The Buffalo Bills have confirmed there have at least been talks about returning to their training camp home away from home in 2022–but there’s also nothing set in stone.
Earlier this week, reports surfaced stating the team and St. John Fisher College near Rochester were discussing a potential plan to bring the Bills’ training camp back.
Due to COVID-19 over the past few years, Buffalo has not traveled to the school in Pittsford for camp. With pandemic safety protocols from the government and NFL starting to be pulled back a bit, a return appears to be on the table.
While not confirming it will happen, Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane did both say there have been conversations held from the NFL scouting combine this week.
“That’s certainly been talk about of going back to camp at St. John Fisher, and we’ll see where that goes,” McDermott said. “There’s pros and cons to both, really. I think we’ve documented those over the years and so we’ll just see where it goes.”
Per Beane, the contract the team had with the school to hold training camp at their facilities had expired during their time away.
Beane did add that not going is an option, too.
When training camp was not held in Rochester, it was at the team’s facilities in Orchard Park. In order to do so, the Bills upgraded their infrastructure and taking advantage of that might be easier.
“If everything works out and they want us and we work it out, we would definitely go there. We’ve had success, but being here, we’ve done it twice in Orchard Park as well and that’s worked well, so we feel like we’ve got two good options. We’ll let some of that play out,” Beane said.
The GM also floated the idea out there that a rotation could be an option as well via the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.
“But at this point, let’s say we went (to Fisher) this year, we could go up this year and then say, ‘You know what, let’s try it back (in Orchard Park) next year.’ We know that we can be successful doing it at Fisher. We also know we can be successful staying home in Orchard Park,” Beane said.
Within the next few weeks we should have our answer on what the Bills decid to do with training camp, Beane said.
In recent years the Bills had appeared to be pushing away from moving training camp to the campus a bit. While sometimes stating the club enjoys moving things to St. John Fisher, actions speak a bit louder than words.
Since McDermott took over as head coach the number of practices the team had held each year at St. John Fisher continued to shrink even prior to the pandemic.
But it doesn’t appear to be totally unrealistic to see the Bills take a short camp trip down the thruway once again.
The previous report on training camp said Buffalo’s stint in Rochester, if it comes to fruition in 2022, could be only two weeks long.