Detroit Lions 2020 head coach candidate profile: Brian Daboll no longer has the Patriots stench

On Monday night, Detroit Lions fans huddled around their television to watch their dream head coach perform on national television. 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh had quickly won their hearts with a stingy San Francisco defense and the endorsement of Richard Sherman. All that was left was for him to shut down Josh Allen on “Monday Night Football” and the party would be on.

Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll had different plans, and that because apparent minutes into the game. Saleh’s defense was dominated from start to finish, and both Lions and 49ers fans were left wondering what happened.

So for this week’s offseason preview of First Byte, we wanted to get to know Brian Daboll better. Daboll is also considered one of the more highly-coveted head coaching candidates this year. He interviewed for the Browns job last year, and Buffalo’s offense looks even better in 2020. The Bills are 9-3 and Allen is on the outskirts of MVP conversation.

For the podcast, we got Matthew Fairburn, the Bills beat writer for The Athletic, to give us the full breakdown of Daboll. What’s his offensive philosophy? How much credit does he get for Allen’s development? What kind of coaching staff could he build in Detroit? How likely is he to take the Detroit job over some of the other head coach vacancies? And has he been away from New England long enough to get the “Patriots stench” off of him?

We get answers to that and much, much more from Fairburn in this week’s First Byte 2.0. And if you missed it, be sure to go back to last week’s episode when we talked with Matt Maiocco about Robert Saleh.

As always, you can catch our podcast live (or on demand) on our YouTube and Twitch pages, if you prefer the videocasts.