ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Sleep, in Joe Brady’s mind, is overrated.
No, wait. Scratch that.
He reconsiders. It’s not that it is overrated. Instead, it’s the most important thing.
But, Brady asserts, that he has tried to “convince” his brain that he can operate without it.
During seasons past, Brady -- before becoming a head coach for the Buffalo Bills -- would sleep no more than three or four hours a night.
Brady can sustain such a schedule with the help of caffeine, which plays an important role in his life, but declares caffeine is just an assist.
His brain doesn’t stop either way.
The first-time head coach made it clear that he’s “not living on caffeine.” Yet on the morning of a sitdown with ESPN in June, he was on his second Gatorade Fast Twitch of the day. He’s an espresso guy, not coffee. On the road for games and in the summer it’s café con leche when it can be found on a food delivery app.
Brady’s consistent energy has been noted by staff and coaches over the years, even in the early hours of the morning. Quarterback Josh Allen noted Brady’s fast-talking nature pops up when he’s wired for team meetings in the morning, espresso in tow.
Now that ever-moving brain has a tall task on its hands in leading the Bills and continuing to call offensive plays.
The highly caffeinated but light on sleep 36-year-old is the youngest head coach in the NFL, and over a team that is listed for the second-highest odds of winning Super Bowl LXI (10-1), per DraftKings Sportsbook.
Brady has worked this offseason to put his own stamp on the Bills. Now the time has arrived to see how his high-energy iteration of the Bills translates on the field as Buffalo plays at the Houston Texans in Week 1 (1 p.m. ET, CBS).
“This is Year 1 in the Joe Brady era,” said Allen. “What he’s doing it’s gonna take the conviction to buy in, in order to achieve what we want to achieve. And it’s going to take everybody in this locker room to do it.”
CHANGE IS A visual thing in Orchard Park.
As the leaves begin to turn, the new Highmark Stadium has transformed the landscape and can be seen from different vantage points around Western New York.
It’s audible, too.
At an arbitrary Bills practice, the music blasting throughout the session stands out. Not the fact that it’s playing itself, but that this music contains significantly more expletives. There’s no censoring this practice unlike what the previous coaching regime did.
The change was something the players requested in which Brady obliged. It is one of many changes that he has brought to the team after coach Sean McDermott’s nine-year tenure ended on Jan. 19 when he was fired.
“Right, wrong or indifferent. I want the guys, this is their safe space,” Brady told ESPN. “... I don’t want them to have to think about the music.”
Training camp practices were moved earlier in the day in part to embody Brady’s “put the ball down mantra” -- that the team can play whenever and wherever. Therefore, less practices were held at St. John Fisher University in Pittsford, New York than in years past. The choice was to encourage players to spend time together as opposed to going back-and-forth to Buffalo, and to simulate game-like weeks.
Offense and defense switched practice jersey colors.
“[There’s a] new energy in the building and he wants us to be well conditioned,” right tackle Spencer Brown said of Brady’s changes. " He’s letting guys be themselves, trying to get the ball in everybody’s hands and stay together."
For every change, there are also consistencies.
General manager Brandon Beane is still in charge, but now with more power as the president of football operations with Brady now reporting to Beane as opposed to separately to owner Terry Pegula. Much of the support staff has stayed in place. But the coaches are new, notably the coordinators, namely defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard and offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael Jr.
When Beane described the process of hiring Brady, a focus was put on having a “CEO-type of head coach” who brought alignment and his own “strong culture.”
“From a staff point of view and from a player point of view, there’s still a lot of familiar faces. Gives me the vibe that they probably didn’t want to blow it up for that very reason,” long-snapper Reid Ferguson, one of the team’s longest tenured players said. “... We were having a lot of success over the last decade.”
Many of the tweaks Brady has made are done with the players in mind. A big one for the season is changing practice to later in the day so players can eat lunch before and then have dinner at a more standard time.
“There is a lot of support for that,” Ferguson said. “We used to practice ... 12:30 to 2:30, and I would eat lunch after practice at 3 or 3:30 and I would go home, and my wife would have dinner, and I would basically just sit there with her and the kids and I’d be like, ‘I just ate two hours ago. I’m not hungry.’”
On his side, Brady emphasized during his introductory news conference that he needs to have his “uninew energy” every day, while acknowledging assists from espresso or Fast Twitch.
“I believe people are going to feed off [my energy],” Brady said. “I truly believe in being the temperature. I’m the weather, and they’re going to feel it every single day, a mentality.”
EXPLAINING THE WHY is important to Brady -- so people in the building understand the reasons behind something being done.
“Why are we calling this? Why are we doing this? Whether they need to hear it or not,” Brady said. “It’s important, because then it allows guys to at least have an understanding of it.”
DJ Mangas, now the Bills pass game specialist, has known Brady since they were teammates, and roommates for a time, at William & Mary. He joined his friend at LSU, then for a season with the Carolina Panthers, where Brady was offensive coordinator in 2020 and for most of 2021 before being fired, and since 2023 with the Bills.
