As the doors open on training camp for the 2026 season, it’s a brand new Buffalo Bills.

Well, sort of.

The Bills carry an unusual circumstance by NFL standards: a different head coach than the previous year, but one who had been in the building with the last one. The Bills made the controversial decision to fire longtime head coach Sean McDermott and, after a coaching search, landed on McDermott’s offensive coordinator, Joe Brady, to try to change their playoff fortunes.

Along with that massive change comes the added responsibility for Brady, who has to put his own spin on what is now his team.

There were tiny noticeable tweaks even before the Bills arrived at St. John Fisher University. The camp schedule in Pittsford, N.Y., spans only seven practices, and in prior years they easily hit double digits each summer.

On the first day of practice, the session started earlier, as Brady put it, to maximize the day with team meetings later on. Rather than McDermott’s ‘situational’ period that began every practice, the Brady Bills started things off with special teams. Heck, even the weather was different for Day 1. Usually sweltering, the Bills endured a steady stream of rain throughout practice Wednesday.

But that’s not all that’s changed.

“Just the vibe, the energy… you know, it’s different,” quarterback Josh Allen said. “I’m not saying it’s better [or] it’s worse. It’s different. As a new head coach for a team, I think that’s a smart decision to make things different.”

Bills center Connor McGovern mentioned it felt new but not all that new at the same time.

“It’s just I would say a little more energy around the building as really the only difference,” McGovern added.

Whether that energy, the new voice in charge and changes to the defense can help raise the Bills’ playoff ceiling remains to be seen. It’s also up to Brady to make sure that energy continues once the demands of the regular season arrive. But at the very least, to start, the players who were there in 2025 initially feel the contrast.

“This isn’t the same place, and you have to make it feel differently because, you know, doing the same thing, it obviously didn’t work,” Allen said. “So we’ve got to change it up and try to find new ways to make it work.”

Here’s what stood out on Day 1 of Bills camp.

The Allen-Moore chemistry building

In an attempt to solve what felt like a never-ending conundrum at wide receiver the last two seasons, the Bills made a massive splash by not only trading for veteran DJ Moore, but also extending his guaranteed money through the 2027 season. The Bills have viewed Moore as a No. 1 option in the NFL, and both of their offseason actions surrounding his acquisition point to that. That makes his on-field impact and rapport with Allen among the most important factors building up to the 2026 regular season.

That has been top of mind for Allen, but he admitted he felt a breakthrough on Wednesday.

“I feel myself trying to be perfect when I’m throwing him in some of the routes on air,” Allen said. “Today I walked up to him and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m just going to throw it. I’m going to pick a spot and let it go. And I’m not trying to aim it anymore.’ And I felt like once I said that, things kind of clicked for us.”

It bled through into reps against defenders, as the two combined for the best play of the day. Allen roped a pass through tight coverage and into Moore’s arms along the left sideline for a diving grab. Moore was out there constantly with the first-team offense, which could be an early sign of a departure from how the Bills handled their receiver room over the last two seasons.

In those years, the team flattened their playing time more than they ever had with Allen as their quarterback, which was likely a product of the room rather than a complete philosophical shift. While Khalil Shakir is an excellent player, he was a slot-only player over the last two seasons, which narrowed his usage. With Moore being a proven commodity that they paid for, it would not be stunning to see him near the 80 to 90 percent of snaps mark when he’s healthy.

Moore has camped out in that range throughout his NFL career. It’s early, and we have to see if it’ll hold, but given the investment level and Allen’s vested interest in making it work, we could see a Bills receiver get near that level of playing time for the first time since the team traded away Stefon Diggs.

Coleman’s make-or-break Year 3

As Moore settles in with the Bills, third-year receiver Keon Coleman tries to make the most of a clear make-or-break campaign. He’s said and done all the right things to handle the off-field side of this to date, which has helped the Bills generate some excitement about the 23-year-old. With how the Bills receiver room is built, Coleman could yet again find himself getting several opportunities at playing time. The 2024 second-round pick dropped one early pass from Allen in 7-on-7 before brushing it off and coming back to make a difficult back shoulder catch against cornerback Maxwell Hairston.

It was a good bounce-back, as the team needs to see signs of growth in every phase through the regular season. Bills general manager Brandon Beane again on Wednesday waxed poetic about how Coleman has matured, and that he can tell Coleman is growing while knowing he can’t do the same things he did over his first two seasons if he wants to have success in the NFL. The expectations on Coleman have certainly changed from when he was first drafted. Still, the Bills are hoping to get a player who can start and play meaningful snaps rather than potentially starting over next offseason.

