The Bills head into the bye week off a disappointing 32-30 loss to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, with the winning points coming down to a 43-yard heave from Kyler Murray to DeAndre Hopkins.
"At the end of the day, they had two special players and made a special play,” McDermott told reporters on a video conference.
Murray eluded the pass rush to his left and then found Hopkins toward the corner of the end zone. Hopkins making a leaping catch with three Bills on him.
"When I looked over we had three guys. I haven’t seen the video of it yet or anything like that, but we had three guys there," McDermott said. "Number one, you don’t want the quarterback to be able to extend the play like that, number one, stating the obvious. I thought we had him on the run a little bit there and we had him towards the sideline and it looked like we had a rusher fall down and then another guy come as he unloaded. So, you always think about what we could have done differently. ... That’s the first thing we do, first thing I do.”
KYLER MURRAY HAIL MARY TO DEANDRE HOPKINS🚀 pic.twitter.com/z4aThLrN3p
— PFF (@PFF) November 16, 2020
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McDermott had called timeout with 11 seconds remaining before the touchdown.
"We had timeouts to burn," he said. "I was trying to give our rushers a rest and our players a rest and make sure they understood the situation and take a look at their formation at the same time. And so we try to do that, to gather as much information as we can prior to a critical play or, in that situation, the last play.”
While McDermott repeatedly gave the Cardinals credit, he was clearly miffed and said the Bills needed to try to knock the ball down and "not be interception minded in that situation."
“It hurts. It definitely hurts. It hurts bad,” he said. “At the end of the day, that game should have never come down to one play. … Unfortuntely, it did. We take our lump, live by it and learn from it and it’s go to drive us all harder.”
