Bills happy to kick off vacation
One reason the Buffalo Bills players like coach Dick Jauron is his habit of giving them an early jump on summer vacation.
Jauron didn’t cut the team’s June minicamp a day short like he did a year ago, but he limited Thursday’s scheduled 90-minute practice to only 40 minutes. That’s an indication of how pleased he is about the way the offseason went.
It has been a long offseason, beginning with the conditioning program in April and continuing with 12 voluntary workouts (organized team activities) and the just-completed three-day mandatory minicamp.
With all that time on the job, Jauron believes the players have earned some time off before they reconvene for training camp in six weeks.
“They have worked awfully hard. They need to get away. They need some rest. They need some relaxation,” Jauron said after the morning walkthrough. “But they need to stay on top of everything, and that was essentially our message to them today. You’ve got to get some room, but you also have to stay fit. You have to stay in your books. You have to know what’s going on and you’ve got to come back ready to go. We’ve made a lot of progress, but we certainly have a long way to go.”
This spring has been a bit more tranquil than last year when the Bills were dealing with Jason Peters’ contract holdout and Marshawn Lynch’s hit-and-run case.
Even with Terrell Owens drawing more media attention to the Bills, the focus has been solely on football, which is a good thing.
“What you do this time of the year can have an effect on what happens during the season,” wide receiver Lee Evans said. “I thought we got a lot of work done this offseason that’s going to allow us to hit the ground running when we get to training camp.”
Jauron said this offseason has been better than last year from a production standpoint, which comes as no surprise to him since the players have had another year to gain a better grasp of the system.
“We’re certainly advanced beyond it, and we should be,” he said. “They’re a year more mature in the things that we do, in knowing what we want. You’d love to believe that you got better. You’d love to believe that on the field talent-wise. We’ve had a year to study what we did, what we didn’t like, what we liked. We kept stuff, threw stuff out. So hopefully we’re a better football team. The flip side is so is everybody else probably.”
There was plenty to like about the Bills’ offseason workouts.
The spark Owens provided to the offense was evident from the first practice. His play-making ability is a welcome addition to a unit that will feature more no-huddle as part of its package.
The defense, with its returning veterans, free agent and rookie additions, flashed some big-play capability by getting after the quarterback and creating turnovers.
No matter how good the Bills looked this offseason, there is only so much you can evaluate in helmets and shorts. The real test comes when the pads go on.
But the Bills are confident their efforts this spring will pay off in the summer and fall.
“It’s very exciting going into training camp and going into the season because this is one of the better teams that I’ve been on,” Evans said. “We’ve got a chance. It’s about putting it on the field, and I think that’s the most exciting part about it. We have faith in what we have here because it is significantly better than it has been in the past, so we’ll see.”
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