Coleman even mixed in on punt return duty. However, what was most interesting about the punt return group was who wasn’t a part of it. The four who fielded punts were Coleman, Mecole Hardman, Max Tomczak and Mac Dalena. Rookie Skyler Bell was not part of the mix, which is interesting, as it could change the math for the final 53-man roster. If Coleman were to win the job, that would be one thing. However, he seems a bit less trustworthy and certainly less explosive than Hardman, potentially allowing for Hardman to take a sixth receiver spot.

Things can change as camp goes along, but it’s always interesting to see the team’s early perspective.

One rookie with a big opportunity to start camp

While it has nothing to do with the players they picked and more so with the positional depth charts they’re walking into, the expectations on the Bills’ 2026 rookie class are relatively low compared to other years.

The most likely outcome of their top two picks, edge rusher T.J. Parker and cornerback Davison Igbinosun, is that they’ll be backups to the starters. In Parker’s case, he’s got free-agent signing Bradley Chubb ahead of him, while Igbinosun has 2025 first-round pick Maxwell Hairston ahead of him. Igbinosun could certainly push the inexperienced Hairston for the job, but that hasn’t happened just yet. Wide receiver Skyler Bell is intriguing, but he’s got Moore, Shakir, Coleman and probably Joshua Palmer ahead of him right now.

Buffalo Bills linebacker Kaleb Elarms-Orr (52) could be one of the few rookies on the team to earn significant playing time this season. (Gregory Fisher / Imagn Images)

However, of all the team’s rookies, the one with the clear best chance to try and work his way into a starting role is fourth-round pick and inside linebacker Kaleb Elarms-Orr. The Bills are going through a ramp-up period with starter Terrel Bernard, who got some time with the first unit in team drills but didn’t get the full complement of snaps. On top of that, Elarms-Orr’s main competition for a starting spot, Dorian Williams, didn’t take part in any team drill work as he’s working back from an injury. That allowed the rookie to take a full practice of first-team reps.

After practice, Beane admitted that Elarms-Orr had a great spring, but that they wanted to see what it would look like once the pads come on next week. Williams is a free agent after the season, so for the long term, having the rookie as a starter is an ideal outcome for the team if he shows he deserves it. The more Williams is out, the more runway Elarms-Orr has to impress and make it a legitimate possibility.

The punting competition has begun!

The Bills began their first 2026 training camp practice with a little #Puntapalooza session and mixed it in midway through the practice as well. The two entrants — rookie seventh-round pick Tommy Doman Jr. and the incumbent veteran Mitch Wishnowsky  — each had their fair share of work, with Doman getting the most opportunities. Doman had 21 documented attempts in the slippery, rainy weather to Wishnowsky’s 13, and the rookie punter was the clear winner on hangtime. Unofficially, Doman averaged in the 4.3-second range, whereas Wishnowsky was a bit below 4.1 seconds.

LeBron James joining the Philadelphia 76ers caused a shift in the hierarchy of the Eastern Conference, but there’s reason to think the newly built 76ers won’t hit the ground running in the regular season.

While the 76ers are third or fourth in the odds to win the NBA Finals next year, depending on the sportsbook, the outlook for the regular season is a touch less positive. The 76ers win total line currently sits at only 50.5 on various sportsbooks, and is even as low as 48.5 on FanDuel. That puts Philly not only behind the Western Conference powerhouses of the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs, but also behind the New York Knicks and Boston Celtics in the East.


The Thunder and Spurs are the clear favorites to win the NBA Finals in 2027 and have projected win totals hovering around 60. The Knicks have the top number in the East at 52.5 (53.5 on DraftKings), and the Celtics come in next at 51.5.

This variance, as senior director of basketball trading at Fanatics Josh Byrne explains, is due to a different philosophical view when it comes to the regular season as opposed to the playoffs.

“We project Philly’s ceiling to be higher, but Boston’s floor is stronger,” Byrne said. “The win total market prices 82 games, not a playoff series. Boston’s core is younger and healthier, while Philly’s number carries real games-played risk on both (Joel) Embiid and a 41-year-old LeBron, plus the integration cost from bolting two stars onto a new roster. If Philly’s stars all play 70-plus games, they blow past 50.5 — but that’s a big if.”

The 76ers also added 2024 NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown to a roster with future Hall of Famer Joel Embiid, All-Star Tyrese Maxey and first-team all-rookie guard VJ Edgecombe. They were at 48.5 wins on BetMGM and DraftKings before signing LeBron, which bumped that number to 50.5.

