Easy Does it for Bills Rookies in First Exposure to Pro Football

The focus is on not giving their minds and bodies too much too soon.

A time will come when the Buffalo Bills coaches will push the team's rookies to their limit and beyond. That time is most definitely not this weekend, coach Sean McDermott said at the start of rookie camp on Friday.

In fact, McDermott and his staff have donned proverbial kid gloves for the proceedings.

"I told them this morning: `No one's going to make the team based off this practice alone, so let's just get out there, know where you're supposed to be and when you're supposed to be there and, you know, put one foot in front of the other and let's just crawl before we walk and kind of get the boulders of what of what this system is supposed to look like and what their job is in the system,' " McDermott said.

To that end, the coaches plan to probe more than push. That applies to every phase of what they're doing — on the field and off.

"It's a wide range of conditioning levels," McDermott said. "And part of it, quite honestly, is because a lot of these players have been on the banquet circuit, or Pro Day circuit and they're not really working to get ready for football, and now we expect them to go out here and play football. So we made it as a point as coaches after the draft was over to make sure that in the last two weeks, these players are putting themselves through football drills, even the rest in between, you know, getting in the huddle, back out, going to another drill, another rep."

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The idea, McDermott added, is to reduce the chance of early injuries that can keep them off the field for all or portions of the spring and even into training camp.

Said the coach: "One of the goals is to just get through the camp healthy so that we can really start to get the guys in our in our stream, in our current, in our flow — get them more in shape and get them acclimated with the system. And then they continue to grow from there."

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After practice, first-round draft pick Kaiir Elam spoke of the significance of the best ability being availability.

"I go out there, listen to my coaches, make plays, and, you know, have fun," he said. "At the of the day, help this team win. That's the most important. Help this team win. Stay available. I'm going to go get treatment right now."

The Bills were one of the healthiest teams in the league throughout last season. They believe their approach to training and conditioning throughout the COVID-19 pandemic had a lot to do with it.

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This season will mark a return to normal routines, however, even though the pandemic continues to rage.

For the Bills, that means a return to St. John Fisher College for training camp for the first time since 2019.

"You kind of go back to your notes on how we we did things in 2019 and what we liked, what we didn't like," McDermott said, "and so our staff helps me a lot with those notes and what worked, what didn't work and then how you want to improve things. And you go back and sometimes you forget. Even some of the staff wasn't here when we last did certain things the way we do things this time of year when the players are around like they've been this year, as opposed to the last couple."

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Nick Fierro is the publisher of Bills Central. Check out the latest Bills news at www.si.com/nfl/bills and follow Fierro on Twitter at @NickFierro. Email to Nicky300@aol.com.