The Buffalo Bills won 33-30 against the Las Vegas Raiders at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday. However, Bills head coach Joe Brady caught flak online when he tried to defend safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson by surprisingly roping in James Cook into the conversation. Brady basically implied Gardner-Johnson’s spitting incident wasn’t as bad as Cook’s fumbling issues.

Both issues never needed connecting. Former Bills player Leonard Fournette called the HC out for the slip.

On the October 22 episode of the 4th and South podcast, Fournette spoke about how repeatedly calling out Cook for fumbling the ball in Week 5 was unnecessary.

“I just don’t see how you can call out your All-Pro running back like that,” Fournette said. “You don’t see nobody else doing it. Oh, besides well, it’s not All-Pro, but Harbaugh calling out his running back. That’s crazy to me.”

Cook has fumbled four times this season. He fumbled the ball twice against the Rams, losing one of them. It is a worrying situation, and Joe Brady already sounded an alarm for the RB.

“That can’t happen, and it’s going to cost us football games,” Brady said afterward, “and it almost cost us (Monday night). We can’t confuse that because we won the game. That’s OK.

“It’s got to improve, or the carries are going to decrease.”

The problem is a carryover from last year. Cook tallied six fumbles in 2025 during the regular season, of which three were lost. He also lost one in the Divisional Round against the Denver Broncos, a game in which he posted an impressive 117 rushing yards. Buffalo had a 7-3 lead over Denver up until that turnover.

That criticism is deserved. But what was not warranted was the abrupt connection with Gardner-Johnson, whose conduct deserved backlash. He spat at Raiders TE Brock Bowers and was even ejected from the game. Gardner-Johnson later reflected upon the incident and expressed his regret, even admitting that Bowers never did anything to him.

Fournette criticized Brady’s approach in this matter. Having played under him briefly when Brady was still an assistant, the former RB described Brady’s mentality as “fake it till you make it.”

He openly criticized Brady’s media approach, comparing it to coaches like Bruce Arians. Per Fournette, the former Tampa Bay head coach was the type of coach who would criticize someone like Tom Brady in the media, after having made that criticism known to Brady too.

“Joe Brady is not like that,” Fournette said. “He’s going to say one thing and say another thing when the camera.”

Co-host Jarvis Landry also noted that if there was an issue regarding a player’s technique, it was the head coach’s job to rectify the problem, not lambast them in front of the media over multiple weeks.

“Look, these are conversations that I’m having with my guys I ain’t having with y’all,” Landry said. “This is all in-house business. All this outside stuff is noise. And you know, we see coaches, you know, not as regularly in the NFL, more in college, you know, say things like this where you [are] throwing your guys under the bus.

“It’s one of those things where yeah, these are conversations that we having behind closed doors, but to the media, I don’t need to continue to stress how important not fumbling the football is and bringing up James Cook in a bad light.”

Joe Brady brought up two unrelated issues on the same plane. One warranted punishment, while the other needs to be approached with better coaching. The head coach should have thought of another trajectory or comparison to add weight to his defense of Gardner-Johnson.

The post “That’s Crazy to Me”: Ex-Bills RB Slams Joe Brady for Publicly Criticizing James Cook’s Fumbling Issues appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.