“There’s certainly upside beyond that number, but we also have to account for the realities of an 82-game season, including LeBron’s age and Embiid’s injury history,” said Johnny Avello, the director of sports operations at DraftKings. “Come playoff time, though, Philadelphia’s star power gives them a championship ceiling that’s reflected in the Finals odds.”

At Fanatics, James was worth three wins, moving Philly from 47.5 to 50.5.

“We believe LeBron’s worth is three games for two reasons: his on-court value for the 55-60 games that we project him to play and the lineup insurance he provides,” Byrne said. “With Embiid’s availability risk, LeBron is the difference between a lost stretch and a treading-water stretch. Even at 41, he’s a top-tier offensive organizer, and slotting him next to Maxey, Brown and Edgecombe means Philly almost never fields a bad five.”

So that’s what the sportsbooks think, but what has history told us about how LeBron’s teams do in his first year after making a move? NBA staff writer Law Murray has the breakdown on what to expect from Philly this season:

The 76ers have been incredibly up-and-down in Nick Nurse’s three seasons as 76ers head coach. Last season, the 76ers won 45 games and survived the Play-In Tournament. In Nurse’s first season, the 76ers won 47 games and had to survive the Play-In Tournament. In between was the worst-case scenario, a team that tanked aggressively after the All-Star break to a 24-58 record. The 76ers haven’t cleared 50 wins since Doc Rivers was coaching James Harden in 2022-23, and Nurse hasn’t coached a 50-win team since the 2019-20 season in Toronto.

Now, James’ teams in Los Angeles increased their win total each of James’ last four years, from an awful 33-49 2021-22 season to a 53-win 2025-26 season, the second-best win percentage of a Lakers team with James on it in his eight seasons there. But the Lakers got better without James as well. Last year, the Lakers went 14-8 without James, a win percentage of .636. In the previous three seasons, the Lakers went 25-25 without James. In Frank Vogel’s final season as Lakers head coach in 2021-22, the Lakers were a paltry 8-18 without James.

All of the talent that the 76ers have accrued should raise the floor. But the key to winning a lot of regular season games will be navigating what is always a slow start for a new LeBron James team, actually getting a respectable number of games from the powerful five-man lineup James will play with, and that lineup clicking sustainably before the playoffs.

This will be James’ fifth time joining a team. The 2003-04 Cavaliers started 6-19 and finished 35-47. The 2010-11 Heat started 9-8 before a 12-game win streak. The 2014-15 Cavaliers were 19-20 before a 12-game win streak. The 2018-19 Lakers started 2-5 and finished 37-45. Again, for the first time, James is joining a team that won a playoff series, so the floor should be higher. But history says that a slow start is likely.

Finally, here are the three-year averages of total games played for James, Embiid, Brown, and Maxey, respectively: 67, 32, 68, 64. Edgecombe played in 75 games last year. I would expect the 76ers to play Edgecombe as much as possible while being particularly aggressive about not playing James and Embiid at less than full strength. That will limit regular season wins for a team aiming for a deep postseason run. Compare that to the Celtics, a team that may not have to load-manage Jayson Tatum and otherwise has shown that they are consistently good at exceeding regular-season expectations.

DETROIT — Before the Detroit Tigers and Baltimore Orioles played 12 innings and combined for 19 runs, 19 hits, four errors and a wild array of twists and turns, people whispered the questions while standing in stairwells and seated at lunchroom tables.

Will the Tigers trade Tarik Skubal?

What are the odds he goes?

Is there any way he stays?

In what might have been Skubal’s final start as a Detroit Tiger, the Orioles won 10-9, staging a dramatic comeback from down 7-0 entering the seventh inning. This single game is unlikely to determine whether the Tigers trade Skubal. There’s too much at stake to let emotions rule such decisions. Still, Wednesday sure felt like a perfect embodiment of the journey Skubal and the Tigers have traveled — inspiring at some points, exhausting at others.

Skubal walked in from the bullpen before his start with a camera following his every move. He seemed emotional as he strutted toward the dugout. With trade whispers circulating, the outside world spent the past 24 hours wondering whether Skubal would even make this start as scheduled.

Before the game, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch gave the perfect soundbite, saying just enough to entice fans who are still dreaming of the Tigers buying and making a remarkable run.

“Pitching Tarik today was never up in the air, unless it was external,” Hinch said. “We’ve continued to talk about winning series, winning weeks, winning months. It’s how I talk. It’s how Scott (Harris) and Jeff (Greenberg) talk about our team.”

