Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

‘“He’s just a really edgy guy, doesn’t think he should ever be blocked,” said defensive line coach Eric Washington. “He has a really, really competitive, aggressive mindset, his hands are extremely violent, and he understands pad level and all the things you have to do to give yourself a chance to win. I mean, he gets (upset) if he’s blocked or stalled as a pass rusher. I absolutely love that. He’s got a lot of pride in how he performs.”’

‘“I think that’s a huge part of being a rookie,” Dorsey said of the camp development. “O’Cyrus is getting more and more to that point, and I’ll tell you what, he did a great job in the offseason between mini camps and training camp because he knew more when he came back than he did when he left. That’s the exciting part about him is there’s something inside him that wants this. He wants to be a good football player and he wants to be out there and help us win football games.”‘

‘“I’m always looking to improve, always looking to get better, but this year it’s all about just playing confident and playing fast and free,” he said Monday following practice at St. John Fisher University. “That’s my big emphasis. I know what to do, I know how to play this game and just trust that trust in myself.”’

‘“Huge Bills fan,” said Boeheim, who was at the practice with his father Jim and mother Juli, guests of team owner Terry Pegula. “When I’m overseas playing basketball, I’m staying up til’ the primetime games are over, I’m staying up til’ 3-4 a.m. to watch the games. Bring my (Bills) flag over there with me and all that. So yeah, I’m a big fan.”’

‘What would be nice is if the Bills could somehow meld Dodson and Bernard into one player. Dodson has a little more size at 237 pounds and will probably hold up better against the run while the 222-pound Bernard has a little more speed that will help him in pass coverage.’

‘“I think during free agency you’re always trying to find a good fit, not only for yourself as a player but as a team culture fit, too,” he said. “I knew coach (Sean) McDermott, Brandon Beane, they’re just building something great here and I always had respect for how this team plays. They’ve got the right guys in the locker room, right guys around the facility.’

‘“It was an emotional day, I felt the love then (in January) but to then not knowing the future and not knowing what it was going to be for me, to be able to be back out here so soon, I can’t describe that to you,” Hamlin said after the Bills’ two-hour practice concluded.’

‘However, on the other side of the field at CB2, things are nowhere near settled as Kaiir Elam, Dane Jackson and Christian Benford remain locked in a three-way battle for the starting job, and no one has inched ahead of the others at this point.’

‘Spencer Brown left practice early: The right tackle got hurt late in practice and he came off the field very gingerly, looking the way you do if you tweak your back. And as we know, back problems have been a constant for him and were partially to blame for the uneven season he had in 2022.’

‘“I want to take as much of the burden off of Josh as I possibly can,” Harris said. “I want to let him go out there and play free, throw the ball, stay healthy, do his thing. Obviously, he’s a freak of nature so he does a lot of things, but if I can take some hits off his shoulders and keep his legs fresh, I would love to do that.”’

‘A betting site called Bookies.com ranked the best pregame experiences at NFL stadiums and Buffalo’s Highmark Stadium clocked in at 24th out of 32.’

‘The next thing you have to say is that Harty might be undersized, but you can’t hit what you can’t catch and through the first week of training camp he has shown off game-breaking speed which offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey hopes to utilize far more than his coaching counterparts at New Orleans did when they had Harty for four seasons.’

‘“Sean and I have worked together for over a decade and so obviously there’s a lot of experiences together, there’s a lot of dialogue that we’ve had over the years, trust that we built with each other,” Washington said. “At the end of the (2022) season, once we sat down and kind of talked about his new role and how I could best assist him, be a great resource for him, we talked about that and we decided that that was a move that we wanted to make and I was excited to do it.”’

‘“It’s just the way the universe works man; it’s truly a blessing,” Poyer said.’

‘Hamlin worked without restriction for most of the offseason program after he was given clearance, and that continued for the first four days of training camp. But Monday was the first time the team was in pads and there was much more contact as it worked through the script of plays and drills.’