Buffalo Bills: Sean McDermott would like to make practice more public

Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott would like practices to be more public, but it’s easier said than done.

The Buffalo Bills announced their training camp schedule on Friday, with eight practices being held at St. John Fisher in Rochester. All eight practices will be available to watch for the public, but head coach Sean McDermott would like to expand on that, as he told BuffaloBills.com;

"We’d love to make everything public, quite honestly. We’re just not able to do that necessarily with the physical location of things and trying to rotate fields and space."

McDermott hasn’t been shy to interact with fans since his arrival in Buffalo, even walking through Bills Mafia tailgates. So it shouldn’t be surprising that McDermott wants the team to be more public; however, it won’t happen in Rochester.

The logistics of holding public practices at St. John Fisher’s are stress inducing. McDermott prefers not to practice on turf — the primary field at St. John Fisher is turf — so the Bills practice on a smaller, less fan-friendly secondary field. When they need to switch fields to avoid ruining one, they have to go to a practice field — with minimal viewing areas. Changing fields is already a logistical nightmare for fans; doing so without much space is worse.

Another limiting factor for the Bills’ publicity in practice is that it is about an hour and a half drive from Buffalo to Rochester. Considering that McDermott prefers his practices in the morning, many simply can’t fit going into their schedules.

Of course, this problem could be solved by ditching training camp at St. John Fisher’s as a whole. NFL teams have turned destination training camps from the norm to the exception. With the Bills’ $18 million training facility now built, there is an opportunity to bring practices to Buffalo. In doing so, training camps would be far easier to attend for fans.