' Andrew Berry were the only other two GMs who got votes from their peers. Beane succeeds the Ravens' Eric DeCosta in winning the award. Beane is the first Bills GM to win the award since Bill Polian won it twice back-to-back in 1991 and 1992.
- Vinnie Iyer, Sporting News
Assistant Coach of the Year – Brian Daboll
Buffalo offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who oversaw the NFL's No. 2-ranked offense and the development of quarterback Josh Allen, was selected as the 2020 NFL Assistant Coach of the Year.
Daboll joined the Bills as the club's offensive coordinator in 2018. Under the 20-year NFL coaching veteran, the Bills set a franchise record with 501 points during the regular season. The Bills increased their points per game by 11.7 in 2020, which was the biggest increase in the league from 2019. Buffalo was second in the NFL in points per game at 31.3 and tied for second in yards per game at 396.4. The Bills, behind quarterback Josh Allen and a talented skill position group, was third in passing yards per game at 288.8. Allen became the first NFL QB with at least 4,500 passing yards, 35 TD passes and five rushing TDs in a season, and wide receiver Stefon Diggs set franchise records with a league-leading 1,535 yards and 127 receptions on the way to PFWA All-NFL and All-AFC honors.
- PFWA
First Team All Pro – Stefon Diggs
There are five excellent candidates for three wideout spots, so I'm going to make two sets of fans very angry. Let's start with the league leader in receiving yards, Diggs, who was expected to be getting into daily fistfights with Josh Allen by this point of the season. Those post-trade expectations could not have turned out to be more wrong. Diggs has had a preternatural link with his new quarterback all season and has pushed the Bills to a new level.
The former Vikings star leads the league in catches and targets, but he's more than strictly volume. NFL Next Gen Stats assigns Diggs 158 targets and an expected catch rate on those passes of 64.5%. His actual catch rate is 75.9%, for a difference of 11.4%; the only other guy ahead of him with 75 targets or more is the Titans' Corey Davis (13.2%) and the player right below him is Justin Jefferson (9.6%), the guy the Vikings drafted to replace Diggs. What a win-win trade.
- Bill Barnwell, ESPN
Second Team All Pro – Josh Allen, Cole Beasley, Tre'Davious White, Andre Roberts
This is the first time in their careers the Allen and Beasley were named to an All-Pro team. This marks the second time for White and Roberts being named on the All-Pro team. White was named First Team All Pro in 2019 and Roberts was named First Team All Pro in 2018.
Breakout Player of the Year – Josh Allen
There was little in Josh Allen's tape before this season to suggest what was in store for him in 2020. It's not that Allen hadn't shown signs of development or improvement, but they had been small, and the breadth of his issues was still so large that a jump of this magnitude seemed farfetched. But that's what happened.
Allen has played at an All-Pro level for most of the season, still making big plays but also becoming one of the most accurate passers in the league, something that seemed ridiculous to suggest before this year. Allen's adjusted completion rate was 79.1%, more than 15 percentage points higher than his rookie year and a top-five mark among all quarterbacks this season, sitting just behind Drew Brees — the most accurate passer in NFL history.Allen went from being a marginal quarterback with outstanding physical tools to one of the best players in the entire league. And that is a true breakout performance.
- Sam Monson, PFF
Most Improved Player of the Year – Josh Allen
Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who raised his completion percentage by over 10 points and threw for 1,455 yards and 17 touchdowns more than he did in 2019 to lead the club to the AFC's No. 2 seed, was selected as the 2020 NFL Most Improved Player of the Year.
- PFWA
Fantasy Player of the Year – Josh Allen
Allen threw for 4,544 yards with 37 touchdowns to only 10 interceptions. He ran for 421 yards with eight rushing touchdowns and also had a 12-yard receiving touchdown. All of that totaled a league-high 436.1 fantasy points in Draft Kings' fantasy football scoring. The Bills quarterback had the most fantasy points of any player this season.
