ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Remember the era when National Football League training camps were grueling, month-long, physical competitions in the summer sun peppered with two-a-days?
No more.
The NFL Players Association and its Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the league have ended that.
Two-a-days are history — the Bills last had them in 2001, Gregg Williams’ first season as coach — and practice sessions are dramatically shorter with mandated days off.
Indeed, Buffalo’s training camp has been shrinking in length in recent years, as evidenced by the 2018 schedule which was released Wednesday.
This year, the Bills open camp on Thursday, July 26, and end it on Wednesday, Aug. 15 at St. John Fisher College. In that span, Buffalo will conduct 16 workouts, 15 at SJF — four of those will be closed to the public — and one at New Era Field (Friday, Aug. 3 at 6:15 p.m.).
The only night practice at the Pittsford college will be the opener, a 5:30 start. Of the other 10 sessions at SJF, seven will be at 8:45 a.m. with three at 2:15 p.m.
Tickets are required for six of the workouts, including the one in Orchard Park.
Today marks the end of the Bills’ mandatory minicamp before the team reconvenes at St. John Fisher, seven weeks from now.
What did second-year coach Sean McDermott see during the current session before his 88-player squad starts a 42-day break?
“I’ll give the players credit; they’ve done a tremendous job this offseason of being in Buffalo and working their tails off,” he said. “It’s been a good environment around the building, we’ve got a lot of positive energy around this place right now.
“There’s obviously some things rule-wise (that) change in terms of mandatory versus voluntary (workouts), but other than that, the complexion of what we do really doesn’t change all that much.”
McDermott added, “The players know that this time of year, there’s really not an overall set depth chart. We try and give you (media) guys the best (we) can and I respect that you have jobs to do, but, by in large, there’s really not a set depth chart.
“We’re looking at our roster and trying to find and evaluate players at all positions (including) quarterback. Some of what we’re doing at (that) position is also evaluating other players, so we can evaluate the receivers along with (QBs) AJ (McCarron), Nate (Peterman) and Josh (Allen).”
He pointed out, “There’s a lot of different ways and reasons for doing what we’re doing, and that’s true at every position. You’ll see some twos (second-teamers) play with the ones, some threes play with the twos, (and so forth). Those are some of the questions you want to answer this time of year and onto the early portion of training camp.
“Once we get into the second, third, certainly the fourth week of training camp, then we’ll start to really try and build some continuity with the ones so that it carries forward into the season.”
Of course, due to CBA rules, teams aren’t allowed to have full-contact workouts during training camp.
“It’s tough from a standpoint of the interior line play … there’s very little contact for us,” McDermott said. “The evaluation part of it is a challenge, but we know that going into it, so it’s a little easier this time of year to evaluate some of the skill position players at practice on both sides of the ball.
“The interior line play, you can see some of it, but really, when the pads come on that’s when you can evaluate further. You have to be careful not to make too early of a final evaluation of a player until you really put the pads on because that’s how our game is played.”
Then, too, at this point, all three units aren’t at the same stage.
“We’ve got a decent amount of the offense in at this point,” McDermott admitted. “Naturally, with where and what we’re allowed to do through NFL rules, it’s challenging to have it all in … not being in full pads.
“The defense is in its second year and really, so is the special teams. The offense is a little bit behind in that regard, but we can still function if we had a game tomorrow, for the most part. We’ll go back through the installation schedule again in the first couple weeks of training camp … the players will have a pretty good feel of what’s coming next and what’s expected.”
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
