I didn't say that. You made most of that up in your own head.
I have worked as a journalist and no editor would ever allow 25 anonymous sources.
The way it's supposed to work is that you work hard to get your sources to let you attribute them as closely as possible and have to be willing to not publish people if they won't agree to a level that is sufficient. For example, a former coach says he doesn't want you to use his name, you suggest to use, "a former coach on the Bill's defense" or something like "former positional coach from Carolina". That's not what is done here.
The entry level guy who cuts film can be referred to as a coach.. the person selling pretzels can be a team source that passed through one bills drive (oh, every single coach who has ever entered the stadium could also be a coach who has passed through one bills drive.. opponent, interviewee for a position someone who visited the stadium) so you can see why journalists would want to be as specific as possible.
That's always been loose in sports writing, but this is egregious. The big reason for this is to allow the reader to gauge how reliable the source is and second.. to examine why the source is sharing this information. In this case, it's sort of odd that it happened a couple years ago and we never heard a peep about it.
As you can easily see, I have thought McDermott needs to go for awhile now due to the amount of drama around this team, but I have a strong opinion about responsible journalism and I'm not willing to unhinge myself and forgive bad journalism because it advance my own agenda.