Pittsford, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) - The Buffalo Bills took the field Wednesday for Day 1 of training camp at St. John Fisher University.
Ahead of practice in the pouring rain in Rochester, new head coach Joe Brady said he couldn't be happier about this kind of start for his team.
"There's a mentality that I want us to play with, and I think it's just perfect," said Brady with reporters on Wednesday. "It's the first day, 8:30 a.m. practice, it's raining. It's just what I want. It's got to be a tough camp, and you get a pulse of the team and where you want it to be. This isn't supposed to be just fun. We want to push it, and the guys to feel some type of way. I'm excited for us to figure that out, and learn and go through it all."
To start camp, only wide receiver Tyrell Shavers won't be out there, as he's on the Physically Unable to Perform list. He suffered a knee injury in last year's playoffs against the Jacksonville Jaguars. However, there still are some guys on a limited rep count.
Brady says there's only one way he knows how to be, and that doesn't change just because he's now the head coach of the Bills.
"I'm just being myself. That's all I know," he said. "I told the team, 'We've never been here before, and I can't be anybody I'm not.' I'm going to act a certain way. There's standards and a personality that I want us to be about, and If I see things that's not the standard or not living up to it or getting in the way of it, then I'll address it."
Practices are earlier this season, as they'll begin at 8:30 a.m. Brady feels there are good reasons as to why.
"Being able to maximize the full day, we've got a certain amount of time restraints. I don't want to have dinner any later, but I want to make sure we have enough meeting time," he said.
"I think there's a mindset and personality of, 'Let's wake up and let's go.'"
This year, the Bills are spending quite a bit less time at St. John Fisher, and Brady knows they have a new home in Orchard Park that they have to get acclimated to.
"There's something to me wanting to get into a mindset of, 'What are these game weeks going to look like?'" Brady said.
"We come back, we have the Red-Blue [practice], we're into the routine. It's not going to be necessarily like a game week, but we have that preseason game and getting the guys back into the routine. I love getting away, but I want to make sure there's a lot of different nuances, in regard to us getting back to the stadium and getting into that flow."
While training camp in Rochester is shorter, Brady sees a positive in being at St. John Fisher.
"I like coming away to camp, because there's that focus where there's a lot of things going on outside of football, but we're in this all together. And we focus on the football and the connection piece. It's a lot of things that folks don't put lot of attention on, but the connection piece is so critical. And when the guys have time together are they just being with themselves, they have to make sure they're in the playbook, but are they hanging with each other? Because when you get back to Buffalo, sometimes your work day is over and you're going home because you have a wife and kids. You want to establish a mentality that we're working towards, and when the guys take the ownership and really believe in who you're going to be, that's when it comes to life," Brady said.
It was raining hard for much of Wednesday's practice, but that doesn't bother Brady even one little, tiny bit.
"Who says it's a crappy day? It's football, right?" he said. "There's never a bad day to play football. Is it crappy when it snows? We play in Buffalo, and we don't care. Just put the ball down and let's go play. I think this is awesome. If it's raining, cool. Let's see how we respond. Who can go through the good and the bad? I think it's perfect."
Brady was asked if there were a lot of jobs open, and he pretty much bristled. He has one message to the players:
"When I had my end-of-offseason meetings with every player, I was like, 'A lot of guys want to talk about something. Go take it. Go take the job. I don't care how much money you make, I don't care how many years you have left on the contract.' We're going to give everybody all these opportunities, but we're in an opportunity at training camp. Go take the job! If you want to earn it, nothing is going to be handed to the guys," Brady said.
Brady knows about the outside expectations out there, and says there are no expectations in his locker room.
"All I focus on is today," he said. "We can talk about what we want to do and the expectations, but we haven't done a damn thing. What I don't want is, 'We know we have a good offense.' We don't know anything. We haven't earned a damn thing."
