PITTSFORD, N.Y. – Joe Brady called the first practice at 8:30 in the morning. He had a reason for that, and for a lot of things about the opening day of Buffalo Bills training camp that felt different from what came before.
“We haven’t done a damn thing,” Brady told reporters after the session at St. John Fisher University on Wednesday. “What I don’t want is…we don’t know anything.” Two days into his tenure as the Bills’ head coach, Brady is working to make sure no one in Orchard Park confuses a 12-5 record with a destination.
This is the specific tension the Bills carried into camp: a team talented enough to win a Super Bowl, led by a coach working hard to keep everyone from acting like they already have. The AFC East title went to Drake Maye and the New England Patriots at 14-3 last season. The Bills’ window, genuine as it is, produced a second-place finish. Brady wants the next one opened differently.
The first hint of what different looks like came in 11-on-11 drills, when Josh Allen dropped back and threw to the sideline. DJ Moore caught it, one hand reaching, tracking the ball cleanly, a play that takes most receivers and quarterbacks several practices to coordinate. Allen, speaking to reporters after the session per the Bills’ official training camp recap, put it simply: “I’m just going to throw it. I’m going to pick a spot and let it go.”
The Bills brought Moore in this spring from Chicago precisely because Allen needs a receiver he can commit to before the route finishes. Keon Coleman remains in the picture, but Day 1 went to Moore. Teammates have described him since the first OTA as carrying “a different aura,” not loud, not performative, just the presence of a player who has been in this league long enough to know what urgency looks like on a practice field. On Wednesday, in the most competitive drills of the session, that description held.
Brady’s fingerprints on the program were visible before the offense ever lined up. The earlier 8:30 a.m. practice call is part of a deliberate effort to “maximize the full day,” according to the Bills. He shut down a livestream being conducted by safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson during warm-ups, walking over and ending the broadcast in under a minute. None of it was dramatic. All of it was informative.
The defense, meanwhile, is operating under a structural overhaul. New coordinator Jim Leonhard moved the Bills from a 4-3 to a 3-4 scheme, with Bradley Chubb, Greg Rousseau, Deone Walker, and Landon Jackson expected to anchor the front. The Bills used multiple different starting lineups on the defensive line last season and paid for it late in the year. Whether the scheme change, combined with a healthy Chubb, allows the Bills to disguise their coverages better than they managed in 2025 is one of the central questions this camp needs to answer. Tight end Dalton Kincaid had a productive opening session with no apparent effects from the knee injury that hampered him last season, adding a dimension to the passing game that disappears when he is not available.
Allen, for his part, arrived in Pittsford carrying none of the weight everyone else is. He announced the birth of his first daughter in April, opened camp with a social media post reading “We are back, baby! WE ARE BACK!,” and spent an off-day this week defending the team’s new Nickel City alternate uniforms against a wave of fan criticism. “Stop hating,” he said. He is approaching 5,000 career rushing yards and entering his age-30 season. He knows what this window is.
The Bills break camp in Orchard Park on August 8 before the Return of the Blue & Red practice, with the receiver hierarchy expected to come into clearer focus in the sessions between now and then. James Cook, who won the NFL rushing title on 309 carries last year, is expected to absorb a smaller individual workload under Brady’s more distributed approach, with Ray Davis and Ty Johnson factoring in more heavily. Brady has said publicly that he wants the running back group involved in the passing game, which, combined with Moore and a healthy Kincaid, gives Allen a set of options that looks meaningfully different from what he had twelve months ago.
Brady said Wednesday that he does not want assumptions. The Bills made assumptions last season. They went 12-5 and watched New England win the division anyway. Whether Moore is the receiver Allen has been waiting for, the one who forces defenses to pick their coverage and live with it, is the question this camp has to answer. Whether Brady is the coach who can convert this roster’s genuine talent into a championship is the question the whole season has to answer. One day into Pittsford, Brady’s position is simple: they don’t know anything yet. In western New York, that kind of honesty lands differently when it comes from the head coach. He may be the only person in the building who actually believes it.
