INDIANAPOLIS - When Sean McDermott’s phone buzzed a few weeks ago, he saw that he was getting a text from Troy Vincent, the one-time Buffalo Bills safety who is now executive vice president of football operations for the NFL.

Vincent is a player whose time with the Philadelphia Eagles overlapped with McDermott’s first few years as a low-level assistant coach on Andy Reid’s staff. But the coach’s immediate reaction to the text wasn’t that perhaps Vincent was reaching out to wax poetic about the old days.

“My heart started going a little bit because I’m going, ‘Hey, what didn’t we do right?’” McDermott recalled Monday when he spoke to reporters at the NFL Scouting Combine.

While it’s true that Vincent would definitely be someone who could be calling about a potential violation the Bills might have committed in some aspect of the business, this wasn’t that.

“The next morning, we got on the phone and he offered the invitation on joining the (Competition) committee,” McDermott said. “I was honored, No. 1, and, humbled by it.”

As he should have been. The NFL Competition Committee is the group that reviews all aspects of the game, in particular, any proposed rule changes, and then presents its findings and/or recommendations to the NFL owners who then vote on whether to institute any of the rules.

It is heavy work, to be a member of the committee carries tremendous responsibility, and McDermott was reminded of that a few days ago in a text message from former committee member and Bills general manager, and Pro Football Hall of Famer, Bill Polian.

“Bill is Bill, he’s a legend,” McDermott said. “He served on the committee years ago, and the words he used with me - that he felt like were important years ago- I believe are important and make a lot of sense. He said, ‘Be a guardian of the game.’

“It’s easy for one to go into these meetings and say, ‘Well, this is what’s important for the Buffalo Bills,’ or ‘This is what’s important for my team,’ if you’re Mike Tomlin or whoever else is in there. But that’s not the job. The job description is to do what’s best for the overall league and growing the game and growing it the right way.”

Frank Reich, Ron Rivera and Mike Vrabel lost their head coaching jobs in 2023, so they are no longer on the committee, which is chaired by Falcons CEO Rich McKay. McDermott and Rams coach Sean McVay have now been added, and they join holdovers Mike Tomlin, head coach of the Steelers, plus Giants president and owner John Mara, Cowboys COO, executive vice-president and director of player personnel Stephen Jones, Dolphins general manager Chris Grier, and Bengals executive vice-president Katie Blackburn.

Obviously, to be one of only three coaches among the group speaks to the respect McDermott has earned around the league.

One of the first questions McDermott asked Vincent was about the time commitment.

“I just took a minute or two to ask, ‘Hey, what does it entail?’” he said. “Because I’m sensitive to spending as much time as I can with our team and the things that revolve around our organization. And we went through that for a few minutes, and then I decided to to accept the invitation.”

McDermott has already attended meetings shortly after he came aboard, and those have continued since he arrived in Indianapolis on Sunday and will go on for a couple days before he will break away to start honing in on the college prospects at the Combine.

“It’s been very interesting, very educational at the same time and getting a chance just to be around the different parties that come in there, the different groups, whether it be health and safety or officiating or what have you,” he said.

NFL rule changes the committee is looking at

Already, the committee has shot down a possible change regarding fumbling the ball out of the end zone. If an offensive player loses a fumble that rolls into and out of the end zone, it is a turnover, even if the defensive team did not make a recovery.

There had been a push to either allow the offensive team to maintain possession at the spot of the fumble, or maybe move it back to the original line of scrimmage with loss of down, but that’s not going to happen. The committee felt that it is the ballcarrier’s responsibility to maintain possession of the ball.

In the Bills’ playoff loss to the Chiefs, Buffalo benefited from this exact situation when Jordan Poyer forced a Mecole Hardman fumble that went out of bounds in the end zone, giving the ball to the Bills. It might have been a huge play had they come back to win the game.

There is some momentum for changing kickoffs, though. Last year, the kickoff became almost irrelevant as only 22% were returned. “We know we won’t go back into what we saw last year when it became a ceremonial play,” Vincent told NFL Network.

The committee is reviewing the way the spring league, the former XFL, handled kickoffs. The kicker teed up at his own 30-yard-line and the coverage team lined up at the opposing 35-yard-line with the kickoff return team five yards away at the 30. No one was allowed to move until the kickoff was touched by the return man.

This style greatly reduced the dangerous high-speed collisions that the NFL has been trying to get out of the game and the committee apparently believes it warrants serious discussion.

Other issues that the committee will review are eliminating the hip-drop tackle that has caused numerous injuries, and what to do about the the tush-push short-yardage play made popular by the Eagles, and something that has worked very well for the Bills, too.

“We haven't visited that specific topic to this point,” McDermott said. “My stance on the push play is that whatever the league decides is the best thing, that's what we'll do. So I've just been one over the years, not just because I'm on the committee now, but I'll voice my opinion on it and what I feel like is best for the game. And then we adjust as needed. I’m learning the cadence. Learning where I fit in and when to speak and when to listen. And so I think that’s just part of the first kind of the rookie campaign at this point.”

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out each Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Sean McDermott will have a say on NFL rule changes with new role