PITTSFORD, N.Y. - Joe Brady walked into his first training camp practice as the Buffalo Bills’ head coach under a steady soaking rain, and if there’s any wedding-day luck attached to that kind of weather, he’s going to need plenty of it.
This job does not come with a honeymoon. Brady is 36, brand new to the head-coaching seat, and already operating under the kind of heat most coaches spend years trying to avoid.
Fans are impatient. The media is watching every move.
The betting market has made its opinion clear. In Buffalo, the expectation is not simply to contend - it is to finish the job.
Brady didn’t try to soften that reality Wednesday morning at St. John Fisher University.
“I like to think there’s not a head coach in the league that buys into a grace period,” Brady said. “I know I can’t speak for everybody, but that’s not how my brain is wired.
“I understand what comes with this job, but that’s what I wanted. I want the guys to understand what comes with that.
I have no pressure. I don’t feel any pressure, and that’s not in a negative way, but I wake up, I work, I try to do the best job I can do and get my guys in the best position to have success, and they go from there.”
That’s the assignment now: turn a team that already believes it has championship pieces into the one that finally breaks through. Owner Terry Pegula made that plain when he fired Sean McDermott and said the Bills already had a championship roster, then elevated general manager Brandon Beane to president of football operations. Brady was brought in to push Buffalo through what Pegula called the “proverbial playoff wall” and into the Super Bowl.
Seven months later, the roster still looks unfinished, especially on defense. More than half of Buffalo’s defensive starters from last postseason remain unemployed.
The pressure around all of this has only sharpened because of Josh Allen. The quarterback is on a Hall of Fame track, and the Bills’ failure to reach the top with him became part of the case against McDermott.
Pegula pointed to Allen’s heartbreak after the overtime loss to the Denver Broncos as the emotional trigger for the coaching change. The Bills even let Allen sit in on interviews for McDermott’s replacement, and they ultimately landed on Brady - the coach Allen had wanted to replace offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey midway through the 2023 season.
Allen’s presence is the reason the expectations stay so high, even with the rest of the roster still taking shape. Around the league, consensus offseason player rankings included only Allen and running back James Cook among Bills players, while the NFL’s annual player-voted list added left tackle Dion Dawkins.
That hasn’t stopped Buffalo from being treated like a heavyweight. At most major sportsbooks, the Bills are entering camp as AFC favorites to win the Super Bowl at plus-1,000, just ahead of the Baltimore Ravens and behind only the plus-500 Los Angeles Rams leaguewide. They are also the biggest division favorite in the league, even after finishing second to the New England Patriots last season and moving on from McDermott in part because of that result.
The betting public, though, is still only assigning Buffalo about a 9 percent chance to win it all.
That’s the burden of being the favorite in a 32-team league built on parity, where big bodies collide every week, officiating can turn into a debate over what a catch even is, and the ball itself never seems to bounce the same way twice.
Brady doesn’t sound interested in using any of that as an excuse.
“We can talk about what we want to do and the expectation of our football team,” he said, “but we haven’t done a damn thing. You know what I mean?
What I don’t want is, like, ‘Well, we know we have a good offense.’ We don’t know anything.
We haven’t earned a damn thing.”
There’s more newness around him than just the head coach title. Buffalo also has a first-time NFL defensive coordinator in Jim Leonhard, and the defense is learning his scheme while adjusting to different assistant coaches. That side of the ball should look choppy early in camp, especially compared with an offense that has continuity.
Allen said it plainly: “It’s new everything,” he said. “We got a new stadium, a new coach.
In my personal life, I’ve got a lot of ‘news’ too. It is different.
“Change isn’t always the easiest, but sometimes it’s for the better. We’ve just got to keep moving forward.”
The message around the Bills has not changed. The standard is championships.
The pressure is immediate. And for Brady, the rain that hit his first practice may end up being one of the easier things he has to get through this season.
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Bills Camp Battle Could Decide More Than One Linebacker Job
Training camp is opening with Buffalos linebacker room carrying more intrigue than usual, and the inside spot next to Terrel Bernard looks like one of the first real tests on the roster. Kaleb Elarms-Orr and Dorian Williams are in the mix there, while the outside jobs are expected to belong to Gregory Rousseau and Joey Bosa, giving the Bills a veteran edge on the perimeter even as the middle stays unsettled.
Bernards health hangs over the whole group, because any hiccup there could force the Bills to rethink more than just one position. If the plan starts to wobble, Buffalo has a few short-term answers it can explore, and the depth chart behind the starters already has names like Joe Andreessen, Keonta Jenkins and others waiting for their chance to matter. [Read more 🡒]
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Gardner-Johnson has pushed back on any idea that he is becoming a distraction, and he has also tried to frame the chatter around his reputation in a broader way. Still, the scrutiny has only grown, with Sports Illustrated insider Alex Brasky taking aim on social media and Gardner-Johnson continuing to defend the way he carries himself by pointing to the success of the teams he has played for. [Read more 🡒]
Why Bills Fans Should Be Wary Of The Justin Herbert Buzz
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There is also a reason this buzz is being taken seriously beyond the tabloid sheen. Herbert now has a new offensive coordinator and, on paper, a setup that could help him take another step if the system clicks right away. The question for Buffalo observers is the same one that follows any AFC quarterback with this kind of upside and a fresh start around him: whether the attention stays a sideshow, or whether it ends up being part of a bigger leap. [Read more 🡒]