He thinks the desire to explain the why comes from Brady, as a player and coach, not understanding why things were done himself. Understanding, in turn, brought energy.
“When he finally figured out the why to why we’re doing something, it clicked,” Mangas said. “It’s almost energizing and it makes you a better player or it makes you a better coach.”
Learning is a theme of Brady’s coaching career. He has publicly discussed the lessons taken from his stretch as the Panthers coordinator. In hiring his coaching staff, Brady brought in coaches who have plenty of experience in former head coach John Fox and Carmichael.
Brady has changed over the years to get here, too. “The Carolina thing I think was, I know he’s been pretty open about it, it’s been one of the best things that’s happened to him. He’s learned so much, I think, from that experience,” Mangas said.
“... He felt like he just didn’t, not that he didn’t care for the players, but he spent too much time in the X’s and O’s, this is his words, as opposed to I think communicating and connecting with the players. And obviously I have definitely seen a change in that.”
Quarterback Kyle Allen saw Brady through the ranks to elevate at One Bills Drive from quarterbacks coach to interim offensive coordinator to offensive coordinator to head coach, however, note the consistency he’s shown.
“He’s the same guy though as a head coach, which is awesome to see,” Allen said. “And he’s in the quarterback room all the time, too and it hasn’t changed. Hasn’t got an ego. We still give him some s---, and he won’t get mad about it.”
Lessons come on a daily basis for Brady, who repeatedly emphasizes a focus on where he is in that moment. Some of that comes in the form of internal feedback, including asking for coaches to anonymously send him what they would change, things that they think should be emphasized and answering, “If you were head coach right now, what’s one thing you would change?”
“I think there’s conversations about, sometimes vulnerability is shown as a weakness and I think it’s, ‘Hey guys, like I’m open to feedback, doesn’t mean it’s going to change, but I still expect feedback the next time,’” Brady said.
He developed the team’s schedule in the offseason, designing it from the end of the season and then working his way through the year backwards, but is tweaking things on the daily.
“He’s looking at every day to see how could we have done it better and the next time we have this same type of day or schedule or whatever, how can we do it better moving forward,” Mangas said. “... I’m talking about whether it’s a week from that day or maybe even the next day if we have the same schedule.”
DON’T EXPECT TO learn much about Brady from a news conference. That’s intentional. And it’s certainly not indicative of his full personality.
“I don’t believe in using the media as a way to communicate to my guys,” Brady said of the choice to keep things close to the vest.
“It’s important that the guys can feel that they can be themselves. I’m not their best friend,” Brady said. “I protect my guys, but when I’m out there like I am competitive, like I said, I curse, I get after them, I’m going to talk s---, you know, like I’m going to do those things, but I want them to feel comfortable being whatever that version is.”
Don’t confuse protection to preclude accountability. Brady got on veteran offensive players for sitting on coolers during a special teams period of practice in early August. He instructed veteran safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson to not livestream from the locker room or training room. Brady emphasizes to players to be present and focus on what needs to be done on that particular day.
One of his favorite phrases is “be you with us,” which represents a desire for players to feel comfortable being themselves.
Brady has his own ways of being utterly himself, such as a day of minicamp caffeine that included downing a Fast Twitch in the morning, another while he was working out, knocking back a MEG Military Energy Gum during practice, then an espresso at lunch, only to drink another Fast Twitch or espresso at night. He also almost always wears a uniform of black shirt, baggy black shorts, white sneakers and a gold chain outside of his Bills gear.
“I always thought Joe was the coolest white boy I ever met. He rocked the taper fade,” defensive tackle Ed Oliver said this summer. “So, we [would be] there getting a haircut, ‘Man, this smooth white boy right there. ... Now he’s a head coach, but I still see Joe Brady, the cool laid back, real reserved. Well, I wouldn’t say reserved but just a cool cat.”
Swag aside, the lofty expectations surrounding the Bills aren’t going anywhere. Most head coaches get a little time to settle in.
Making it to the big game goes against historic trends. Just five first-year coaches have made it to the Super Bowl and two have won it (San Francisco 49ers’ George Seifert and Indianapolis Colts’ Don McCafferty). Every season is crucial with a franchise quarterback like Allen, who can make even a team led by a brand-new head coach have the tallest possible ceiling.
And true to his emphasis on focusing on what is directly in front of him, the expectations don’t bother him.
“I don’t believe anybody ever rises to low expectations, but there’s not a person in this room or this city or wherever that has higher expectations than I’m always asking them of myself,” Brady said. “I know the mindset that I have and, but no different than kind of what have I learned as a head coach? That all can take care of itself. Let’s find out what we got to do today, and everything else will take care of itself.”
While catching up with Brady a week before the season got underway, Brady made it clear where his current energy is coming from.
“Running on caffeine.”