Skubal entered the day with 999 career strikeouts, one away from a meaningful milestone. A student of the game’s history, Skubal is well aware 1,000 punchouts is nothing in the grand scheme. At one point, he nodded over to Justin Verlander, seated two lockers down.

“The guy next to me has got 3,500 of them,” Skubal said. “Nonetheless, they’re special to me.”

Something about the achievement still felt bigger to Skubal than most so far in his career. Perhaps a small bit of history — only 16 other pitchers have recorded 1,000 strikeouts in a Tigers uniform — added to the gravitas of Wednesday’s start. Once an unheralded lefty buried in the minor-league bullpen, Skubal is now the most sought-after pitcher in the game.

“You get a little bit nostalgic in those moments,” Skubal said. “My story. I don’t know if I could have convinced myself when I was 19 that I was going to strike out 1,000 guys in the big leagues.”

For as much as Skubal said he was blocking out the trade-related noise, one can imagine what he might have felt in the moments leading up to his start.

“He had to pitch with a lot on his plate,” Hinch said. “That’s very obvious.”

Soon enough, Skubal struck out the game’s first batter, Taylor Ward, to notch No. 1,000. There was a brief pause as the Tigers commemorated the achievement on the video board. A crowd of 34,406 clapped. Skubal tipped his hat to the fans.

Even on a day where Skubal was not at his best — his velocity was down a tick in the first three innings, and his command wasn’t entirely crisp early on — he captivated the day and worked through the Orioles’ order with ease. He ended the sixth inning having retired 14 consecutive batters despite giving up his share of hard contact. More than once, Skubal popped a fist in his glove when a hard liner or deep fly ball sailed toward one of his teammates and landed in leather.

By the time there were two outs in the seventh inning, Skubal walked Coby Mayo to put runners on the corners. Hinch came to the mound, asked Skubal how he was feeling and told him the next batter would be his last. Skubal quickly got down 2-0 against Leody Taveras, then left a sinker over the middle of the plate. Taveras hit the ball on a line into center field. Baltimore scored its first run. Skubal was finished after 92 pitches.

And so the end of Skubal’s day proved to be anticlimactic. There was no pulsating strikeout, no electric roar from the mound.

As he walked off the field, there was still a massive cheer from the fans who had come to see him pitch. Skubal acknowledged the fans with a few claps of his own and then headed into the dugout, still uncertain if that was really the end.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on around me that I have no control (over)” he said afterward. “I try to be pretty present all the time. When the fans get on their feet like that and give you a pretty good ovation, it’s special. It’ll never not be special, and it’s something I’ve always appreciated. Hopefully they feel the same way. Hopefully they feel like I’ve given everything to the team, the city, because I truly have.”

The score at the time was 7-1, and everything that happened from there felt like a microcosm of the Tigers’ topsy-turvy season. A bullpen that has been this team’s Achilles’ heel struggled with walks and couldn’t execute in two-strike counts. Baltimore battled back to tie the score at 7. There was more back and forth. A couple of double plays. A dramatic Spencer Torkelson home run and, ultimately, not enough. The Orioles won the game and sent the Tigers back to seven games below .500 at 51-58.

“We’re close,” Torkelson said. “One swing, one pitch. The last three, four losses have been like that. The margins are so tight. We just got to keep grinding.”

As the media gathered two deep around his locker after the game, Skubal fielded more questions about his future. Parts of his interview were reflective and appreciative, but for the first time in what has become a long saga, he seemed worn down by the trade talk.

“I don’t even want to speculate, to be honest,” Skubal said when asked if he would be disappointed if this turns out to be his final start in Detroit. “I try to live where I’m at right now. Right now, I’m a Detroit Tiger. I don’t really want to speculate a ton on what’s happening or what the future holds, because I don’t know. … I don’t really like thinking like that. It’s a tough place to be.”

Even Skubal’s manager seemed more wounded than usual after a strange loss that took 3 hours and 33 minutes to reach its conclusion.

“I just can’t think in hypotheticals,” Hinch said, also asked about Skubal’s future. “I really can’t. I’ll have a ton to say when and if and where and whenever, but I think it’s a waste of my time to talk in hypotheticals. It’s not what I’m about.”

The trade deadline will be here in five days. Answers to all the questions will come soon enough.

If this was the end, an emotional day that ended in grueling defeat felt a little too appropriate, another chapter in a season where Skubal and the Tigers have carried a heavy load.

“We’re up 7-0 at one point in that game,” Skubal said. “We end up losing. I don’t even know the final score. … That one hurts.”