Left tackle Dion Dawkins has been with the Bills since 2017, so he has never played a game in the NFL for a head coach other than Sean McDermott.

That will change in Week 1 this season when the Bills face the Texans with Joe Brady calling the shots. McDermott was fired after the team’s playoff loss to the Broncos last January that Dawkins compared to the part of a movie when “a drastic thing happens where the castle kinda gets a little shaky” during an appearance on NFL Network.

Advertisement

Dawkins said it feels like the Bills are “getting to the climax” of such a movie in 2026 and he laid out what’s on the line for the Bills in stark terms.

“Everybody has to do better,” Dawkins said. “So we’re all going to be that and do that so we can get over that hump and we can be exactly what we want to be and stop talking about it, right? I’m ready for it. It’s time. I’m telling you, man, it’s kill or be killed, and we’re not playing around. We are not playing around with nobody.”

A movie script would have the Bills win a Super Bowl title that makes all of their painful losses in recent seasons part of a story of triumph, but real life doesn’t always provide the kind of happy endings that you find at a cinema.