PITTSFORD, N.Y. — A soaking rain fell on Joe Brady’s first training camp practice as the Buffalo Bills’ new head coach.

Maybe some sort of wedding-day superstition applies: how rain brings good luck and whatnot.

One thing’s for sure: Brady doesn’t anticipate much of a honeymoon. He never has been a head coach, but nobody is cutting him slack, not the fans, not the media, certainly not the betting public.

The 36-year-old Brady is supposed to accomplish something no coach in franchise history ever could: win the Lombardi Trophy. And many people are wagering — at One Bills Drive and elsewhere — that he should.

This year.

“I like to think there’s not a head coach in the league that buys into a grace period,” Brady said Wednesday morning at St. John Fisher University. “I know I can’t speak for everybody, but that’s not how my brain is wired.

“I understand what comes with this job, but that’s what I wanted. I want the guys to understand what comes with that. I have no pressure. I don’t feel any pressure, and that’s not in a negative way, but I wake up, I work, I try to do the best job I can do and get my guys in the best position to have success, and they go from there.”

Brady was hired to punch Buffalo, as owner Terry Pegula phrased it, through that “proverbial playoff wall” and into the Super Bowl.

Upon firing previous coach Sean McDermott, Pegula declared the Bills already have a championship roster, a belief underscored, italicized and boldfaced by simultaneously promoting general manager Brandon Beane to president of football operations.

Almost seven months later, over half of Buffalo’s defensive starting lineup from last postseason remains unemployed.

The basis for McDermott’s demise was not reaching the promised land despite Josh Allen’s magnificence. The all-everything quarterback is in the high-speed lane on a Hall of Fame track, and while Beane was given credit for drafting Allen, McDermott was blamed for wasting him.

Now, it’s up to Brady to make that elusive dream happen. Allen’s responsibility also has grown through the offseason upheaval. Pegula cited Allen’s heartbreak after losing to the Denver Broncos in overtime as the impetus for firing McDermott. The mere sight of his mighty quarterback in tears was more than Pegula could bear. The Bills let Allen participate in the job interviews for McDermott’s replacement. They decided to elevate Brady, the guy Allen wanted to replace offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey midway through the 2023 season.

“The standard here right now is championships and winning,” said safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who played in the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2022-23 and won it two seasons later. “Everybody understands what’s going on. We’re too good of a team to fall short. Simple as that.”

The roster around Allen seems far from complete. Consensus offseason player rankings — whether the input came from executives, coaches, other players or analytics — included just two Bills: Allen and running back James Cook. The NFL’s annual list, voted on by players, added left tackle Dion Dawkins.

Nevertheless, Buffalo features the greatest player at the most crucial position. Therefore, they are expected to win, win, win.

“We can talk about what we want to do and the expectation of our football team,” said Brady, “but we haven’t done a damn thing. You know what I mean? What I don’t want is, like, ‘Well, we know we have a good offense.’ We don’t know anything. We haven’t earned a damn thing.”

At most major sportsbooks, Allen … I mean the Bills enter training camp as AFC favorites to win the Super Bowl at plus-1,000 odds — slightly ahead of the Baltimore Ravens — and are behind only the plus-500 Los Angeles Rams leaguewide. No team is a bigger favorite to win its division than the Bills despite finishing second to the New England Patriots last season and firing McDermott in part because of it.

The Bills’ implied odds, however, mean the betting public thinks they have about a 9 percent chance to win the Super Bowl.

Such is the albatross of being dubbed the favorite in a parity-weighted league of 32 teams with gargantuans repeatedly slamming into each other, with officiating crews that don’t necessarily know what a catch is, with an oblong ball that bounces funny.

Should the outside world show patience with the Bills?

“No, I think just keep all the pressure on,” Bills center Connor McGovern said. “That’s what we look forward to.”

In addition to having a rookie head coach, Buffalo’s defensive coordinator, Jim Leonhard, hasn’t done the job in the NFL yet either. The defense, learning Leonhard’s scheme and with different assistant coaches, should look muddled early in training camp against an offense imbued with continuity.

There will be growing pains.

“It’s new everything,” Allen said. “We got a new stadium, a new coach. In my personal life, I’ve got a lot of ‘news’ too. It is different.

“Change isn’t always the easiest, but sometimes it’s for the better. We’ve just got to keep moving forward.”

The expectations aren’t new. The expectations have not changed.

For sure, the rain saturating his very first training camp practice Wednesday morning will be among the easiest days Brady will weather in a season that will be considered a disappointment unless it ends at the Super Bowl.

Former Toronto Blue Jays All-Star starter Alek Manoah was released by the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday after a dreadful run in Triple A.

Manoah posted a 24.23 ERA over his last five starts for the Salt Lake Bees, which included 24 hits, 21 walks, five hit batters and five homers in just 13 innings.

The 28-year-old right-hander signed a $1.95 million guaranteed contract with the Angels this past offseason. The club viewed him as a reclamation project, hoping for the former flamethrower to rediscover the repertoire that made him one of the game’s best pitchers.

“We have a plan. We’ve got to get his delivery back in place,” since-fired Angels general manager Perry Minasian said in December of Manoah. “… He’s motivated. If he is productive, which we believe he will be, there’s an extra year of control, which made a ton of sense for us. And we’ve got to take some chances.”

Manoah’s best years came in Toronto, where he finished third in Cy Young voting in 2022. That season, he had a 2.24 ERA in 31 starts and a sub-one WHIP.

In his latter years with the Blue Jays, Manoah dealt with multiple injuries, including Tommy John surgery. His velocity dipped, he lost the ability to throw strikes consistently, and he was eventually demoted to the minor leagues in 2023.

Before this season, Manoah was confident in his ability to regain his form.

“I just think that’s the cycle of baseball. It’s very, ‘What have you done for me now?’” Manoah told The Athletic in February.

“There are a lot of guys that had a really good year two years ago, but because they had a bad year last year, a lot of people are writing them off for the rest of their careers.

“For me. It was a matter of, I had a down year.”

Before the season started, the Angels put billboard images of Manoah in Angel Stadium. They were removed before the home opener, after Manoah struggled in spring. He also started the season on the injured list with a fingernail issue.

Manoah made just three appearances for the Angels. In his third and final outing against the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 16, he allowed eight earned runs in 1 1/3 innings. His fastball velocity averaged just 87 miles per hour.