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Joe Brady’s already making moves to shore up his staff in Buffalo. The Bills announced Friday that they’ve hired John Fox as a senior assistant coach, bringing some serious head coaching experience to a first-timer’s staff.
Fox has been around the block. The 71-year-old coached the Carolina Panthers from 2002 to 2010, then moved to the Denver Broncos (2011-14) before wrapping up his head coaching career with the Chicago Bears from 2015 to 2017. He’s been to two Super Bowls as a head coach and spent years as a defensive coordinator before that.
More recently, Fox worked as a defensive assistant with the Indianapolis Colts in 2022 and the Detroit Lions in 2023.
The hire lines up with what Brady said he was looking for when he first got the job. He wanted someone with head coaching experience – but not someone who’d come in acting like they had all the answers.
“Full transparency, I’d love to have [someone on staff with head coaching experience]; it’s not a must. There’s a fine line when you bring in coaches, and I’ve worked with coaches that have been in certain systems, and like, ‘This is the only way to do it.’ If there’s people that have had the experience that I can lean on will be great, but they’re not sitting there saying that they have all the answers. More so someone that can help me, bounce ideas off of. … The compatibility is way more important to me.”
Brady’s 36 years old — the youngest head coach in the NFL right now — and he’s never been a head coach before at any level.
Fox is just one piece of what’s now a 20-assistant coaching staff that the Bills rolled out on Friday. Brady also promoted Rob Boras, who was coaching tight ends, to running game coordinator and tight ends coach. That move came after Aaron Kromer, the offensive line coach who’d been handling the running game, decided to retire.
On the defensive side, Joe Danna — one of the few holdovers from the previous staff — got bumped up from safeties coach to secondary coach.
