Yes, Bills Safety Micah Hyde Acknowledges `Dad Wall'

The birth of his two children during the pandemic has forced him to alter his training routines, not that he's complaining.

As a nine-year NFL veteran, Buffalo Bills safety Micah Hyde has seen and experienced every possible way an offense can attack. There's no use trying to fool him. And he scaled his "rookie wall" in 2013 with the Green Bay Packers.

As a nearly two-year veteran of fatherhood, he admitted on Thursday to still being green and how that can affect his performance. There's no use for him to deny it.

Micah Jr. was born to Hyde and wife Amanda at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March of 2020. Their daughter Maverick was born in August of 2021.

Since then, he's hit the proverbial "Dad Wall" and is still trying to get safely to the other side.

"I say that because I think that here in Buffalo, when the weather gets bad and I think also due to COVID, I just happened to pick the right time to have two kids," he said after practice. "Right at the beginning of COVID was our first child, so that's all we know is having kids during COVID. And I know that it's tough on my wife, I know it's tough on a lot of the wives in the building. ... You can't take the kids outside because it's too cold.

"... So I know my wife is trapped in the house with two babies all day, and that's not ideal. So obviously when I get home, that's when my dad wall just comes in and I'm just like, `hey, you know, put your head down and we all have got to work to hopefully, you know, mid-February."

Micah could run, but he couldn't hide.

"Mavvy was born right before our first game," he said, "and so a lot of chaos, a lot of stuff going on. Obviously you've got to make sure daughter's fine, you've got to make sure your wife's fine. But at the same time, I think that it kind of gave me a boost to being in a season. I wasn't getting as much sleep and I was kind of just coming in here and just going, just drinking my coffee and just keep trying to get through the day. And it kind of gave me an extra boost early in the season.

I don't think I hit a wall then, not at all. I think that now, as the season gets longer and you're waking up and the sun's not out and by the time you get out of here, the sun's long gone and it's dark out — I think that's kind of when the wall hits you."

Hyde is in the process of scaling it. But it's all new to him. It's like he's a rookie all over again.

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.