Like every Western New York football fan, Jim McNally was disappointed at the end of the Buffalo Bills’ playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
However, there was a pretty good silver lining for McNally.
“I always was brought up with the Bills, and I felt bad when they lost,” McNally said.
“But I’m kind of in a Catch-22,” McNally said laughing. “I wasn’t as devastated as loyal Bills Mafia, because the Bengals pay me.”
McNally, 78, retired as a full-time NFL offensive line coach after serving a four-year stint with the Bills from 2004 to 2007. He didn’t go into total retirement.
He’s still working as a part-time consultant for Cincinnati, and he will be going to Super Bowl LVI this week to watch his Bengals face the Los Angeles Rams.
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“When I retired from the Bills in 2007, I spent a couple years with the Saints and a couple years with the Jets,” McNally said, referring to part-time consulting gigs. “Then I’ve been with the Bengals the last eight years or so as a consultant.
“They give me an iPad, they let me go to training camp, they let me work with the players,” he said. “I do a lot of projects during the week, looking at the defensive linemen.”
It speaks to McNally’s stature in the NFL that the Bengals have kept him on through changes in coaching staffs. Head coach Zac Taylor succeeded Marvin Lewis in Cincinnati in 2019.
“They called me and said you’re as much a part of us as anybody we want to take you,” he said. “They’re taking four extra planes. ... They’re flying me out Thursday.”
McNally is one of the most respected offensive line coaches in NFL history. The 1966 University at Buffalo graduate worked as an offensive line coach for 28 years. He coached for Cincinnati from 1980 to 1994, for Carolina from ’95 to ’98 and for the New York Giants from ’99 to 2003. Then Mike Mularkey brought him to the Bills for his final full-time gig.
McNally’s reputation is so good, then-Panthers General Manager Bill Polian hired him to be Carolina’s line coach even before picking a head coach for the expansion franchise.
McNally helps scout the Bengals’ upcoming opponents during the season.
“For the upcoming opponent, I do maybe four games on,” he said. “I take the front line people and I put them in categories, like their best pass rushers, their best pass rushes, when they get double-teamed, and I put this play here and this play there.”
In the offseason, he continues evaluations for the scouting staff.
“I do evaluations of draft prospects,” he said. “They might give me some runs or protections to look at and make my comments. I have an office there. ... I spend three, four or five hours (a day) on my iPad doing what I do for the Bengals.”
McNally’s work ethic is legendary, even in the hardworking coaching profession.
Anthony Munoz, the greatest Bengals lineman ever, spoke to it in his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech in 1998.
“Jim McNally taught me a lot,” Munoz said. “Jim was the kind of guy, my first two offseasons I lived in Southern California, and about 10 o'clock at night, he would call me. After viewing tapes all summer or all offseason, he would say, 'I found some new technique. Get down in your stance and I'll show you what to do.’ So the first time he calls me, I have the phone in my ear and I get down in my stance and he says, 'Now shift your weight to your left, shift it to the right.' Now I'm sitting there only having played one year in the NFL and I'm doing everything he says. And we're 2,000 miles apart from each other.
“The second time he calls and goes, 'I've got something else, get down in your stance,’ ” Munoz recalled. “So I'm laying on the bed and say, 'OK, I'm in my stance.' 'Shift to the left.' I said 'OK,' I roll over and grab the pillow I say 'I feel it.' I thank Jim McNally for all those years, the 13 years I had him as my offensive line coach.”
McNally was inducted into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.
This will be McNally’s fourth Super Bowl. He was on the sideline with the Bengals when they lost to San Francisco in 1982 and 1989 and with the Giants when they lost to Baltimore in 2001.
“I was there with the Bengals in ’82 in Detroit when we played the 49ers,” he said. "We were on the 1-foot line and couldn’t score. Kenny Anderson completed a bunch of passes. It was a fairly close game. Then we were going to win the game in Miami, but Joe Montana took them down to win it.”
Montana’s TD pass to John Taylor with 34 seconds left won the game, 20-16.
McNally marvels at Cincinatti's second-year quarterback Joe Burrow.
“Patrick Mahomes is unbelievable,” McNally said of the Kansas City star. “But as far as consistency and accuracy, Joe Burrow may be as good as anyone. Obviously, Josh Allen is 250 pounds and he’s terrific too. But, this Joe Burrow, nothing fazes him.”
McNally suffered a broken hip in a car accident near his Lockport-area home in September.
“It’s been five months, I had rehab, within two or three weeks I was walking, and now I’m fine,” he said.
His recovery was helped by the fact he keeps himself in great shape. Before his accident, McNally was doing 100 pullups a day.
“I could do maybe 12 full ones in a row – where you go all the way down and pull yourself all the way up with a wide grip,” he said. “Those are hard.”
